Meet Cue: Pick Up Where Your Practice Left Off

You finish working on a phrase, close the score, and come back the following evening. The page is familiar; the detail of what you meant to do next is less clear. We built Cue, our score-following practice companion in Practis, to bring that detail back alongside the music.

Cue listens through your microphone and brings the passages it could locate into a session review, where you can leave a next-step note to return to alongside the score.

1. 01 · BeforeChoose a passageGive today's work a location.
2. 02 · DuringPlay from the scoreCue follows what it can hear.
3. 03 · AfterwardsReview the sessionSee the passages it located.
4. 04 · Next timeReturn to your noteKeep the musical question in view.

Choose a passage with something to work on

For this walkthrough, we're using a short controlled-playback demonstration with the opening of Chopin's Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 34 No. 1. The screenshots follow the same example from passage selection to the next-session screen. Their timings belong to that demonstration.

Give Cue a readable score and an audible instrument

There are two parts to following music: recognising the page and hearing what happens at the instrument. Cue needs both. If your score has not been prepared, the panel offers Analyse this score. Let that finish before trying to select a passage. The example above uses an already-prepared score.

Check the result against the page. A crop that starts in the wrong place, misses a line or groups the music strangely is worth noticing before you rely on the review. Cue's bar labels come from score analysis; they may not correspond neatly to the numbering in a particular edition. The visible notation helps you identify the passage.

For a paper score, a straight, legible scan gives you a more useful starting file. Keep the edges of the systems in frame and avoid a shadow across the inner margin. Our guide to turning paper scores into practice-ready files covers the scanning stage in more detail.

Allow microphone access when your browser asks. If you previously blocked it, check the site's microphone permission and your device's privacy settings; Chrome's microphone instructions show where those controls live.

A digital piano playing only through headphones may give the device microphone little piano sound to hear. Keep that signal path in mind before changing settings in Cue. For a first attempt, use a straightforward setup where the microphone can clearly hear the instrument, without a recording or another player sounding nearby.

Begin playing and leave the page in view

Select Begin selected passage when you're ready. The Cue panel closes, leaving the score visible. You can work on the phrase without repeatedly opening a menu to tell the app that you've played it again.

With Score guide enabled, a small coloured line appears beside the music system Cue last located. A system is the group of staves read together across the page. The guide is deliberately modest: it gives you a location without covering the notation.

There will be moments when Cue cannot place the sound confidently. The marker may remain at the last located system while you have moved elsewhere. Keep reading the music, and check that the relevant page is visible if the guide seems lost. A stationary marker alone does not tell you whether you played the phrase correctly.

You can switch the guide off if it attracts too much attention. The useful work still happens at the instrument: deciding on a fingering, listening to the balance between the hands, or trying the join at a manageable speed. Cue doesn't make those musical decisions for you.

Opening the Cue panel during practice lets you reach the session controls. When you want to look back, select Finish and review. If you realise you still want another go, the review also offers Keep practising before you save.

Read the review as a partial record of the session

The review puts the music back beside the numbers. Under Where you spent most time, Cue shows passage previews and the time assigned to them. Seeing the notation can make a line recognisable much faster than a page-and-bar label alone.

Even with a fuller record, a passage receiving the most time has no single explanation. You might have been fixing a hesitation, trying two fingerings or enjoying the sound. The review cannot infer that reason from location and duration.

Use the crop to recall what you were doing, then add the missing musical detail yourself. If the join felt easier only at a slower tempo, that belongs in the note. If you changed your mind about the fingering, write which one you want to try again. Our guide to reading practice data explores the broader limits of interpreting these kinds of numbers.

Leave a next step you can recognise tomorrow

The For next time field is where you turn a record of the session into a starting instruction. In our example, the note reads:

That gives the next session a location and an action. “Work on the waltz” would leave much more to remember. You can make a note more specific when you have a particular observation to preserve: which hand to start with, where to rejoin the phrase, or a tempo you actually used.

There is no need to invent a successful outcome to finish the note. “Still hesitating before the next line; try the approach with the left hand first” is useful even when the session felt inconclusive. You have recorded the question that remains.

Select Save & finish. On returning to the piece and opening Cue, the saved next-step note appears with a passage preview. In this example, the instruction we entered is now the prominent text under Suggested next step.

Try this passage offers a quick route back into that work. You can also choose another passage if a lesson, rehearsal or fresh listen has changed your priorities. A saved note is a reminder you can act on, not a schedule you have to obey.

For a longer-running piece, keep each note small enough to use at the start of the next session. The previous entry can remain a record of what you meant then; today's focus can change. We have more examples in how to write practice notes that help next session.

Make your first Cue session a small one

Start with a familiar passage you can already read comfortably. That gives you room to notice whether the selected crop is sensible, whether the microphone hears the instrument and whether the review contains useful locations. A difficult new piece adds several other things to manage at once.

Finish after you've done enough to have something specific to write. Check the passage previews, add one next step and save. When you reopen the piece, see whether the reminder puts you back in the right place. That return is the part of Cue worth trying for yourself.

As of September 2026, Cue access is unlimited on Practis Pro, Premium and Teacher accounts. Limited accounts have a seven-day Cue window from account creation. That window starts when the account is created, so an older free account does not automatically receive a new seven days when it first opens Cue.

Score shown: Chopin, Waltz Op. 34 No. 1, Breitkopf & Härtel edition, via IMSLP. Featured photo: wal_172619 / Pexels.