Detailed feature reference

Piece pathways guide

CADENCE · LEARN THROUGH YOUR MUSIC

START FROM A PIECE
Open Library (Command-2), select a piece, and choose Learn. Select a part and
up to 16 bars. Add a personal goal in Overview, then set your experience,
session time and starting point in the pathway brief.

Create local plan works offline. It creates a sequence of reading, small
passage work and bringing the phrase together, with exercises drawn from the
selected notation. Tailor with AI requests passage guidance using your goal,
notes and starting point, with an optional summary of this piece's recorded
practice. The resulting plan is saved separately; existing progress stays put.
To adapt a plan after more practice, choose New plan and Tailor with AI.

Both kinds of plan appear here and in Learn → Personal plans. These
are passage pathways, not automatic analyses of an entire book or song.
The stage checkboxes are your own readiness marks. They never unlock or lock
material, and they do not replace recorded exercise results.

EXERCISES FROM THE SCORE
The first version can create:
• Key signature recall from the opening selected bar.
• Recall of the first written pitch, with its source spelling.
• An ear question using two notes from one staff and voice. Playback simplifies
  their rhythm; the answer is their sounding distance in semitones.
• Recall of a written note duration, expressed in quarter-note beats.
• A MIDI chord exercise where the source contains a suitable simultaneous chord.
• Small passage practice, followed by playing the selected phrase together.

Only supported examples are offered. Not every piece produces every exercise.
These are short, fixed recall exercises from this version of the score, not a
comprehensive sight-reading test or generated variations of the whole piece.
Imported AI drafts should be reviewed against their originals first.

MIDI checks compare chord pitch classes and the lowest pitch class. Octave
shifts and doublings are welcome. Timing, fingering, voicing comfort, sustain
pedal use and physical technique are not assessed. Enable Listen to keyboard,
play all the tones, then release. The Roland FP-10 can use the existing USB
MIDI connection in Settings; this update was checked with virtual input.

Use Show answer, Open notation or two choices when helpful. Those are recorded
as supported practice. Listening to an interval question is part of the task;
hearing a chord example is a hint. Skipping does not count as a miss.

PASSAGE PRACTICE
Open passage takes you to its exact part and bars in Studies. Use its existing
loop, tempo, notation and singing tools. Afterwards choose Felt difficult,
Needed support or Comfortable in the pathway panel. These are your reports,
not an automatic judgement of your performance.

Start with one bar offers a smaller step. A comfortable report there counts
as supported practice for the original full passage. Changing the selected
part, staves or bars disables the report buttons until you return to the linked
passage. A result cannot be silently attached to a different selection.

REVIEWS AT YOUR PACE
Practice now starts with From your music when piece pathways exist. Continue
in a pathway mixes due reviews with new work. You can also open any exercise
at any time, even in a later stage. Pause reviews hides that pathway from the
suggested queue while leaving all its exercises available.

The schedule is a simple local rule, not a calibrated mastery estimate:
• A miss returns after roughly 10 minutes.
• An answer using support returns after roughly 20 minutes.
• A comfortable due review grows to 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days.
• An encounter counts once. A later miss can shorten its review, but repeated
  guesses cannot turn it into a clean first recall.
• Early practice does not push a review away or increase its interval. Interval
  growth needs a due review and at least 20 hours since the last growth.

There are no streak penalties, quotas or locked lessons. The reason for a
suggested review is shown alongside it. Checked questions, MIDI results and
self-reports are kept distinct. This first integration adapts the order and
review spacing of piece exercises, with smaller steps available when needed.
The existing free-practice games keep their separate concept history; their
results do not silently change a piece's review schedule.

SCORE CHANGES AND SAVING
A plan belongs to a particular score version. If you edit its music or replace
imported pages, the old plan remains readable, with its history, but its tasks
cannot grade the changed score. Create a new plan for the current music.
Moving a piece between library collections does not reset its plan.

Pathways, review schedules, totals and detailed attempts save together in
practice-state.json in the Cadence application-support folder. Attempts include
the piece, pathway and task identities. A failed save changes neither the
schedule nor the journal, and leaves the question open. Damaged or future-version
files are preserved. Earlier practice.json, attempts.json and learning.json
files are read at migration and retained unchanged as backups; they are no
longer the active data files. Back up the whole Cadence data folder.
Removing a pathway removes its schedule; the score and detailed attempts stay.

Renaming a piece no longer makes its pathway stale. Musical changes and changed
source-page mapping still do. Current legacy fingerprints migrate on load;
older plans that were already stale retain their history and stale status.

AI AND PRIVACY
AI tailoring uses your Settings model and Keychain OpenRouter key, with ZDR
required. It sends selected symbolic notes, piece goal and notes, starting
point, and optionally recorded practice for this piece and score version.
The underlying score reference is limited to 160 note/rest events; dense
passages disclose truncation. Choose fewer bars for fuller coverage.
Original PDFs and microphone audio are not sent by this feature. Requests
start only when chosen, have a four-minute limit, and never retry automatically.
Work already sent may still be charged after cancellation.

If a received plan cannot be saved, keep the brief open and use Save received
plan again. This retries only the local save and makes no new model request.
AI suggestions remain interpretations to review against your music and needs.

VERIFICATION
Core tests cover source-derived exercises, exact chord checks, review timing,
hints and retries, older saved data, malformed plans and AI request context.
Native checks cover persistence, exact passage navigation, result isolation,
failed-save recovery and preservation of damaged pathway data. Virtual MIDI
runs through the same exercise input handler. This update used simulated model
responses and spent no OpenRouter credits; hardware playing and live AI quality
still need your own trial.