Groove report
demo-coached
4/4 · 9 bars · 80 bpm · played to a click · drums identified with your ‘demo’ kit profile
Listen to this take
As it plays, the current bar lights up in the charts below. Click a row in “Moments to look at” to hear that moment.
Recording problem: The recording is distorting: the drums were too loud for the mic. Move it further from the kit or turn the input volume down (System Settings > Sound > Input). Timing results are still useful; which-drum labels may be wrong.
Recording problem: The recording has very little bass, so the kick drum is hard to hear. Laptop mics often miss it; a phone placed a few feet in front of the kick usually works better. Timing results are still useful; which-drum labels may be wrong.
The short version
You played 9 bars of a syncopated, tom-heavy groove at 80 BPM with a click. The kick is on 1, the hi-hat is on 2, 3 and 4, and snare and tom hits fall around the & of 1, the a of 2, the e of 3 and the e of 4. Your tempo was steady and you kept the form the whole way through. The two big issues are both about the click. First, you slowly crept ahead of it: from about 7 ms behind in bars 1-2 to about 42 ms ahead by bar 8. Second, you rush the 'a' 16ths. Your timing also got noticeably looser in bars 6-8, when you started adding busier ideas. A caveat on the data: the recording distorted and barely picked up the kick. That is why the transcription shows 39 'crash' hits and stacks snare, toms and crash on the same notes. Those are almost certainly mislabeled snare and tom hits. So trust the timing trends below more than the exact drum names. Next time, turn the mic input down or move the mic back, and put a phone a few feet in front of the kick.
Your groove
The beat you played most often (1 of 9 bars). Darker = harder hit, lighter = ghost note.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crash | ||||||||||||||||
| Ride | ||||||||||||||||
| Hi-hat | ||||||||||||||||
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Mid tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
Tempo, bar by bar
Early or late, bar by bar
Average distance from the click in each bar.
By drum
Dot = average placement inside your groove; line = spread.
By count
Are your in-between notes rushed or dragged compared with the beat?
Moments to look at
The hits furthest from where they belonged. Clusters in one bar usually mean a fill got away from you.
| Bar | Count | Drum | Off by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | a of 1 | Floor tom, Mid tom | 73 ms early |
| 6 | a of 1 | snare | 70 ms early |
| 8 | 1 | kick | 68 ms late |
| 8 | 3 | Hi-hat | 64 ms late |
| 8 | 4 | Hi-hat | 59 ms late |
| 8 | a of 1 | snare, Floor tom, Mid tom | 54 ms early |
What the research says
Published studies on timing and groove that put your numbers in context. Every source is listed at the bottom of this page.
How small a difference can anyone hear?
At this tempo your 16th notes are 188 ms apart and 8th notes 375 ms apart. Research puts the smallest noticeable timing change at about 6 ms for 16ths and 9 ms for 8ths at this tempo. Differences smaller than that are below what listeners can reliably hear. [1]
What does tight look like?
Your spread is 24 ms. For a professional benchmark, Jeff Porcaro's famous hi-hat part varied by about 9 ms between hits. (That's a slightly different measure from this tool's spread, so treat it as a ballpark, not an exact target.) Research also finds trained musicians are less variable than beginners, so this number should come down with practice. The 'typical' (10–20 ms) and 'loose' (20–30 ms) spread labels are this tool's rules of thumb, not research findings. [2][3]
Why am I ahead of the click?
You were 18 ms ahead of the click on average. Landing early is one of the most consistent findings in timing research: most people play tens of milliseconds ahead of a beat they're following, and trained musicians do it less. It's normal, and it shrinks with practice. [4][3]
Behind the beat can be a choice
Laid-back, on-the-beat and pushed are styles expert drummers play on purpose, for example a snare slightly behind the hi-hat. So a drum that sits late in the 'By drum' chart isn't automatically a mistake. What matters is whether it's deliberate and consistent. [5][6]
Tighter isn't automatically better
Research is split here. Listeners rated a perfectly quantized drum pattern highest, but in another study expert listeners' bodies moved more to music with human timing. Every human performance drifts in small, connected ways, and listeners prefer that over machine-made randomness. Use these numbers to get control of your time, not to sound like a machine. [7][8][9]
Coaching
What's working
- Steady tempo. Bar by bar you stayed between 79.7 and 80.4 BPM, and the overall drift (1.4 BPM per minute) was rated steady. You aren't speeding up in a way bandmates would feel as a tempo change.
- Your 'e' notes are almost dead on: on average they land 0.6 ms from where they belong in your groove. Off-beat 16ths that early in the beat are hard, and you nail them.
