If you use Soundslice to create instructional materials with a lot of talking and explaining, we have an excellent new feature for you.

You can now create nonsequential syncpoints — meaning the syncing between a video and sheet music no longer has to be linear.

Previously, as you watched a slice, the playhead would always be moving forward (except in cases of repeats or jumps). Now, when you sync your slice, you can choose to move the playhead back a few bars or even hide it during a segment.

Why would you want to do this? In music-lesson videos (particularly those recorded without Soundslice in mind), there are times when the instructor pauses to explain a part of the music, perhaps repeating it multiple times while discussing it. If your goal is to sync that video with sheet music, you’re forced to decide: “Should I duplicate the notation each time the instructor plays it, or should I use a commentary bar to label this with text?” Either way can be labor intensive if you want to create top-notch instructional materials.

Now, if you’re in that situation, you can simply add some extra syncpoints, to move the playhead back to the appropriate part of the sheet music. Or you can hide the playhead entirely, if you’d like the student to focus on the video. Essentially, nonsequential syncpoints save you time and can result in a clearer learning experience for the student.

This is an advanced feature, and it can be hard to understand, so we’ve put together a sample lesson video using three different approaches. Check out our new help page on nonsequential syncpoints to see the examples and learn more.

Not interested in this? No problem. For the common case of using Soundslice to sync a performance video/audio with sheet music, you won’t need to use nonsequential syncpoints — just use the same workflow you had before.

For those of you using Soundslice for this type of music education, we’re looking forward to seeing how you use this new feature.