We’ve added a way for you to display instrument (part) names directly in your music:

This is especially handy for music that has lots of parts, such as choral or orchestral music. Here’s an example so you can see it in action.

We won’t display these names by default; you have to opt into it for any slice you’ve created. To do so, edit your slice, go to the advanced settings and look for this new option:

You can choose to display the instrument names in every system or only in the first system.

Abbreviated names

In published sheet music, it’s common to use abbreviated part names after the first system. For example, the first system of a choral score might use Soprano/Alto/Tenor/Bass, while subsequent systems use S/A/T/B.

We now support this as well. If you’ve chosen to display the instrument names in every system (not just the first), we’ll use an abbreviated version of the name.

That’s made possible by the “Abbreviated name,” which we’ve also added today. When you edit an instrument in our editor, you’ll now see this new field.

If you’ve entered an abbreviated name (like “S” instead of “Soprano”) for an instrument, our graphics engine will use that when displaying the instrument name. Except for the very first system, in which case we’ll always use the full name, per convention.

Removal of old instrument names display

Previously, in certain situations, our player would automatically display instrument names in vertically aligned text at the far left, like this:

We’ve now removed this, since the new instrument names feature is much more powerful. Plus you don’t have to tilt your head to read the names now.

If you were relying on that old behavior, enable instrument name display on your slices to get a similar (hopefully better) effect. This is done on a per-slice basis. If you have a lot of slices and want to enable instrument name display on all of them, just email us and we can take care of it for you to save you from having to do a lot of clicking.