An interactive compact disc system (10) having a teaching mode in addition to an entertainment mode is provided for the recovery of a predetermined aural response from predetermined randomly accessed storage on a compact digital disc. The interactive compact disc system (10) includes a mode select switch interface (26) which is coupled to microprocessor (22) by data bus (34) and address bus (32) for selecting the desired operational node. A keyboard (12) which includes a removable graphic overlay, provided for use in the teaching mode, is coupled to keyboard decoder/driver (14). Keyboard decoder/driver (14) generates a unique character code for each of the keyboard switches in keyboard (12). Microprocessor (22) uses that unique character code to generate an address for accessing the track encoder read only memory (24). Track encoder read only memory (24) provides a lock-up table which in effect cross references each keyboard key switch with a discrete audio segment on a compact digital disc located in disc playback unit (30).