Soundslice will be closing public channels on 11 Jul 2025

JSanta · July 15

https://djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/122183#Comment_122183

Only one of my dozen or so links still works. So these are effectively gone.

JasonS · July 15

Yeah looks like they've locked it down, I can't imagine Soundslice will last much longer without the community aspect

Josechiky · July 15

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/122188#Comment_122188

Yes, I agree with you on this statement: Soundslice is first and foremost its community, and without it, it's going to start to lose power and meaning. I've met incredible guitarists whose paid products I've then bought through their profiles. This way, there's no way of knowing who they are.

billyshakes · July 15

@swing68 Thanks much for passing your note about bookmarked slices. It worked for me and was able to go in and save some of the ones I was using as well as some others for the future. That is to say, bookmarked to my profile (not a browser link). They all have a link ending in ..../in-practice-dx75f with the last 5 or so characters being random. Previously, if you'd delete that /in-practice... part, it would take you to the public slice. Now, those public slices show unavailable when you try to use them.

One thing I did note is that there is no obvious link to the soundslice store anymore. Not sure if that will be diminished or it was just missed in removing the community functionality. It can be found through internet search or adding /store after the .com link.

billyshakes · July 15

https://djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/122192#Comment_122192

I don't know...as far as I know, soundslice is the interface used in all Truefire guitar courses and there are tons of users and courses on that platform. I'm sure the decision was made with due consideration to the community that had grown there, but also probably faced legal challenges by copyright claims, etc. The music industry is pretty relentless these days in shutting down digital pathways to explore/enjoy music if they feel it threatens their bottom line. I think there is a strong case to be made for allowing those new uses as a way to capture new listeners that otherwise might not find the music, but it is probably the major artists who shut this down. Not anyone in our small community.

You'll probably recognize the soundslice interface in this Truefire Reinier Voet course (and get a free lick too!)

https://truefire.com/jazz-guitar-lessons/50-gypsy-jazz-licks/resolving-melodic-run/v147

adrian · July 16

Hi all — Adrian from Soundslice here. Sorry, I've been away from the forum.

Yes, I agree this is really sad and disappointing. Unfortunately the big powerful music publishers are not pleasant to deal with, regarding copyright violations. Hopefully we'll find a way to have a repository of public domain (that is, not copyrighted) music on Soundslice in the future. Maybe copyrighted music too, if we can find a way to work with publishers.

Also, I wanted to respond to this one:

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/122188#Comment_122188

Soundslice has a lot of different features, and each one has its own proponents who for some reason think it's the *only* Soundslice feature.

For example, we have an excellent sheet-music scanning feature, where you can extract the music from photos or PDFs, and a lot of people think that's the only thing we do — whereas I imagine most DjangoBooks forum posters didn't even realize we had that feature.

Example 2: lots of people use our editor for transcribing recordings, and those scanning users I mentioned in the previous paragraph generally have no idea Soundslice can be used for that purpose.

Example 3: many websites embed our technology to power their online music lessons, and those customers likely had no idea the community section existed.

So all of that is to say: if the community section was the only part of Soundslice you were familiar with, I can completely understand how you'd think this is some sort of death knell. But frankly it isn't.

If anything, I'd encourage you to check out the various ways you can use it to transcribe, notate and practice. Obviously it's a lot easier if you let somebody else do the work — and a big benefit of the community section was that other people did the work of "Soundslicing" music for you — but it's actually pretty easy to do it yourself. The whole point of the site is that you can use it for whatever music you want to learn, as opposed to being limited to an existing content library.

Adrian

JasonS · July 16

Sounds good man, good luck.

littlemark · July 16

I didn't know you could scan music. I'm learning!

Josechiky · July 16

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/122204#Comment_122204

Adrian, thanks for responding! We know that publishers don't make it easy when it comes to breaking or infringing on a work's copyright, but we can't let the Community die like this, nipping it in the bud and wiping it out in one fell swoop. Thanks to it, I've been able to make enormous progress with the instrument, in addition to meeting extraordinary musicians like Lars and Fredi Gebhardt, whose gypsy methods I eventually bought. I've also been able to enjoy, among others, your transcription of Donna Lee's improvisation by Adrien Moignard and Benoit Convert in Django in June, which I had previously commissioned from Denis Chang.

Don't let all that material, that legacy of great transcribers, be lost. I don't see it as subject to copyright. In any case, publishers, the owners and custodians of copyrights, often sell us such rubbish that you're dead.

As for the rest, I wish we all had time to transcribe and Soundslice everything we want. I've taken advantage of the know-how and wisdom of others, and to do my part, I've supported the site by purchasing many methods, both here and at DC Music School.

Remember, the old site, Soundslice.com started as a place where people shared their transcriptions. Let's not let the community die. I'm sure there are ways to revive it!