Proportional notation

Soundslice lets you quickly enable proportional music notation for any music on our site.

In proportional music notation, the horizontal space after a half note is always exactly twice the space after a quarter note, and so on:

This means each bar takes the same amount of horizontal space. By contrast, traditional spacing (the Soundslice default) tries to find a balance between communicating rhythmic durations and maintaining visual tightness.

Enabling proportional notation

To enable proportional notation in Soundslice, open the Settings menu and switch to Scrollable Horizontal layout. You’ll see a “Proportional notation” checkbox appear:

Check the checkbox, and your notation will instantly be reformatted to use proportional spacing.

Changing the base proportional width

The slider below the checkbox lets you change the base proportional width:

You can think of this as “zooming left and right.” It doesn’t change the size of notes, it only changes the spacing after them. That’s in contrast to our normal zoom, which indeed changes note size.

Advantages of proportional notation

• For beginner musicians, it more clearly communicates the difference between note rhythms.
• For music with rhythmic complexity, it can help clarify things.
• Musicians with dyslexia can find it easier to read.
• During playback, the playhead moves at a constant rate, because the notation spacing is exactly proportional to time.

Disadvantages of proportional notation

• It can be a much less efficient use of space.
• It can result in notation collisions: symbols such as accidentals, dots, barlines and clef changes might overlap other symbols. In our standard spacing, our engine detects these situations and adjusts spacing accordingly, but proportional spacing disables that. To avoid this, make sure to choose a large enough base proportional width.

Can Soundslice save the fact that I’ve chosen proportional notation for a given slice?

Yes! If you’re logged in and have a paid Soundslice account, we’ll automatically save your proportional notation settings so your practice environment will be preserved next time you view that slice.