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. The clock runs only while something's actually playing, so pauses and tea breaks don't inflate it. 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×). If the description already lists timestamps, the app offers those sections as ready-named loops before you've dragged a single handle.
- 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
- A lenient streak, and a daily goal. Did you show up today, and how long is the chain — computed from real logged minutes, not self-report. The streak doesn't break the first day you miss; it only breaks after two zero days in a row, so one off day doesn't erase a month of showing up.
- The Practice Stairway. One dashboard chart, your cumulative practice time climbing by hour, day, week, and month — no configuration.
- Per song: a Speed Stairway and Spots. Every song gets its own speed stairway — how long you've spent at each speed — plus Spots, a map of exactly where in the song you've actually practised, not just opened.
- Medals. Five minutes of real time on a section earns Bronze, ten Silver, thirty Gold, an hour Diamond, two hours Trophy — a small, honest marker of where the time actually went, per song.
- A recap image. Day, week, or month, as a shareable picture of what you played and how the speed climbed — free on every tier, nothing to unlock, a PNG.
- Review, once you've earned it. Name five loops and Review starts resurfacing them on a schedule instead of leaving them to be forgotten — spaced repetition built from your own practice, not flashcards someone else wrote.
All of that is free. The only two stats surfaces held back for Pro are a monthly speed breakdown and a speed-climb timeline that compares across every song you practise, rather than within one.
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 — the lenient streak, the Practice Stairway, Speed Stairways, Spots, medals, the recap image, Review — and the looping player it's built into are free, with no account. Sign up (also free) and everything syncs across devices. Uploading your own recordings needs that same free account (guests can't upload, but signing up costs nothing) — files stay on the device you added them on, with the same self-writing tracking. Pro is £4.99 / €5.99 / $6 a month, or £47 / €57 / $58 a year, and adds cloud sync for those uploads plus the two deeper stats surfaces above.
FAQ
Does it track practice away from videos — scales, metronome work, exercises?
Yes. There's a built-in metronome and Quick Jam — a chord-progression backing track mode with no video at all — and time spent in any of them logs into the same record, so warm-ups, technical work, and jam sessions all count toward your day, streak, and goals.
Do I need an account?
No. As a guest, the whole record — loops, speeds, every logged minute — builds up right in your browser from the first video you open. A free account is only there for the day you want that record following you to a second device, and switching over costs you nothing already tracked.
Does the streak really survive a day off?
Yes, by design. It only breaks after two zero days in a row, so one missed day doesn't reset the chain — closer to how real practice actually goes than an all-or-nothing streak.
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: the lenient streak, daily-goal progress, the Practice Stairway, each song's Speed Stairway and Spots, and its medals. It logs what you did, not how it sounded; it's a tracker, not a judge.
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.