- Your '&' notes are your most consistent position, with a 13.8 ms spread. That's a solid backbone to build from.
- Bars 1-5 were fairly controlled, with spreads of 12-19 ms per bar. That is roughly the 10-20 ms range I'd call typical for an intermediate player (a rule of thumb, not a hard standard).
- You kept the form. Kick on 1 and hi-hat on 2-3-4 show up in every single bar, so the song structure never fell apart even when your hands got adventurous.
- You're improvising. Bars 2-8 all vary the basic figure, which is exactly the instinct you want in a band.
Creeping ahead of the click over the take
Average offset vs the click by bar: +7.3, +6.6, -1.9, -11.9, -23.0, -31.3, -38.6, -41.9 ms. Overall average -17.5 ms. Tempo went from 79.7 to 80.4 BPM.
The tempo change is tiny, but it adds up. By bar 8 you're about 40 ms ahead of the click, which is close to a quarter of a 16th note at this tempo. In a band that plays to a click or backing track, the bass player will hear your hits flamming against theirs. If you're locked to a sequenced part, it will start to sound like two slightly different songs.
Try this: Do the gap-click exercise below. Hearing the click less often forces you to hold the tempo yourself, then shows you right away whether you drifted. Also aim to sit relaxed on the click rather than chase it. Starting slightly behind and ending ahead means you're accelerating into it.
Rushing the 'a' 16ths
'a' notes average -34.7 ms (early) with a 23.2 ms spread. Compare 'e' at -0.6 ms and '&' at -7.8 ms. The worst hits are all 'a of 1' in bars 6 and 8, at -70 to -73 ms and -54 ms.
At 80 BPM a 16th is about 188 ms apart. Landing 35 ms early is far beyond what a listener can notice; even a few ms is audible at that spacing. Your 'a' notes get squashed toward the 'and' before them, so syncopated figures sound hurried and slightly panicked instead of funky. The new 'a of 1' idea you tried in bars 6-8 was the worst offender, up to 70 ms early.
Try this: Count every 16th out loud ('1 e & a') while you play. Practice the 'a' placement exercise below until the 'a' feels like it's waiting for the next beat instead of grabbing it.
Timing loosens when you get busier
Per-bar spread was 12-19 ms in bars 1-5, then 28.2, 33.5 and 37.2 ms in bars 6-8. Overall spread is 24.1 ms, with 41.9% of hits within 10 ms and 64.9% within 20 ms. Seven of the eight worst events are in bars 6-8.
Your simpler bars are reasonably tight. When you add new ideas, the time suffers. Bandmates will feel a rough patch every time you get creative, which makes a groove feel unreliable right when the music is supposed to build.
Try this: Only bring in a new idea once you can play it at the same tightness as the basic groove. Loop each variation for 2 minutes against the click before using it in a song. If it starts to wobble, drop back to the main groove for a bar and reset.
Feet and hi-hat sit behind the hands
Measured against your own groove: kick +20.4 ms and hi-hat +14.1 ms late, while snare (-6.7), floor tom (-5.7) and mid tom (-7.2) sit slightly early. Downbeats as a group are +12.5 ms late.
Your hands run ahead of your timekeeping parts, which stretches the beat. That can make your playing sound a bit flammy or lurching, as if there were two pulses. Caveat: only 9 kick hits were detected and the mic barely heard bass, so the kick number is a rough guide.
Try this: Play the main groove with only the kick and hi-hat for a minute, then add one hand part at a time. Listen for the hand hits fusing with the feet into one sound rather than landing in front of them.
Swing & feel
Your feel is straight: 51.7% on the 8ths and 50.0% on the 16ths, where 50% is perfectly straight. That's right for this kind of syncopated tom groove and for most rock and pop at 80 BPM. The thing shaping your feel isn't swing. It's that your downbeats sit a little late (+12.5 ms) while your 'a' notes rush (-34.7 ms). That squeezes the syncopations together and stretches the beats, which can sound uneven rather than deliberately laid back. A pushed or laid-back feel can be a great choice, but it should be the same every time. Right now it changes as you get busier.
Dynamics
The distortion makes it impossible to judge dynamics properly. When the mic is overloaded, loud and medium hits all come out the same size. The few accents detected land on beat 1 of bars 2, 4, 5 and 6, which is a good instinct for marking the top of the bar. The 'ghost' notes on the crash are very likely detection artifacts. For a tom groove like this, the next step is a clear difference between accented tom hits and softer in-between notes; the stretch variation below works on that. Re-record with the mic input lower so we can actually hear your dynamic range next time.
