How a practice round works
From the first question to the reward: task types, score, stars and which XP gets credited at the end.
Web + app
A step on the learning path is always a round: a fixed number of tasks, then a score, stars and your reward. This page shows what happens in that round and how your answers turn into XP at the end.
In a normal practice round there are no lives and no aborting on mistakes. You always answer every task through to the end, even if you get things wrong — mistakes only push the score down. Hearts and a mistake limit exist solely in the test for skipping a unit. And a weak round never takes anything away from you: stars and best score are only ever revised upwards.
The task types
Which kind of task comes up depends on the step:
- Pick an answer (Ear Training). cori plays you something and you choose from two to four answers — "The first" / "The second", "Up" / "Down", "Happy (major)" / "Sad (minor)" and so on. Using Play again you can replay the task as often as you like, even after answering. On many steps the root is given first; you can play that back separately as well.
- Tapping along (Rhythm). Depending on the step you tap along on every beat ("On the beat!"), hear a rhythm and tap it back ("Your turn. Tap!"), or read notes scrolling towards a line.
- Rebuilding (dictation). You hear something and put it together yourself — from note values in rhythm dictation, via the scale-degree bar in melodic dictation.
- Singing (Voice branch). cori listens in through the microphone and continuously compares your pitch with the target notes.
In the browser you can play the whole round from the keyboard: 1–9 picks an answer, space replays, Enter moves on, Esc quits. cori shows the hint below the answer options.
Score and stars
Every round ends with a score from 0 to 100. How it comes about depends on the task type:
| Task type | Score |
|---|---|
| Listening quiz | Share of correct answers — 6 out of 8 correct is 75 |
| Rhythm | Average across all bars; what's scored is how close each tap was to the beat. Noticeably more taps than notes drag the result down, so hammering away wildly gets you nowhere |
| Singing | How long you actually held the target notes — fully hit notes count more than narrowly missed ones |
The score turns into 0 to 3 stars:
| Score | Stars |
|---|---|
| 0–16 | none |
| 17–50 | ★ |
| 51–83 | ★★ |
| 84–100 | ★★★ |
From the first star onwards the step counts as done and the next one opens up. So the three stars aren't the ticket to moving on — they're the reason to come back.
What gets credited at the end
After the last task the same sequence always plays out: first your score, then the XP breakdown, then your streak.
The XP is made up of individual items that cori lists out for you one by one:
| Item | XP | What for |
|---|---|---|
| Round completed | 10 | every round you finish, however well |
| First time bonus | 10 | when you clear this step for the first time with at least one star |
| New stars | 5 per star | for every star above your previous best |
| Perfect! | 5 | from 95 points |
| Flawless! | 5 | a rhythm round in which not a single tap was off |
| Challenge bonus | 5 | when the round counts towards a running challenge |
A first, middling round therefore typically brings in 10 + 10 + 5 = 25 XP; the same step played perfectly with all three stars on the first attempt brings 10 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 40 XP. Play it again later without improving and it stays at 10 XP — so repeating pays off through the stars, not through the quantity.
On top of that, every completed round does the following:
- Your streak is ticked off for today. A single exercise a day is enough for that — see Practice streaks.
- The step's stars and best score are updated, but only upwards.
- If you hit a milestone along the way, a badge pops up straight afterwards.
After the round
At the end you have exactly two options: Practise again plays the same step over right away (the round you just played is already banked, the next one comes on top), and Continue takes you back to the learning path — right to the step you've just played.
If your taps in a round were systematically early or late, cori offers you a new tap calibration of its own accord. Take it before you start doubting yourself: usually it's simply the audio output lagging — often considerably so with Bluetooth headphones. cori makes the same suggestion at most once every three days, and only on the learning path — never in a test or a challenge.
What's next?
- How the path is built: The learning path
- What the individual branches train: Ear, rhythm, voice
- Skipping whole units: Skipping units
- Where the XP goes: Your rewards at a glance
- Setting up timing and vocal range: Calibrating your vocal range and rhythm
Still need help?
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Send us a message and our team will get back to you.
Contact support