Indian taditional-style rhythmic puzzles
I have always been drawn to the idea of studying Indian classical music because of the secure rhythmic sense I know I would attain from the practice. Obviously, playing this game is not the same as actually studying the tradition, but it gives you a little taste of it. What you do is learn to play tihai-s, which are rhythmic cadences based on playing the same phrase three times, in different metric orientations, landing ultimately on the “one.” These are really tricky and fun to learn. Like learning tongue-twisters. Every day, the app offers you a new selection of tihai-s to try: easy, medium, and hard. It is not clear whether there will be a an unlimited number of new ones issued daily, or if at some point they will start repeating. (This would be good to know, before investing in a year-long subscription!)
The rhythmic cycle is represented with a polyhedron which you travel around—“follow-the-bouncing-ball” style. It is very nice, super clear. I believe in traditional music apprenticeship, you learn to count the rhythmic cycle on your fingers. This is a graphical representation of that. It works well.
As you learn to tap the pattern on your phone, the app measures your rhythmic accuracy in milliseconds. It is surprising how far off you can be, when you think you are “on”—particularly on the off-beats.
I will say that I have noticed my iPhone sometimes has trouble registering taps accurately when I use two fingers instead of one. It seems to need to register all the taps in the same place. I imagine that a major challenge for this app resides in the hardware. Phones aren’t designed for ultra-accurate rhythmic registry. Nonetheless, it seems to work well, provided you tap with one finger in the same spot.
The rhythmic cycle is represented with a polyhedron which you travel around—“follow-the-bouncing-ball” style. It is very nice, super clear. I believe in traditional music apprenticeship, you learn to count the rhythmic cycle on your fingers. This is a graphical representation of that. It works well.
As you learn to tap the pattern on your phone, the app measures your rhythmic accuracy in milliseconds. It is surprising how far off you can be, when you think you are “on”—particularly on the off-beats.
I will say that I have noticed my iPhone sometimes has trouble registering taps accurately when I use two fingers instead of one. It seems to need to register all the taps in the same place. I imagine that a major challenge for this app resides in the hardware. Phones aren’t designed for ultra-accurate rhythmic registry. Nonetheless, it seems to work well, provided you tap with one finger in the same spot.
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AWESOME concept, waiting for it to be better
This is a super cool app! Unfortunately, on my device, the taps seem out of sync. Every time I would calibrate in the app, I would get a different result. Mind you, I’m a classically trained pianist who studies music at university—been playing for twelve years. Who knows, it could be just a quirk on my device or maybe my screen protector is too think hahaha. Will definitely try again in the future but for now it doesn’t seem to work great :(
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Response from developer
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. There is a natural variation of a few milliseconds in auto-calibration that’s completely natural. You can also manually adjust the calibration under settings menu. If you feel your taps are consistently out of sync, there might be something else going on. Can you reach out to us at info@thetimeseer.com so that we can investigate this issue further?
Does not correctly show where I tapped
Does not correctly show where I tapped
Tapping on the phone is wildly inconsistent on iPhone 16
Not a tool for learning precise rhythm, sorry. Calibrating ranges +\- 50ms which is…simply not good enough. Haptic doesn’t work at all.
Great concept, but plays like a video game
Lovely look and feel, with different challenge levels each day. Rhythm input is by tapping the screen, which really made the whole thing feel like a video game instead of a training tool. I feel like I have it a fair shot during the free trial period, and seriously considered paying the ($$$) price of the app despite my qualms about all the tapping, but within a few days the interface seemed to degrade, tap timing accuracy getting worse and worse, which defeats the purpose of the app, and the calibration function would not work. Tried restarting my phone and even removing/ reinstalling the app, but kept having the same problem. Ultimately I was already feeling like the tapping play input was more of a time suck and a distraction from real rhythm practice that I want doing on my instrument while I sat in a chair tapping on my phone, and gave up on the calibration issues. I feel like this app could be extremely useful and worth the $$$ if it could work with a microphone input, and I’ll surely be back if that is added.
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