Practice exercises
Gap click start at 70 bpm
Set the click to 80 BPM. Play your main groove for 4 bars with the click on, then mute it for 4 bars and keep going. Many metronome apps have a 'gap' or 'mute bars' setting. When the click comes back, notice whether you're ahead, behind or right on it. Once 4-on/4-off feels solid, move to 2 bars on and 6 off. Record yourself and check that you stay on the click through bars 5-8.
Goal: Come back in on the click (no audible flam) after 4 muted bars, ten times in a row. Then do the same at 80 BPM.
'a' placement ladder start at 60 bpm
Play quiet 16th notes on the hi-hat and count '1 e & a' out loud. Put a snare hit only on the 'a' of 2, then only on the 'a' of 1, then on both. Keep the 'a' snare hits locked to a hi-hat stroke so they fuse into one sound. Then drop the hi-hat 16ths down to 8ths, then to quarters, and keep the 'a' in exactly the same spot. Finally, play your main groove and the 'a of 1' idea from bars 6-8.
Goal: No flam between the snare and the hi-hat on the 'a'. Then keep the 'a' just as late (not rushed) with only quarter-note hi-hats, at 80 BPM.
Feet first, add one hand at a time start at 70 bpm
With the click on, loop just the kick on 1 and the hi-hat on 2, 3 and 4 for one minute. Add the floor tom part for a minute, then the snare, then the high tom. Each time you add a part, listen for it to land with the click and the feet, not in front of them.
Goal: Every layer stays locked to the click for a full minute without your hands pulling ahead.
Variation endurance start at 72 bpm
Play 4 bars of the main groove, then 4 bars of a variation, and repeat for 32 bars total with the click. Record it and listen back to the variation bars specifically: are they rushed compared with the groove bars? Start with the easier variation below and only move on when it's clean.
Goal: The variation bars sound just as relaxed and tight as the groove bars across the full 32-bar recording, at 80 BPM.
Ideas to explore
Starting points, not scripts. These ideas are built from how you played. Use them like a teacher's examples: learn one, then change it until it sounds like you. The fills you make up yourself, in the moment, are the real goal.
Variation ideas
Settled syncopation easier
This keeps your kick on 1, hi-hat on 2-3-4, the floor tom on the & of 1 and the high tom on the e of 3. Your rushed 'a of 2' moves to the '&', which is your tightest position, so you get a groovy tom part you can play cleanly while working on the 'a' notes.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi-hat | ||||||||||||||||
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Loop it against the click at 72 BPM, counting 16ths out loud. When it's relaxed, alternate 4 bars of this with 4 bars of your original groove at 80 BPM.
- Swap which tom plays the & of 1 and the & of 4: try mid tom, floor tom, or snare rimshot.
- Thin it out: drop the & of 4 snare in the first and third bars of a phrase and only play it in bars 2 and 4.
- Add a second kick on the & of 3 to give a bass player something to lock onto.
Two-bar groove with the 'a of 1' done on purpose same level
Bar 1 is your main groove. Bar 2 adds the 'a of 1' you were experimenting with in bars 6-8, but as a soft ghost note instead of a loud hit. Played softly, it's easier to place late enough, so it stops being the thing that rushes. Bar 2 also accents your e-of-4 floor tom to set up the repeat.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi-hat | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Start at 66 BPM. Keep the ghost note really quiet and think of it as leaning into beat 2 rather than jumping off beat 1. Loop it until bar 2 feels as calm as bar 1, then bring it up toward 80.
- Move the ghost from the 'a of 1' to the 'a of 3' and see how it changes the push.
- Play the bar 2 ghost on the mid tom instead of the snare for a more melodic tom part.
- Turn it into a 4-bar phrase where only bar 4 gets the ghost and accent, to mark phrase endings in a verse.
Floor-tom drive with ghost notes stretch
This turns your tom groove into a driving chorus part. Your right hand plays steady 8ths on the floor tom while your left hand plays accents in your own spots, the a of 2 and the e of 4, with ghost notes on the e's in between. Your hi-hat foot keeps 2-3-4 as you already do. The steady right hand gives you a built-in 8th-note grid to place the 'a' against, which helps your rushing.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hat pedal | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Learn the hands alone first: floor tom 8ths, then add left-hand accents only, then the ghosts. Add the kick, and add the hi-hat foot last. Keep the ghosts very soft and the accents strong, so the difference is obvious.
