Passages

Passages are a way for you to tell Soundslice that a specific bar in your slice starts a whole new musical idea. With this information, our engine will optimize the visual layout accordingly, making it look better and easier to follow.

Using passages is appropriate for:

• New movements in an orchestral piece
• Distinct phrases in a collection of jazz piano licks
• Separate melodies in an index of short melodic snippets

For example, consider a slice that consists of three scales. By default, it might appear like this:

It’s slightly awkward that the melodic minor scale gets split over two staves while the other scales don’t. :-/

Passages to the rescue. Using our editor’s passage feature, you can mark each of those scales as a separate passage. That results in the following:

Much clearer and easier to follow! If you’d like to compare for yourself, here are two live examples: without passages and with passages.

Of course, our player also offers a horizontal layout, in which case line breaks wouldn’t make sense. So in horizontal layout, new passages are offset by whitespace. You can see that here:

Creating and removing passages

To create a passage, select a note or rest within the first bar of your passage, then:

• In the editor’s top panel, open the “Format” section and click the “Toggle new passage” icon .
• Or: Search the editor for “Toggle new passage.”

Removing a passage

To unmark a bar as the start of a new passage:

1. Select a note or rest within the passage’s first bar.
2. You’ll see the “starts passage” icon in the current notations section. Click that icon to change this bar not to start a new passage.

Passage details

When you mark a bar as “starts new passage,” here’s specifically what changes in your music:

• The bar will always start on a new line, regardless of screen width or zoom settings.
• The key signature, time signature and clef are displayed.
• Bar numbering is reset to 1, and we’ll hide the bar number from the passage’s first system. (You can override this by setting an explicit bar number.)
• The previous bar gets an final barline. (You can override this by setting it to a double barline instead.)

Are passages meant to be a way of controlling line breaks?

No, passages are not meant to be a way to force line breaks into your music. Use our editor’s line break feature for that.