We’ve spent the last several weeks making lots of Soundslice improvements specifically for percussion.

The improvements span nearly every part of our site, from our notation editor, to our graphics engine, to our audio playback, to our scanning system. Let’s dive in...

Percussion maps

At long last, this highly requested feature is in Soundslice!

You can now edit your instrument’s percussion map. This tells our system which staff position (and notehead) corresponds to which percussion sound.

(This is necessary due to the wide variety of opinions on percussion notation. There’s no single standard for how drums should be notated.)

The percussion map is editable via our new bespoke interface:

Once you’ve created a percussion map you’re happy with, you can save it as a preset. From then on, you can use the preset for any new percussion instruments (or switch existing instruments to use it). Fast and easy.

We’ve also added a built-in preset, “Percussive Arts Society,” based on the recommendations of that industry group.

For much more info, see our new help page.

Percussion legends

The other piece of the puzzle is communicating the percussion map to people reading your music. You can now activate an automatically generated percussion legend directly in your notation:

This displays all the types of percussion used in the current piece of music. With this, you can be 100% sure of the intent of the notation.

This is available sitewide for all percussion music, and it’s a free feature. You don’t even have to log in to use it. To activate it, open the player settings and find “Percussion legend” in the Appearance section:

You can also opt into making the percussion legend visible by default for any slice you’ve created. For much more info, see our new help page.

Higher-quality synth sounds

In synth playback, our percussion sounds are much nicer now. Previously they sounded dull and uninspiring. Now they’re much clearer and crisper, especially the cymbals.

Multiple synth sound banks

We’ve improved our synth engine to support multiple percussion sound banks. Previously all synth percussion always used the same sound bank.

In the player settings, you can now switch between “Standard” and “Electronic”:

You can also save a percussion instrument’s default sound bank in our editor.

We’re planning to add other sound banks now that we have the infrastructure in place. If you have any suggestions, please get in touch.

Hi-hat treatment in synth playback

We’ve fixed our synth playback so that consecutive hi-hat hits will be properly muted. Previously hi-hat sounds persisted even if the hi-hat was struck a second time.

New notehead options

We’ve added support for setting various percussion noteheads. The following are now available in editor search:

• Toggle circled notehead
• Toggle crossed-out notehead
• Toggle diamond notehead

Our graphics engine hadn’t supported circled or crossed-out noteheads yet, so we’ve added full support for those glyphs now.

Feel free to make a custom keyboard shortcut for notehead types that you use frequently.

Improved editor note entry for percussion

Our editor will now automatically use certain noteheads when you input percussion music, according to your percussion map.

For example, if your percussion map uses an X notehead for all notes on the top staff line, then we’ll automatically set the X notehead whenever you add a note there.

This can be a big timesaver, since you don’t have to manually set those noteheads.

Detection of sticking in PDF/image scans

Our PDF/image scanner now detects stickings (“L” and “R”).

It will properly import them as stickings — meaning users can toggle them on/off via the sticking visibility settings.

“Convert to percussion” editor command

Sometimes you might find yourself with percussion music that isn’t being treated as percussion in Soundslice. An example is if you scan a PDF of old-style percussion music that used an F clef instead of a percussion clef.

This is now simple to fix in our editor. Use the new “Convert to percussion” command in the Instruments menu, and we’ll do the change in a single click. More info here.