Sound cues for theater, school and community productions

Cues are numbered, called, and taken one at a time

Theater is the one trade on this site that runs on a shared vocabulary: the stage manager says Sound 12, standby and then Sound 12, go, and the operator takes exactly one cue. Everything else here is a performer cueing themselves; this is two people and a book. So the list is numbered down the side, you rename each row to whatever the book calls it — 12 · DOORBELL, 13 · STORM BUILD — and one press takes one cue and stops. Nothing advances on its own, which is not a limitation here but the entire requirement: an auto-advancing player would take cue 13 while the SM was still holding it.

The operator met the show this afternoon

Community theater, school productions and holiday shows are run by whoever was free. What that person needs is a numbered list, one key that means go, and nothing on screen that can be pressed by mistake into something else. There is no library to browse, no account to be logged out of, no store, and no notifications, because the application makes no network calls at all. The row currently playing is filled with color and counts down; the row that go will take next is outlined. Turn the text size up — it goes to 160px — and both are readable from the back of a dark box.

Standby means finding the cue without taking it

On a standby you move to the next cue and wait, sometimes for several minutes, while the current one is still running. Because the highlight and the sound are separate, moving down the list plays nothing: you park on cue 13 during cue 12 and the header says so in words — Playing — track 12 of 40 · Play starts track 13. That is the check an operator makes before the SM asks, and making it costs nothing.

Paper matters, because the book is paper

Print the running order with every cue, its length, the total, and a table of every pad and what it holds. That is the sheet that goes in the prompt book, the one the SM marks up, and the one you file with the production. Because it is generated from the show rather than typed alongside it, the paper and the screen cannot drift — which is what goes wrong with a cue sheet maintained in a word processor.

The load-out, and the machine that is not yours

Collect the whole production into one folder — every file, with paths recorded relative to it — and it opens on the venue’s machine with nothing missing. One license covers Mac, Windows on Intel and Windows on ARM together, which matters more here than anywhere else: the booth machine and the laptop a visiting company arrives with are rarely the same kind of computer. A Venue license covers three machines, a Site license covers a company or a building with several spaces.

Whatever your venue runs

The best-known theater cue tool is macOS only, so a company on Windows has historically been left with a media player and optimism. This is neither, and it is the same application either way — no reduced edition, no missing features on the platform you happen to have.

Two kinds of sound, and they want different tools

Nearly every production has both, and the mistake is running them the same way. Sequential cues — the storm that builds under act two, the underscore, the walk-down music — belong on the playlist, in order, taken one at a time on a go. Spot effects — a doorbell, a phone, a gunshot, a food fight’s twenty noises — belong on the pad wall, where each one is a single key with no list position at all. The difference matters because a doorbell that has to be a numbered cue means renumbering the book every time the director adds one, whereas a doorbell on pad 4 is just pad 4, for ever. As a rule: if the SM calls it, it is a cue; if the actor triggers it by doing something, it is a pad.

A holiday show is the hardest version of this, which is why it is worth designing for

A big family holiday show is forty spot effects, a dozen musical numbers, a chase, a food fight and a sing-along, run at speed by somebody who was in the chorus last year. The pad wall holds up to a bank at a time and switches banks between scenes, so the food fight’s noises can occupy the same physical keys as act one’s doorbells without either being renamed. Pads under a minute are decoded into memory when the show loads, so the twentieth crash in ninety seconds is as immediate as the first — a spot effect that arrives a beat late in a food fight is a laugh that did not happen. Assign the positions to the number row or a keypad and the operator stops looking at the screen entirely, which is the only way anybody gets through a chase.

A cue has a shape, not just a start

Half the work in a theater cue is how it ends. Stop fades over whatever you set, from half a second to fifteen, so an underscore can fall away under a line rather than stopping dead. Press stop a second time during that fade and it cuts immediately, which is the and now nothing moment. If a production needs a genuine hard out on its own key — a blackout where the sound must die on the frame — bind Stop now: it kills the playlist on the first press whatever the fade is set to, and deliberately leaves any sounding spot effect ringing over the silence, because that is usually what the blackout is. Three endings, all reachable without a menu.

The tech is when the cue list is actually built

Nothing about a cue list survives first contact with a tech rehearsal. Cues get added, split, cut and renumbered for two days. So renaming a row is one key, reordering is a drag, and several rows can be highlighted and moved as a block when the director moves a whole scene. Crucially, the highlight and the playing track follow the tracks themselves rather than their row numbers, so reordering during a stumble-through cannot make the wrong thing play next. Save as you go under dated names — Tech Tuesday, Dress 2, Show — because a saved file is a small text file beside your audio and keeping five of them costs nothing. There is no silent-overwrite path anywhere in the application: saving always asks where, on purpose, so a bad afternoon cannot destroy the good version.

Between the get-in and the last night, nothing should change

The show file is the same file every performance, and the machine reopens what it had when it was last shut — or, if you prefer, always opens the starred production regardless of what happened last night. If a drive was unplugged and a file cannot be found, the row stays where it is and is flagged rather than quietly vanishing: a cue list with a gap in it is recoverable, one that has silently shortened by three is not, and you would find out during the performance. Nothing checks a license, updates itself, or contacts anything, so no performance can be interrupted by the building’s network or by a software update deciding tonight is the night.

Reading it from a dark box

The operator is usually in a booth with the lights out, at arm’s length or further from the screen. The playlist rows scale from 12 to 160 pixels independently of the rest of the interface, so the cue list can be enormous while the controls stay where your hand knows they are. The playing row and the standby row are separately colorable, so you can make what is running and what go will take two colors you can tell apart at a glance in the dark, which is the only glance you get.

Can the operator stand by a cue without firing it?

Yes. Moving the highlight plays nothing at all — sound only starts on a press. The header states which cue is playing and which one go will take.

Will it run on the Windows machine in our booth?

Yes, and it is the same application as on a Mac. One license covers Mac, Windows Intel and Windows ARM, so the booth machine and a visiting laptop are one purchase.

Can I print a cue sheet for the prompt book?

Every cue with its length, the running total, and a table of the pad wall. It is generated from the show, so it cannot disagree with what the operator sees.

Does it take a timecode or MIDI go from the lighting desk?

No. It is a keyboard-and-remote instrument for a human operator; if you need show control, this is the wrong tool and worth knowing before you buy.

What is the difference between a cue and a pad?

A cue sits in the numbered list and is taken in order on a go. A pad is a single key you can hit at any moment, in any order, as many times as you like. Storm build: cue. Doorbell: pad.

Can I fade an underscore out under a line rather than stopping it dead?

Set the fade to anything between half a second and fifteen. Pressing stop a second time during the fade cuts immediately, and a separate Stop now key kills it on the frame whatever the fade is set to.

We renumber cues constantly during tech. Is that painful?

Renaming a row is one key and reordering is a drag; whole scenes can be highlighted and moved together. The highlight and the playing track follow the tracks rather than row numbers, so reordering mid-run cannot repoint the sound.

What happens if a sound file goes missing before a performance?

The row stays in the list and is flagged, rather than disappearing. A cue list with a visible gap can be fixed in five minutes; one that has silently shortened is found out during the show.

Can two operators share it across a run?

There is no account and no login, so nothing is issued to a person. The printed cue sheet is the handover, and it is generated from the show so it cannot disagree with the screen.