We improve Soundslice daily (yes, even on weekends), and we’re going to start posting weekly blog synopses of our progress. Here’s the first one, which covers what we’ve done in the last two weeks.

Note that many of these changes are behind-the-scenes improvements that you might not think are interesting — but if/when you encounter these obscure edge-cases of user interface or music notation, you’ll be relieved we support them!

Big features

• Embed whitelist. If you embed Soundslice in your own web site, you can now specify a whitelist of domains that it can be embedded on, for extra security. This means people can’t easily copy your embed code and put it in their own site. See the new documentation here.
• Multiple lyrics lines. Our notation engine now supports multiple lyrics lines. If you previously uploaded music notation that included multiple lyrics lines, there’s no need to re-upload; your scores will now display those extra lines.

Player UI

• Improved video handling at smaller screen widths to leave more room for the notation.
• Fixed a bug with the interactive fretboard where it wouldn’t redraw when the settings were toggled.
• Fixed a bug where, in the case of multiple uploaded videos, the non-default video wouldn’t play.
• Fixed a bug with our YouTube player where playback didn’t work in odd situations.
• Disabled the default full-screen video behavior on iPhones in some situations. Unfortunately we have no way of disabling full-screen video on iPhones in every situation due to Apple’s draconian limitations.
• Fixed an issue with video playback on iOS. The player now waits to load video until after user interaction.

Notation rendering

• Improved note and stem positioning in case of multiple voices.
• Fixed collision for ties after double augmentation dots.
• Fixed collision for slides (glissando) after augmentation dots.
• Improved rendering of tab when a bend leads into a slide.
• Improved spacing of augmentation dots in tempo markings.

Score manager

• Improved “Copy syncpoints” to refresh the target recording’s syncpoint count instantly after syncpoints are copied.
• Changed default positioning of tap popup in syncpoint editor not to overlap the waveform.

Importers/exporters

• Improved our MusicXML importer to deal with tab data generated by the Notion notation editor.
• Improved our MusicXML importer to support nested tuplets.
• Improved our MusicXML importer to deal with some weird MusicXML 1.0 cases with beams and ties.
• Improved our MusicXML importer to deal with missing time signatures.
• Improved our MusicXML importer to ignore duplicate/redundant tempo markings.
• Improved our MusicXML importer to support dotted notes in tempo markings.
• Fixed a bug in our MusicXML importer involving text positioning.
• Improved our GPX importer to deal with some weird key-signature data, working around a bug in Guitar Pro.
• Improved our GPX exporter to properly export grand staffs.
• Improved our GPX exporter not to include slurs that Guitar Pro would auto-generate due to hammer-ons, pull-offs or ties.
• Improved our GPX importer to include tempo changes that aren’t displayed (but still take effect in the synth player).
• Improved our GPX importer to properly deal with crescendos/decrescendos over rests.

Player API/embedding

• Added an ssAudioSourceChanged event.
• Added a force_side_video parameter for embeds.
• Added getSpeed and setSpeed JavaScript API methods.
• Changed our embed code to use width="100%" instead of a hard-coded pixel width, so that it’s responsive by default.

Other

• Redesigned our Pitch Perfect pages to have a consistent navigation with the rest of the site.
• Updated our site’s SSL to use RSA SHA-2 intermediate cert for stronger security. (Our own cert was already SHA-2.)
• Made a master Help index page.

As always, get in touch if you have any ideas, complaints or love letters.