Workspace and Sessions
Sensory Percussion keeps two places your work can live, and the selector at the top of the window shows which one you're in:
- The workspace is an always-saved scratchpad. There's no save and no unsaved state — whatever you do is kept, and it comes back exactly as you left it the next time you open the app. This is where you noodle.
- A session is a named file you deliberately created. It has a title, it can have unsaved changes, and you save, revert, or close it like a document. Session files have the extension
.sp2.
Only one is active at a time. The other stays parked with its contents intact, so switching between them is free and never prompts you to save.
The selector
Workspace switches to the scratchpad, and Session switches to the parked session — or opens one, if the session slot is empty. Beside them is the name tag, showing the name of whatever session is in the session slot.
The name tag reads Untitled for a new session you haven't named yet, and Open... when the session slot is empty. While you're in the workspace it's dimmed, showing that the session is parked rather than active.
A yellow dot beside the name means the session has changes that aren't in its file yet. It appears as soon as you edit the session, and a brand-new Untitled session always carries one, since it has never been written anywhere. It clears when you Save, Save As..., Revert to saved, or open a different file into the slot.
The dot is remembered, so a session you leave unsaved still shows it when you come back — including after quitting and reopening the app.
It's only drawn while the session slot is active, though. In the workspace the name tag shows no dot even if the parked session does have unsaved changes, so switch to the session to see its real state.
Autosave doesn't clear the dot. While a session is active, autosave keeps your edits safe in a separate recovery file rather than writing to the session's own file — so nothing is lost in a crash, but the dot keeps reminding you that the saved file is still behind.
Clicking the name tag while the session is active opens a short menu of session actions: Edit Session Info, Save, Save As..., and Close Session. From the workspace, clicking the name tag jumps into the session instead.
Moving work between them
The workspace and the session are two parked buffers, not two windows. The selector chooses which one you're editing; switching flushes what you were working on and loads the other, and nothing is lost either way.
The workspace is never dirty — it has no saved/unsaved distinction, which is why it carries no dot and offers no Save. Save to session... in the File menu is how work leaves the workspace and becomes a document: it promotes the workspace into a named session and leaves the scratchpad clean behind you. If you'd rather write the workspace out to a file without changing anything in the app, use Save a copy... instead — you stay in the workspace, and nothing becomes the active session.
New session is available from either side, and starts a fresh untitled session in the session slot rather than carrying your workspace across. Reach for it when you want to begin something new, and for Save to session... when you want to keep what you've been noodling on.
Promoting the workspace replaces whatever session is parked in the session slot. If that session has unsaved changes, Sensory Percussion asks whether to save it first.
Read-only sessions
Opening a factory session from the core library or a soundpack — or any file you don't have permission to write — gives you an editable untitled session rather than claiming the original file. A later save can never overwrite the protected source, because saving routes through Save session as... instead.
Backups
Clearing the workspace, reverting a session, and discarding a session's unsaved edits all leave a recoverable backup behind first.