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When I try to open Music Mentor, I get a message telling me that my screen is too small, and then it quits - but my screen is plenty big enough. What's wrong?

You need to download the latest version. Version 1.0 had a bug which caused the program to quit when the screen was too large, rather than too small. I didn't notice the problem at first because my screen was exactly the right size.

The help bit says I need to click on the start/stop button... but I can't find one anywhere! Where is it?

The reason you can't see the start/stop button is that you're on the "help" screen. You need to press any key on the computer's keyboard to go to the main testing screen.

It says to "press any key to go to the main screen." I did, and all it did was stop or start some music.

The instruction is a little ambiguous... you need to press any key on your computer's keyboard, not the picture of a piano keyboard on the screen.

When I try to open Music Mentor, I get a dialog box saying "Could not find the application program "hypercard" to open the document "MusicMentor"" (or something similar.)

Music Mentor requires either HyperCard or HyperCard Player to run. HyperCard Player is free from Apple, and used to come with all Macintoshes, but sadly it does not any more. If you have one of the earlier iMacs, you might find HyperCard Player in the CD Extras folder on the CD which came with your iMac. Newer iMacs don't even come with that, so you'd need to download HyperCard Player from here.

Is there any way of changing the sound that is generated when an error is made?

Yes, though it is a little complicated unless you're already familiar with ResEdit. You can either record your own sound, copy a system 7 sound, or copy a sound from another application program or game. First, you need a copy of Apple's ResEdit, which you can download from here. Once you have ResEdit, follow these steps:

  1. Open MusicMentor with ResEdit (either by dragging the MusicMentor icon onto the ResEdit icon, or by opening ResEdit first and then opening MusicMentor using 'Open...' in the 'File' menu.) Doubleclick on the 'snd' icon in the MusicMentor window. Another window should come up called 'snds from MusicMentor'
  2. This is where the procedure changes a bit depending on where you want to get the sound from. If you want to record your own sound, go to 2a. If you want to copy a sound from a system 7 sound file, go to 2b. If you want to copy a sound from another program or game, go to 2c.

     2a. Choose 'Record New Snd...' from the 'snd' menu. Record a sound in the window that comes up, then when you're happy with the sound, press 'Save'. Now go straight to step 6.

     2b. Open (in ResEdit) the sound you want to replace my sound with. Click on the 'snd' icon in the window for the sound. Now go to step 3.

     2c. Open (in ResEdit) the program or game you want to copy a sound from. Doubleclick the 'snd' icon in the window for the program you want to copy a sound out of (if there is no 'snd' icon in that window, then that program has no sounds in it in a format which you can copy.) Another window should come up with a list of the sounds in that program. Click on the sound you want to copy from that list, then proceed to step 3. You can listen to the sounds to choose which one you want by clicking on each one and choosing 'Try Sound' from the 'snd' menu.

  3. Choose 'Copy' from the Edit menu.
  4. Click on the 'snds from MusicMentor' window.
  5. Choose 'Paste' from the Edit menu.
  6. The 'snds from MusicMentor' window should now have two things in it, one called "wap" and the other called whatever the sound was called that you copied into it. If you recorded your own sound, the second item won't have a name.
  7. Click on "wap" and press delete. There should now only be one item left in the window. Click on it.
  8. Choose 'Get Resource Info' from the Resource menu. In the window that comes up, there should be a space for 'ID' and another for 'Name'. Change the name to wap, but don't worry about the ID.
  9. Quit ResEdit (click yes when it asks if you want to save the changes to MusicMentor) and now MusicMentor should play your sound when an error is made.

If you have any other questions about Music Mentor, email me and I should be able to answer your question, and maybe add it to the FAQ.