Editing sheet music via a tablet / touchscreen device
Our editor has a few special features to help you create and edit sheet music from your iPad, Android tablet or other touchscreen device.
If you open our editor on a tablet, we’ll automatically detect that you’re using a touchscreen device and will display our touch-optimized interface at the bottom of the screen. This interface consists of a piano keyboard (or fretboard) and some useful shortcuts.
Piano keyboard
The main part of this interface is an 88-key piano keyboard. When you first load the interface, it’ll be centered on middle C. Simply swipe the keyboard left or right to move it around.
You can tap the piano keys to add or remove notes in your music:
- If you’ve selected a rest, tapping a piano key will replace that rest with your tapped note.
- If you’ve selected a note, tapping a piano key will append your tapped note, hence creating a chord.
- If you’ve selected a note, tapping that note’s piano key will remove the note (acting as a toggle).
Fretboard
If your instrument has tablature and you select a note in the tablature, the interface will turn into a visual fretboard.
This generally works the same as the keyboard. You can swipe left and right to move to different parts of the fretboard, and you can tap on a string to add that note.
Adding notes/rests to a bar
As in the non-touch version of our editor, we’ll automatically add empty rests as you move your cursor to the right.
With a note selected, navigate to the right by tapping the right-arrow icon →, just above the piano keyboard. If there’s rhythmic space available in the current bar (according to the time signature), Soundslice will automatically create a “ghost rest.”
To confirm you want to add the rest, tap the rest icon . Or tap a piano key to insert a note.
Changing rhythmic duration
With a note or rest selected, tap the and buttons to increase or decrease the note duration, respectively. Use the button to toggle an augmentation dot.
Selecting notes
Select a note by tapping on the notation itself. To select multiple notes, use the button to select the current bar — then refine it by dragging the left or right edges of the selection.
Auto-advance mode
By default, any note you tap in the keyboard (or fretboard) will be appended to your selection, and your selection will not advance to the next beat.
Tap the “Auto-advance” button to change this behavior. With auto-advance mode active, the cursor will advance each time you set a pitch. This is optimized for fast note entry, in cases of entering single-note lines.
Auto-advance mode works for both the keyboard and fretboard interfaces.
Full list of shortcut buttons
Here’s what all of the buttons above the piano keyboard do:
| Button | Click the button to… |
|---|---|
| Increase rhythmic duration of selected note(s) | |
| Decrease rhythmic duration of selected note(s) | |
| Toggle augmentation dot on selected note(s) | |
| Turn selected note(s) into a rest | |
| Toggle enharmonic on selected note(s) | |
| ← | Move cursor left |
| → | Move cursor right |
| Select current bar | |
| Auto-advance | Toggle auto-advance mode |
| Undo | |
| Redo | |
| Copy | |
| Paste | |
| Delete selected note(s) and rest(s) |
Other notations
The shortcuts above the piano keyboard are meant to handle the common stuff. For many more features and notations, use our top and left panels and the accompanying search feature.
Using the touch input interface from non-tablets
If you’d like to use this interface from a non-tablet device such as a laptop or desktop, no problem. Click the “Touch input” button at the very bottom left of your screen:
