Rhythm Test
Listen to a 4-beat count-in, then tap on every click. The test measures how many milliseconds early or late you are, how steady your timing is and whether you speed up or slow down, at any tempo from 40 to 220 BPM.
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How to use the Rhythm Test
- Choose a tempo (120 BPM is a good start), the test type and how many beats to tap.
- Press Start test and listen to the 4 count-in clicks without tapping.
- Tap on every click using Space, a letter key, the mouse or your finger on the green box.
- In keep-the-beat mode, carry on tapping at the same tempo after the click stops.
- Read your results: score, offset, consistency and drift, then try other tempos to compare.
Beat intervals at common tempos
The time between beats is 60,000 ÷ BPM milliseconds. Your timing errors only make sense relative to this interval: being 40 ms late is small at 60 BPM (a sixth of a quarter beat) but is about half of a quarter beat at 180 BPM.
| Tempo | Beat interval | A quarter of a beat | Typical music |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 BPM | 1000 ms | 250 ms | Slow ballads, a clock's second hand |
| 90 BPM | 667 ms | 167 ms | Hip-hop, slow pop |
| 120 BPM | 500 ms | 125 ms | Pop, house, marches |
| 150 BPM | 400 ms | 100 ms | Fast rock, punk |
| 180 BPM | 333 ms | 83 ms | Drum and bass, very fast rock |
Reading your rhythm results
- Mean offset tells you whether you sit ahead of (negative) or behind (positive) the beat. A steady offset is easy to correct and matters less than scatter.
- Consistency (SD) is the best single measure of rhythmic precision. Smaller is steadier; compare it across tempos to find your comfortable range.
- Tempo drift shows whether you rush or drag. Rushing at slow tempos and dragging at fast ones is very common.
- Within ±30 ms shows the share of beats you hit inside a tight window, a practical target for musicians playing together.
How to improve your timing
- Practise with a metronome at slow tempos first. Slow beats are harder to keep steady because there is more time to drift.
- Count or subdivide in your head ("1-and-2-and") to make long gaps easier to fill.
- Use keep-the-beat mode to train your internal clock instead of only reacting to the click.
- Test with wired headphones; Bluetooth delay makes you look late. Use the latency correction field if your offset is consistently shifted.
Frequently asked questions
How is the timing offset measured?
Each tap is matched to the nearest beat. Offset = tap time − beat time, so a positive number means you were late and a negative number means you were early. If you tap twice near one beat, the closer tap counts and the other is reported as an extra tap. Beats without a tap count as missed.
Why am I always slightly early?
This is a well-known effect called negative mean asynchrony: when people tap along with a metronome they tend to tap a little before the click, often by a few tens of milliseconds. It is usually smaller in trained musicians. A consistent small early offset is normal and not a sign of poor rhythm.
How is the timing score calculated?
Score = 100 × (1 − mean absolute offset ÷ a quarter of the beat interval) × share of beats hit, limited to 0-100. At 120 BPM a quarter of the beat is 125 ms, so an average error of 25 ms with no missed beats scores 80. Scaling by the beat interval makes scores comparable across tempos.
What do consistency and tempo drift mean?
Consistency is the standard deviation of your offsets: how much your taps scatter around your own average. Your tempo comes from a straight-line fit of tap times against beat numbers, which is robust to single sloppy taps. Tempo drift is the tempo of the second half of your taps minus the tempo of the first half, in BPM. Positive drift means you sped up, negative means you slowed down.
What is the keep-the-beat mode?
The click plays for the first half of the beats and then stops, so you must keep the tempo on your own. Psychologists call this a synchronisation-continuation task. Without the click most people drift, often towards a more comfortable tempo, and the tempo chart shows exactly when it happens.
My offsets seem shifted. What is latency correction?
Speakers, Bluetooth headphones and keyboards add delay. The test already uses the audio latency reported by the browser, but some delay cannot be detected. If you are consistently late by a fixed amount on every run, enter that amount (for example 40 ms) as latency correction; the expected beat times are shifted by this value. Wired headphones need little or no correction.
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