Rhythm: early, late, what to do about it

Does a negative number mean it is going worse? No. Minus is a tap before the pattern’s place. Plus is a tap after it. That is direction in time. First look which way the hand drifts, and only then at the hit count.

Rhythm plays a pattern for four bars and assigns every tap to the nearest slot. A hit is a tap inside a 60 ms window of that slot. That is a threshold below which the ear usually cannot hear a drift, not a laboratory. The millisecond number on the screen does not transfer to the pick.

What does “early” mean?

The whole strum ahead of the pattern: the hand speeds up instead of waiting for even gaps. Do not fix it with a harder stroke. Count aloud “one and two and three and four and”. On the number the hand goes down. The “and” must get as much room as the number.

Downstrokes even, upstrokes early: the hand turns back too soon. Leave it a little longer at the bottom. Do not shorten the return only because an upstroke is lighter.

What does “late” mean?

A late hand often starts only when it hears the pattern. Hearing, deciding and moving all take a moment, so the tap lands behind the target. Start the swing before the first stroke and do not stop it in empty slots.

Why is the hit count not enough on its own?

Two rounds can have a similar total and a different correction. In one, the whole hand leads the pattern. In the other, downstrokes sit in place and upstrokes return too soon. That is why there are two measures under the result, and one sentence.

result	change one thing
all early	count aloud and do not shorten “and”
upstrokes early	leave the hand at the bottom longer
all late	move before the sound, swing without a stop
even	the button raises the tempo by 6 BPM

When there are too few taps, slow down and repeat the round. If the click takes all your attention, put the phone aside for a minute and tap your knees: Fujita starts rhythm without a metronome, so you feel the two halves of the pulse. Then return at the same tempo.

Two rounds, one correction

Open Rhythm on the pattern D-DUD-DU. The default tempo is 84 BPM. The first round is a diagnosis. Read the sentence under the result, make only that one correction and repeat four bars without changing tempo. If you count, change the movement and slow down all at once, you cannot tell what helped.

Orange slot: early. Blue: late. Crossed out: missed. Green: inside the window in all four bars. The bar of the strip shows the weakest of the four bars, not an average.