Build a practice pathway

The aim is a musical idea you can use, not a row of completed quizzes.

Make a song your own

Current source builds include a complete pathway from an opening check through listening, chord changes and accompaniment to an eight-bar arrangement. A vertical course map shows the journey and recorded evidence; suggestions explain why an activity returned. Every chapter stays open, and the full score remains close. The downloadable 0.36.1 preview predates this pathway.

Read the pathway guide for its controls, supported sources and independent-return rules.

Begin with an example

Cadence includes original material for smooth chord changes, hearing and imagining phrases, triads, tension and resolution, and tritone substitutions. Read the source, hear the contrast, try it, then create a response.

Start from your library when a passage has the structure required by an activity. Jazz pathways need written chord symbols and reviewed source pages. Unsupported passages remain in the library; they are not forced into an unsuitable exercise.

Turn a chapter into lessons

Import an EPUB or PDF that you have permission to use. EPUB usually makes text and chapter navigation easier; engraved music may still be an image requiring transcription and review. PDFs preserve the printed page well but expose less useful structure.

1. Choose one chapter and check its boundaries.
2. Review the proposed source-linked lessons.
3. Review any editable music against the original.
4. Practise the playable exercises and save a musical response.

The smooth-changes book pathway can connect your own editions of Rikky Rooksby's How to Write Songs on Keyboards and Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book. Neither commercial book is distributed with Cadence; the included exercises are original.

Different evidence, different next steps

Hearing, explaining, playing and creating have separate evidence. A hint or retry remains supported practice. Guitar self-reports and creative reflections are not silently promoted to measured mastery.

Focused retries should lead back to the surrounding phrase. Independent returns ask you to try before revealing study aids or warming up with the answer. Reviews of the current jazz module revisit the same passage; automatic transfer into a new key is future work.

Spaced review without pressure

Due reviews appear in Learn → Practice & review. Clean independent recalls can lengthen spacing; supported attempts return sooner. The scheduling policy is explicit and testable, but it is not a validated scientific measurement of your ability.

There are no locked lessons, lost streaks, lives or subscription gates. Skip or pause whenever you need. Playing away from the app still matters, even though Cadence cannot observe it.

Read further

Activities link to Open Music Theory. These are references, not copied chapters or an endorsement. More counterpoint, form, stylistic listening and independent transfer work are planned.