What rhythm is: beat and tempo
Every note right but the timing off, and a listener knows instantly. One wrong note with steady timing usually goes unnoticed. Rhythm matters more than people expect.
The beat is the pulse of the music
When you listen to a song and your foot starts tapping without being asked, the thing your foot is tapping is the beat. It is a pulse running steadily underneath, no matter how busy the melody on top gets.
Most people think their timing is fine, right up until they play with a metronome. Then they discover they speed up whenever the music gets easy and slow down whenever it gets hard. This is normal, it happens to everyone, and the metronome is the only thing that will fix it.
Tempo and BPM
Tempo is how fast the beat goes, measured in BPM — beats per minute. A song at 60 BPM has one beat per second, exactly matching the second hand of a clock.
| BPM | Musical term | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | Largo | very slow, like an evening piece |
| 70 | Adagio | slow, typical of ballads |
| 92 | Andante | walking pace, roughly how you stroll |
| 112 | Moderato | moderate — a great many pop songs live here |
| 138 | Allegro | fast, with drive |
| 176 | Presto | very fast |
Playing in time
Time to try it properly. You get one bar of counting in, then you tap along with the marks you can see. Any key will do — the system only cares when you press, not what.
Tap four even beats
Listen to the count-in bar, then tap every beat in time.
You get a count-in bar, then tap any key in time with the marks · 72 BPM
Look at the average error the system reports. Under 60 milliseconds is very good for a beginner. Over 120 means there is work to do — but do not worry, everybody starts there.
Put in the reps
Today's drill contains one note: C, four times, filling the bar. There is nothing in it for the fingers to solve, which leaves exactly one thing to judge — whether your note and the click land on top of each other or beside each other.
One C, four times, on the click
As long as you can still hear the click as a sound separate from the C, you are not on it yet; when you are, the click vanishes inside your note. That is easy at 54, but it comes back out at 78, and that is the rung to stay on.
Loop it in time with the clicks. 5 clean reps in a row moves you up a rung; one slip starts the count again · from 54 up to 78 BPM
Today's minigame
A rhythm scrolls past and you tap along. Scored in milliseconds.
Trains: steady time, which listeners feel long before they notice a wrong note
Homework
Go to homeworkAll homework lives on the homework page. Repeat it as often as you like — anything you're still shaky on gets pushed back to the top by itself.
No rush. If you're not confident yet, run the minigame above once more before marking it done.
- Read every part · 0 of 4
- Take the drill up to target tempo · 0 of 1
- Clear 60% of today's minigame · 0 of 1
- Come back and practise again later · 0 of 2 sittings