Soundslice features

The basics

Our player shows you music notation and tablature, synced with audio or video recordings. No plugins, downloads or apps necessary. It works right in your web browser, even on tablets and smartphones.

Play and pause by clicking the Play button or pressing the spacebar. The notation will light up, in real time, as the music plays.

Jump to to a particular moment in the audio by clicking on notes.

Loop sections easily by clicking and dragging across notes. We’ll snap to the nearest note, rest or barline, for ease of making “perfect” loops.

Resize an existing loop dragging the handles on either side.

Slow down audio, without changing pitch, using the speed controls. Use the plus/minus shortcuts, or click the speed to enter a number directly.

Activate a metronome count-in by clicking “Play with count-in” in the Settings menu.

Focus mode helps you concentrate on what you’re practicing. Select any range of music, then choose “Focus on this,” and we’ll hide all other notation (and audio).

By default, whatever notes you’ve selected are looped continuously. Disable looping by clicking “During loops, play only once” in the Settings menu.

Audio playback

We believe you learn music better if you hear it while you read it, so Soundslice seamlessly syncs notation with real recordings. A slice can have multiple recordings — say, backing track vs. full mix, or multiple camera angles, or different performances of the same piece.

Toggle the recording in the menu at lower right. You can even change it in real time, while the audio is playing, and our player will keep track of where you are in the music.

Choose “Synthetic” to hear computer-generated but “perfectly” audio of the slice. This, combined with our slowdown feature, is useful for fast passages in which a real recording is muddled or distorted.

When you’re using the synthetic player, use the audio mixer to adjust volume. You can mute or change volume on a per-instrument basis — handy for isolating a part you’re working on.

Use the audio mixer to change a instrument’s synthetic sound. Select any of our 70+ instrument sounds.

Click the metronome button to hear a rhythmic pulse during audio playback.

Video playback

Soundslice really shines when music notation is synced with video performances.

Quickly resize videos by dragging the bar between video and notation. The notation will automatically compensate.

Slow down videos, without changing pitch, using the same controls you use for our audio player.

Toggle the video’s position using this icon. You can position it on the left or above the music.

Hide notation, making the video full-screen, using this icon. Click the icon again to bring the notation back.

Adjust video quality settings using this icon. By default, we’ll choose the best quality your Internet connection appears to support.

If you’re left handed, you might want to flip the video horizontally using this icon. This is useful for instruments such as guitar.

Customizing notation

One of the most powerful aspects of Soundslice is the “dynamic” nature of the notation. Unlike in a PDF, our player always wraps notation to fit your screen — super useful when you’re on a smartphone. And because everything is rendered automatically by our custom engine, you can tailor what you see.

Experience the fun of rewrapping notation by resizing your browser window. :-)

Zoom in and out via the Settings menu. On a touchscreen device, use a two-finger “pinch” to do this even more quickly.

Transpose into other keys instantly using our transposition feature. Yes, we even transpose tab, making best guesses for fingerings.

Show/hide standard notation, tablature, stemmed tablature, lyrics or chord names for a given instrument by opening the player’s Settings menu. To hide an instrument completely, hide each element.

If your slice has chords in it, don’t miss our chord chart view. Activate it by hiding everything except chords.

Studying singing? Don’t miss lyrics-only view. Activate it by hiding everything except lyrics. With this, you can still click on a word to go to that moment of the audio, or drag across words to loop them.

Open the Settings menu and check “Horizontal” if you prefer to read music with an infinite horizontal scroll. Select “Keep playhead at left of screen” for continuous scroll, or uncheck that option to scroll one screen at a time.

Often music with lots of jumps and repeats can be hard to follow. Use our “Expand repeats” feature to automatically unfold music so that it doesn’t use repeats.

By default, to save space, the player hides instruments that contain only rests within a given stave. To disable this, uncheck “Hide empty staves” in Settings.

Instrument visualizations

Are you more of a visual learner? Use our visual keyboard and fretboard to see a graphical view of where notes should be played on your instrument.

Open the visual keyboard to see where notes should be played on a piano. Click the instrument name at the keyboard’s left edge to toggle between left-hand, right-hand and both-hand view.

For fretted instruments, such as guitar, electric bass or mandolin, use our visual fretboard. During playback, the notes light up in real time. Otherwise, the fretboard highlights all notes you’ve selected in the notation. Toggle left-handed view at upper left.

Use our visual violin to see the instrument’s fingerboard, with notes lighting up on the strings according to how they’re notated. Great for beginning violinists.

If you play a B♭ valve instrument — like trumpet, cornet or flugelhorn — you can use our visual trumpet to watch valve fingering along with the music.