As always, we’re continually improving Soundslice based on user feedback. Here are the highlights of what we’ve improved over the last few months:

Practicing

We now automatically detect your device’s audio latency and account for it in our synced playback. You can still manually set latency if you’d like.

We now auto-save your per-instrument volume and instrument choices in our synth playback. This one was a common request from choir members.

Notationless slices now support multitrack stem playback. Previously, if you created a slice only with a recording (without notation or tab), we didn’t support using stems.

We’ve added a “Scale degree” option to automatic pitch names. This one’s useful for jazz musicians or anybody who thinks of music in relative scale degree terms.

We’ve improved our transposition feature to make sure the displayed keys match the resulting transposed key signature and chord-name transposition. Previously, in some rare cases, it was possible for the menu to use a different enharmonic spelling than the resulting notation.

If your slice has a video, and you temporarily hide the notation (making the video fullscreen), we now remember the video dimensions when you restore the notation.

We’ve improved the playhead positioning in image layout. Previously, the playhead skipped awkwardly at each barline; now it’s smooth.

We improved our Vimeo integration: if you have a slice open for a long time, the Vimeo video eventually expires, meaning playback no longer works. We now automatically detect that and refresh the video, so your practice isn’t interrupted.

For those of you using our performances feature to record yourself: we’ve added a one-click way to “upgrade” a performance to a recording on the slice. We’ve also added a Performances section to your Practice page, letting you easily see all of your performances in a single place.

We expanded the trumpet visualization to support non-B♭ trumpets.

On some devices, such as iOS, if you switch to another app or browser tab, or you change your device orientation, audio playback went into a weird state and was impossible to restart. That should now be fixed.

A technical thing: all of our media files are now on a single subdomain (previously we had four different ones). Aside from making things easier internally for us, this means things probably load a bit faster. Plus it’s a proper soundslice.com domain instead of the URL of our content-delivery network — meaning it’s less likely Soundslice media files would hit content blockers in schools and other strict environments.

Creating and editing

We’ve improved our MIDI, MP3 and PDF export features to provide a way to select individual instruments in the export.

You can now opt in to displaying your slice description directly in the notation. This is useful for providing instructional tips and other context to whoever is viewing your slice.

For teachers working with students using private courses: we’ve added a “View as student” feature, so you can see exactly what your students see. We’ve also redesigned the student video to look more like the main slice library, for consistency.

When adding slices to a course (from a course page), we’ve redesigned the interface to work the same as sharing slices (from a slice page).

We’ve improved the search engine in your slice library. The search results now include any slices in your courses and lists. Previously, we only included slices you’ve created yourself.

You can now specify that anybody viewing your slice should get image layout by default. It’s in the slice sharing settings.

We’ve improved our editor’s touchscreen interface to help prevent misclicks. Previously, it was a bit too easy to inadvertently click the player’s progressbar when trying to use the touch keyboard.

If you upload custom video thumbnails, you’ll be happy to know we’ve increased their image resolution. We now support thumbnails up to 3000 pixels wide; previously the limit was 700.

For people using organization accounts, the slice version history now displays which organization member made each edit.