Working with transposing instruments

The Soundslice editor fully supports transposing instruments — instruments such as clarinet whose “C” pitch is not “concert C.” Here’s what you need to know about working with transposing instruments in our editor.

Creating a transposing instrument

When you add an instrument, we automatically take care of setting the right transposition. But if you’re using an instrument for which we don’t have native support, select the instrument “Other” and look for the “Written C sounds as” dropdown on the subsequent screen:

Available options are:

• C (concert pitch)
• C (two octaves lower)
• C (an octave lower) [e.g., guitar, bass, trombone, bassoon]
• C (an octave higher) [e.g., piccolo]
• C (two octaves higher)
• E flat (an octave + major sixth lower) [e.g., baritone sax]
• E flat (a major sixth lower) [e.g., alto sax]
• E flat (a minor third higher) [e.g., E flat clarinet]
• F (a perfect fifth lower) [e.g., English horn]
• F (a perfect fourth higher) [e.g., horn]
• G (a perfect fourth lower)
• G (a perfect fifth higher)
• A flat (a major third lower)
• A flat (a minor sixth higher)
• A (a minor third lower)
• A (a major sixth higher)
• B flat (a major ninth lower) [e.g., tenor sax]
• B flat (a major second lower) [e.g., B flat clarinet, B flat trumpet, soprano sax]
• B flat (a minor seventh higher)

Entering notes in transposing instruments

When you enter notation for a transposing instrument, you have the option of entering in concert pitch or in transposed pitch. To toggle this, use the “Concert pitch” checkbox in the player settings’ Transposition section:

(To keep our interface clean, this checkbox will only be visible if at least one of your slice’s instruments is a non-C transposing instrument.)

When you enable “Concert pitch” via that button, all the notation in your slice will be rendered as concert pitch. If you click the checkbox again, the notation will return to transposed pitch. Feel free to enter notation in either mode; Soundslice will do the right thing.

Changing an instrument’s transposition

Yes, it’s possible to change a instrument’s transposition after you’ve created it. To do this, just edit the instrument.

Transpositions in PDF/image scans

If you’ve imported music via our PDF and image scanner, you’ll need to tell the scanner that your notation is for a transposing instrument. You can do that in the importer settings.