Before anyone scores an audiobook or an audio drama, someone has to spot it. They read the book and mark every place music should come in or drop out, every door, storm and footstep, then write it up so the composer and the sound editor know what to build. On a novel that's a long read with a pencil. And once the narration is recorded, every mark has to be found again, because a page number doesn't tell you where minute fourteen is.
Cue sheet does the spotting pass for you, then times it to your own recording. It is the newest of Midsummerr's Pro services, built for production houses, freelance narrators producing for authors, and authors who record their own audio.
What you get for each chapter
Upload the manuscript and every chapter gets a cue sheet: each music and sound-effects moment the story calls for, laid over the text in the studio. A cue sits on the word it starts on, and a cue that runs over a passage shows where it ends.
Every cue carries:
- A cue number in the trade's style. 1M1 is the first music cue of chapter 1; 1S2 is its second sound effect. Numbers follow the order of the text, so the page and every exported file agree.
- A type a composer or sound editor already uses: underscore, leitmotif, stinger, bridge, hard effect, ambience.
- A brief: a sentence on what the cue should do in the scene.
- A rank by importance, 1 being the most important.
- On or off. The sheet shows every cue that was considered, not just the ones suggested. Switch any cue on or off, and the export keeps them all, with a column saying which ones are in use.
Open a cue to set its fade in, fade out and level.
Ready to try it on your own book?
Start with 5,000words free →Timed to your narration
The manuscript knows words, not minutes. Upload a chapter's narration (WAV, FLAC, MP3, M4A or AIFF, up to three hours a chapter) and the sheet lines up with what was actually read. Every cue picks up an In and an Out timecode from your recording, counted from the start of the chapter file, the way your DAW shows it.
From then on the cue sheet plays. The studio player runs your narration under the text, with skip, scrub and speed, so you hear where each cue lands. Drag a cue to a different word and its time follows, or type an exact start and end in seconds.
Narrators don't read exactly what's on the page. They trim a sentence, fix a typo aloud, add a breath of their own. Because each cue belongs to a word, the sheet follows the performance you will actually ship. If some of a chapter's words weren't heard in the recording, the chapter is flagged, so you know a few cues may sit slightly off and can check them by ear.
Exports in the trade's terms
| Export | Format | What's in it | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotting list | CSV, for any spreadsheet | Cue, type, name, In, Out, length, the words each cue starts and ends on, fades, level in dB, in use, brief | Composer, sound editor, producer |
| DAW markers | .mid file, one per chapter | A marker for every cue in use, named by cue number and title, at its In time | Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Reaper |
| Data for developers | JSON | Every cue with its word anchors and timing | Your own tools and scripts |
The spotting list quotes the text around each cue's first word, with that word in brackets, so it reads correctly even before the narration is in. DAW markers need a chapter's narration, because a marker needs a time. Export one chapter from its cue sheet, or the whole book's spotting list from the order page once every chapter is ready.
How an order runs
| Step | What you do | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Upload | The manuscript (.docx, .epub or .txt), title and language | The book split into chapters |
| Prepare cues | Prepare the whole book, or one chapter at a time, with the credits shown first | A cue sheet for each chapter |
| Narration | Upload each chapter's recording as it comes out of the booth | Cues timed to the performance |
| Export | Spotting list, DAW markers or JSON | A plan your team builds the sound from |
You don't need the narration to start. Spot the book while it is still being recorded, and add each chapter's audio when it's done.
What it is, and what it isn't
Cue sheet is the plan, not the audio. It delivers no music or effect files: the score and the sound design stay with your composer and sound editor, and so does the final mix. If you are weighing how much score a book needs in the first place, do audiobooks need background music? and how loud sound effects should be cover the craft side.
Cue sheet sits with Midsummerr's other production tools. Screenplay prep assigns every line to its speaker and exports a script and cast list. Narrator to full cast keeps your narrator and gives every other character a voice of their own; Midsummerr is the only platform that turns a narrator's recording into a full cast, and its Music & SFX add-on scores and mixes the result for you. When a whole book is produced on Midsummerr, Martin, the AI audio director in the studio, adjusts the score, an effect or a single line when you ask in plain words.
Price
Cue sheet costs $1.50 per 1,000 words of manuscript (0.3 credits a word), with a 20,000-credit ($100) minimum per title. The order page shows the credits for each chapter before you prepare it.
To start, open Pro services from your account menu and choose Cue sheet, or see Pro services for the rest of what we make for production teams.
FAQ
Do I need the narration before I order?
No. The cue sheet is built from the manuscript, so you can spot a book before recording starts. Each cue is anchored to its word, and once a chapter's narration is uploaded, its cues get their timecodes.
Which DAWs can import the markers?
The .mid marker file is made for Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase and Reaper. Each marker is named with its cue number and title and sits at the cue's In time, so the session and the spotting list line up.
Can I choose which cues are used?
Yes. Every considered cue is on the sheet, the suggested ones switched on. Switch any of them on or off, change fades and levels, and once the narration is in, move a cue to another word or set its exact times.
Does Cue sheet include audio files?
No. It is a spotting list and markers for your own composer and sound editor. If you want the music and effects made and mixed for you, a full Midsummerr production, or Narrator to full cast with its Music & SFX add-on, does that.
What if the narrator didn't read the text word for word?
That is expected. Cues follow the words that were read, and a chapter where some of the text wasn't heard is flagged so you can check those cues by ear.
