The music practice tracker that logs itself
Stairway2Fast is a music practice tracker that lives inside the practising: open a video, loop the hard bars, play — and the time, the speed, and the section log themselves. No timers to start, no journal to fill in afterwards. Free, in your browser, no signup.
▶ Try it live — no signup opens the practice player
Why most practice trackers stop getting used
Manual-entry trackers ask you to do homework about your homework: start a timer, remember to stop it, type in what you worked on, rate how it went. The first week is fine. Then one day you forget, the log gets a hole in it, and the whole record quietly stops feeling true — so it stops getting filled in. The problem isn't discipline; it's that logging is a second task stapled onto the first.
The fix is to make the practising and the logging the same act.
How it works
- Open a video. Paste any YouTube lesson, cover, or backing video — it plays in a practice player with a section looper and pitch-preserved speed control (0.25×–2×).
- Practise. Loop the hard bars, slow them down, climb back up. This is the part you were going to do anyway.
- The record writes itself. Every minute logs against the video, the named section, and the speed you were at. Nothing to type; nothing to forget.
What the record shows you
- Streaks and daily goals — did you show up today, and how long is the chain. The streak is computed from real logged minutes, not self-report.
- The practice stairway — your cumulative time climbing week by week, one chart, no configuration.
- Per-song, per-section history — how much time each piece and each named loop has had, and at what speeds.
- The speed climb — the one manual trackers can't have: because the tracker is the player, it knows the tempo of every minute. So it can show you the day you finally broke 0.9× on the solo you started at 0.6× — which is what progress on an instrument actually looks like.
Most looping tools forget you were ever there; most trackers never see the practising. This one is both halves in one place, which is precisely why the log stays honest.
Free vs Pro, honestly
The tracker — streaks, goals, stairway, per-song speed history — and the looping player it's built into are free, with no account. Sign up (also free) and it syncs across devices. Uploading your own recordings is free too, with the same self-writing tracking — files stay on the device you added them on. Pro (£4.99/$6 per month) keeps your uploads and their history on every device.
FAQ
Does it track practice away from videos — scales, metronome work, exercises?
Yes. There's a built-in metronome and a practice timer, and time spent with either logs into the same record — so warm-ups and technical work count toward your day, streak, and goals even when no video is open.
Do I need an account?
No. Open the app and practise as a guest — your loops and full practice history are kept in your browser. Create a free account when you want it synced across devices; everything migrates automatically.
Can teachers see their students' practice?
Only what a student explicitly shares. A student can send a specific loop or progress moment to someone; there is no dashboard for watching anyone's practice and no surveillance mode. The record belongs to the person who practised.
What exactly gets logged?
Time, per video and per named section, with the playback speed it happened at — plus the derived views: streaks, daily-goal progress, the practice stairway, and each song's speed history. It logs what you did, not how it sounded; it's a tracker, not a judge.
Is the tracking accurate if I pause a lot?
Yes — the clock runs only while the video is actually playing in practice mode, so thinking time and tea breaks don't inflate the log.
Does it work with any YouTube video?
Any video that allows embedding (nearly all lessons and covers do). It plays through YouTube's own embedded player using YouTube's public player API — nothing downloaded or re-hosted.
Practise. The log takes care of itself. Open a video today and have a record worth looking at by next week.