Prepare a piece for Follow

What preparing gets you

Follow turns pages by listening to you play. It works best once the piece has three things: a Smart Score layer (a machine-readable copy of the notation), at least one take (a recording of you playing the piece), and a calibration that ties the two together. The Trainer walks you through exactly those three steps, in order, and shows a status chip for each: SmartScore, Takes, Calibrated.

How much of this you need depends on the score:

• Engraved pieces (MusicXML / MEI, including most Catalog pieces) already know where every note sits — record a take and run Auto-calibrate, and you're done.
• PDF scans need the full ladder: the notation has to be read first, and you can refine the result by hand in the Tuning Calibrator.

Open the Trainer

1. Open the piece in the reader.
2. In the toolbar, find the three-button Follow widget: a dumbbell icon (Trainer), a slider icon (Calibrate follow mode), and the Follow pill.
3. Tap the dumbbell. The Trainer opens as a dropdown with three numbered steps and the three status chips at a glance.

Note — The slider icon next to the Trainer also says "Calibrate", but it opens Follow's display and page-turn settings (tracker style, turn point, confidence). Piece calibration — the subject of this page — lives inside the Trainer, in Step 3.

Step 1 — Create Smart Score Layer

This step builds the internal layer the follower tracks against. Engraved and Catalog pieces usually arrive with it already attached — the step shows a green check and you can move on. A local PDF needs a one-time conversion:

1. In Step 1, tap Create Smart Score.
2. The conversion reads the printed notation and runs in the background — you can close the Trainer; the step badge shows progress until it finishes.
3. The result is registered as a version of the piece (Properties → Versions). If it failed or came out rough, the button reads Try the conversion again.

You can also add a fresh source file first: the Add Version menu in this step imports a PDF, MusicXML, MEI, or image as a new version of the piece. If the new version is a PDF without notation data, the Create Smart Score button reappears for it.

Note — This step is optional for PDFs: skipping it leaves the follower working from staff-band estimates only, which is less precise. If a page can't be read confidently, the app builds a visual follow-map for it as a fallback.

Limit — One Smart Score layer belongs to one version. If the piece already has one on another version, the step says so instead of offering the conversion again. Switch to that version in the SCORE VERSION list at the top of the Trainer, or tap Manage versions under the list to open the piece's versions.

Step 2 — Record a take (Studio)

The Trainer learns timing from real recordings of the piece. One is enough.

1. In Step 2, tap Open Studio. (The same studio is also reachable any time from the reader's Toolbox — the wrench icon — under Recording Studio.)
2. Tap the record button and play the piece through. You can pause and resume; if it goes sideways, discard the take and retry.
3. Tap stop. Take saved confirms it. The recording appears under MY TAKES in the Studio, and in the Trainer's Step 2 take list.

Besides recording yourself, Step 2 also accepts imported audio: a file from a local folder, an authorized recording imported with licence metadata, or a performance downloaded from the piece's cloud entry.

Important — When you import someone else's recording, you pick its licence in the import sheet. Cloud Auto-calibrate needs two conditions: a Public Domain, CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-SA licence, and a server that advertises ephemeral deletion. The server does not advertise it today, so every imported recording — correctly licensed or not — stays on your device and calibrates manually in the Tuning Calibrator. Your own recordings have no such restriction.

Limit — Deleting a take also deletes the calibration tied to it — the timing bars and replay markers are stored with the audio file. If it's your only calibrated take, the piece drops back to uncalibrated.

Step 3 — Calibrate

Calibration aligns a take with the score: system positions, timing, voicing, replays, and page turns. Step 3 offers two paths:

• Auto-calibrate — the one-tap path, and the only one engraved pieces need. It aligns the take to the score automatically ("no manual mapping"). For a licence-blocked imported recording, the button instead reads Imported recording: manual/local until legal upload is available — use the manual path below.
• Open the PDF Tuning Calibrator (manual) — for PDF pieces, opens the hands-on calibrator on a recorded take. The button is disabled and reads Record a take in Step 2 first until a take exists. Pure MusicXML/MEI pieces don't show this button at all; they show Engraved score — only auto-calibration is needed.

Run Auto-calibrate first. Open the manual calibrator when the automatic result turns pages at the wrong moment, follows the wrong voice, or loses you at a repeat.

Inside the Tuning Calibrator

The calibrator plays your take while you mark up the score. It has six modes:

Important — In Systems mode, the first band on each page should start at the first note — past the clef and key signature — and each band must cover every note of its measures. Bands that start at the clef throw off the alignment for the whole line.

When Follow comes alive

The Trainer's footer is Follow, and it's deliberately not a numbered step: there is no "Train" button, because training is cumulative — every take you record is already a saved training take. Follow stays greyed out until you finish calibration; once you leave the Tuning Calibrator (or Auto-calibrate completes), the Follow button at the top of the screen comes alive. Tap it, play, and the tracker listens and turns the pages.