Focus mode

Focus mode helps you concentrate on a specific part of the music you’re learning. It’s super useful and demonstrates the power of our “living sheet music.”

To enter focus mode, create a loop in a subset of your music, then click the “Focus” button in the loop menu that appears in at the bottom:

Soundslice will immediately hide all the notation except the bars you’ve selected. What’s more, the associated audio/video will be cropped precisely to the selected bars, no matter whether you’re using audio, video or synthetic playback.

This means you can learn or practice this section of music without being distracted by other parts of the piece (or audio), and you don’t have to worry about the playhead going outside of the area you care about.

Changing which bars are visible

When you’re in focus mode, you’ll see the current bar numbers in a panel at the bottom of the screen:

You can change those numbers to quickly expand or contract which bars are visible:

Saving your current focus

When you’re in focus mode, click “Save” in the panel to create a “clip.” A clip is a way to save a particular subset of your music for quick and easy access. Read more on the dedicated help page for clips.

Exiting focus mode

When you’re in focus mode, click “Close” in the panel. We’ll automatically create a loop for the music you’d been focusing, and we’ll scroll your music to that location, so that you can stay in context.

Notes on notation

When you’re in focus mode, your subset of music will be automatically re-engraved as if it were a standalone piece. This means:

• It’ll start with the appropriate clef, key signature and time signature.
• It’ll be laid out nicely across your screen. (This is especially useful on small screens!)
• Any notations that extend into or out of your focused area will be automatically, and gracefully, dealt with — such as slurs, ties, hairpins and ottava (8va) markings.
• All the parts of our player that automatically react to your notation — from the visual fretboard (which looks at your tab’s maximum fret number to decide its size) to the instrument appearance menu (which looks at the types of notations used in your music in order to provide options on showing/hiding things) — will take focus mode into account.

Our goal is to give you all the notational context you need, without any distraction.

Limitations of focus mode

Focus mode is not available in the following situations:

• When our notation editor is open
• When expand repeats is active
• When lyrics-only view is active

Is there a limitation on which section of music I select for focus mode?

It can be anywhere in your music, and as long or short as you like.

The only limitation is that the focused music must start and end on a barline. If you’ve created a loop that doesn’t start or end on a barline, we’ll automatically extend it to the nearest barlines on either side.

But what if I want to focus on a subset of music that doesn’t neatly line up with barlines?

Once you’re in focus mode, you can still create a loop, and there’s no such limitation on loops. So you can create a loop over just two quarter notes or whatever.

Can I further customize the music when in focus mode, for example to hide a part?

Yes indeed! Our instrument appearance menu still works in focus mode — so you can hide parts, toggle visibility of certain types of notation, transpose, etc.

I find myself focusing on the same section repeatedly. Is there a way to save it for quicker access?

Yes! Clips let you do exactly this.