Instrument name display
In music with many instruments, it’s handy to display the instrument names to the left of each stave. By default, we don’t display these names, but you can turn them on.
To enable this display on any slice sitewide (not just slices you’ve created yourself), use the Appearance section of the player settings. There, look for “Instrument names” under the Advanced menu.
If you’re sharing your slice with other people and want them to see the instrument names by default, go to the slice sharing notation settings and look for the “Display instrument names in notation?” section:
The options are:
- No — instrument names aren’t shown.
- Yes, only in first system
- Yes, in every system
A system is a essentially a “row” of music, aka single printed line of music before a line break.
Names and abbreviated names
In the first system, we’ll display each instrument’s full name. In subsequent systems, we’ll use each instrument’s abbreviated name, which you can set by editing the instrument. If an instrument doesn’t have an abbreviated name set, we’ll use the full name.
What’s the point of abbreviated names? It’s just to simplify the display. In choral music, for example, it’s common to display instrument names like this:
- In the first system: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass
- In subsequent systems: S, A, T, B
Exceptions
If a slice is currently in chord-chart view or lyrics-only view, we won’t display instrument names even if you’ve activated them.