Detailed feature reference

MIDI and practice guide

CADENCE · MIDI KEYBOARD AND PRACTICE HISTORY

CONNECT A KEYBOARD
Connect your keyboard by USB, then open Cadence → Settings → MIDI. Select
its input. The same chooser appears in Compose and Play chords. No input is
selected automatically. Cadence remembers your choice and reconnects when
that input returns; writing and exercise listening must be enabled again.

Your Roland FP-10 will use this CoreMIDI input path. Its physical USB connection
has not yet been tested here. The native test uses an actual virtual CoreMIDI
source, including note-on, release and disconnection. Cadence does not send
MIDI back to the piano, so it cannot create a MIDI feedback loop. Use the
piano's own sound; Cadence's optional audition happens after key release.

If no input appears, check the USB connection, turn the piano on, and choose
Refresh. Check that macOS sees it in Audio MIDI Setup. Clear held notes resets
Cadence's input display after an interrupted or unusual MIDI stream.

WRITE NOTES AND CHORDS
Open Compose, select a score and the hand/voice you want to write, and choose
MIDI keyboard. Select your input, choose a duration, then turn on Write MIDI.
Play one note or a chord and release every key. Cadence enters the complete
gesture and advances within that hand and voice. The sustain pedal is tracked
separately and never joins successive entries. Leave a gap between gestures;
overlapping legato playing becomes one chord. This is step entry, not timed
performance recording or automatic rhythm detection.

The gesture replaces the selected event's complete chord. Lengthening a note
only consumes following rests; occupied music is never silently overwritten.
Impossible rhythms or guitar fingerings reject the whole gesture and pause
writing. Undo/Redo treat the entire gesture as one edit. At the end, Cadence
adds a bar up to the existing 128-bar limit. At the limit, select another event
before continuing. Piano entry supports up to eight simultaneous notes, guitar
up to six, in sounding range A0–C8. Guitar notation remains an octave above
sound and proposed tab positions should be reviewed for comfort.

If keys are already held when you arm writing or select a different event,
release them before beginning. Closing the input panel, changing input,
disconnecting the keyboard or leaving Cadence pauses writing. The audition
toggle is off initially and uses Cadence's simple synth on release.

PLAY THE CHORD
In Practice choose Play chords. Set the root in the main header, choose a
quality and inversion, then select Listen to keyboard. Play your answer and
release the keys. Feedback distinguishes missing tones, extra tones and the
wrong bass. Any register and octave doublings are accepted. The lowest note
must match the requested inversion. Triads and major, minor and dominant
seventh chords are included.

Show tones or Hear example marks the answer as assisted. Incorrect gestures,
retries, correct answers, revealed answers and skips remain separate in the
history. Practise another moves to the next chord quality. You can also choose
your own quality or inversion. Timing, fingering and technique are not graded.
This first exercise is deliberately user-directed; adaptive chord selection
and a complete structured curriculum are future work.

PRACTICE HISTORY
Your recent practice shows the latest ten events. Export history saves the
complete retained journal as JSON. Up to 10,000 recent events are kept locally.
Unreadable or newer history files are preserved rather than overwritten; the
history panel explains how to export new attempts from that session.
The record includes the activity, session, input method, result, assistance,
attempt number and available target/played notes or selected answer.
Response time, tempo and score links are optional fields, recorded only when
the activity actually supplies them. No timing or proficiency is invented.

Singing, multiple-choice and MIDI answers stay distinct. First-try correct
counts exclude retries and assisted answers. Opening Practice starts a new
session. Existing points, spaced-review schedules and earlier totals remain;
this detailed journal begins with version 0.10. It provides evidence for a
future adaptive practice system rather than claiming mastery from a few taps.

PRIVACY AND CURRENT BOUNDARIES
MIDI and practice history stay on this Mac. They are not automatically sent to
the AI coach. Coach and pathway calls now explicitly require ZDR routing as
well as the account-level setting. A separate development-only PDF comparison
uses original known-answer scores, native PDF-capable models and an initial
US$5 ceiling. A control uses locally rendered page images without external
OCR. The app now also imports a selected PDF page as an editable draft with
its original beside it. See PDF import guide.txt.

Real-time recording, velocity-sensitive MIDI audition, pedal notation,
automatic fingering assessment and timed rhythm grading remain future work.