Today we launched a full transposition feature on Soundslice. This lets you change the key of notation, chords and tablature for any score in our new player.

You’ll find this useful if you want to play a tune in another key — say, to accommodate a singer.

To transpose a score, open its Settings menu at lower left and use the new transposition slider:

Drag it to the left to decrease pitch, and drag it to the right to increase pitch. Here’s a quick video demo:

A lot happens behind the scenes as you do this:

1. Notation changes key accordingly — both the notes themselves and the key signature(s).

2. Chord names are transposed.

3. Chord diagrams are transposed. For chords with no open strings, generally this means the chords get moved to a different fret. For chords with open strings, we automatically calculate another chord shape with exactly the same voicing. (We decided to prioritize “perfect” transposition, preserving voicings, rather than what’s necessarily easiest to play; in the future, we might add an option to prioritize easy chord shapes instead of perfect transpositions.)

4. Tablature is transposed. Generally this means the notes go up or down a fret, but in case of open strings, we change strings so that the music is still playable.

5. Audio in our synth player is transposed. (Change the audio source to “Synthetic” to activate our synth player.) You can even do this in real time, while it’s playing.

6. Our interactive fretboard is also updated in real time. (That’s the thing we launched a few weeks ago.)

Everything happens instantly, with no downloads or page reloads needed. Contrast this to other sites that require you to email them with transposition requests, so that they can manually do it and get back to you “between two and four weeks” (!) and cannot transpose tablature.

Note that we previously announced support for transposing instruments. This new feature is different, as it actually changes the “concert pitch” of the score. The previous feature is for instruments that aren’t in concert pitch. You can use these together.

These new capabilities are available now for all Pitch Perfect scores and for our partners. Enjoy!