- Move the right hand from the floor tom to the ride or a crash for a bigger chorus wash, keeping the left-hand accents.
- Leave the ghost notes out entirely for a heavier, simpler version.
- Shift the second accent from the e of 4 to the a of 4 to push into the next bar.
Fill ideas
Eighth-note roll down easier
The first half is your groove: kick on 1, floor tom on the &, hi-hat on 2. The second half is plain 8th notes moving from snare to high tom to floor tom, which keeps you on your strongest positions. It lands you back on the kick at beat 1 of your groove.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi-hat | ||||||||||||||||
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Play 3 bars of groove and 1 bar of fill, on loop. Make sure beat 1 after the fill lands on the click, not ahead of it. That's where fills usually rush.
- Start the fill one beat earlier, on beat 2, and add two more 8th notes.
- Reverse the direction: floor tom up to high tom.
- Add a crash with the kick on the 1 after the fill to mark a new section.
Syncopated tom cascade same level
This keeps your groove's a-of-2 snare hit, then runs 16ths around the toms from beat 3, with accents on the 'a' of 3 and the '&' of 4. Accenting the 'a' on purpose trains you to place it late enough. The floor tom on the e of 4 echoes your groove.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi-hat | ||||||||||||||||
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Mid tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Practice beats 3 and 4 alone at 60 BPM, counting out loud. Then put the fill after 3 bars of groove, and check the 'a of 3' accent doesn't rush.
- Move the accents so the strongest hit lands on the e of 4 instead.
- Thin it out to just the accented notes for a sparser, punchier fill.
- Swap the toms around so it moves floor, mid, high instead of high to floor.
Three-beat 16th build stretch
After your groove's beat 1, this plays 16ths for three beats with accents on beat 2, the a of 2, the & of 3 and the e of 4. Those are the same spots your groove hits, so the fill sounds like your groove exploding rather than something borrowed. A kick on the & of 4 pushes you back into beat 1.
| 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Mid tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Floor tom | ||||||||||||||||
| Kick |
How to practice: Start at 60 BPM with a click. The test: the 'a' notes in the snare run must not crowd the next beat. Keep the ghosts soft so the accents stand out, and only speed up once the whole bar is even.
- Start the 16ths on the & of 2 instead of on 2 for a shorter fill.
- Replace the ghosts with rests to make a stuttering, gap-filled version.
- Play the whole thing on just the snare and floor tom for a darker sound.
Your turn
No answers here. Set the click, pick one, and improvise. Then record it and see how it felt.
- Play a one-bar fill using only the floor tom and snare that starts on the e of 3 and ends with a kick on the next 1.
- Make up a 2-bar groove where your hi-hat stays on 2, 3 and 4, but the tom part in bar 2 uses no notes on the 'a' at all.
- Write a fill that uses exactly five notes and includes at least one 'a'. Record it and check that the 'a' isn't rushed.
- Play 8 bars at 80 BPM where every bar changes just one note of your main groove. Never move more than one note at a time.
- Make up a chorus version of your groove where your right hand moves to the ride or a crash, while your left hand keeps one of your syncopated accents.
- With the click muted for 4 bars, improvise a fill in bar 4 and try to land beat 1 exactly when the click comes back.
Research sources
Each source was checked by hand against the published paper. The coaching and ideas above come from AI and don't cite studies themselves.
- Friberg, A., & Sundberg, J. (1995). Time discrimination in a monotonic, isochronous sequence. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 98(5), 2524–2531. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.413218
The smallest noticeable timing change is about 6 ms for notes under 240 ms apart, and about 2.5% of the gap between notes for gaps of 240–1000 ms. - Räsänen, E., Pulkkinen, O., Virtanen, T., Zollner, M., & Hennig, H. (2015). Fluctuations of hi-hat timing and dynamics in a virtuoso drum track of a popular music recording. PLOS ONE, 10(6), e0127902. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127902
Jeff Porcaro's hi-hat on "I Keep Forgettin'" (96 bpm): the time between hits varied with a standard deviation of about 8.7 ms. - Repp, B. H. (2010). Sensorimotor synchronization and perception of timing: Effects of music training and task experience. Human Movement Science, 29(2), 200–213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2009.08.002
Trained musicians showed smaller asynchronies, lower tapping variability, and greater sensitivity to timing deviations than students with little training. - Repp, B. H. (2005). Sensorimotor synchronization: A review of the tapping literature. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(6), 969–992. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206433
People playing along to a regular beat usually land tens of milliseconds early (the 'negative mean asynchrony'), one of the most robust findings in timing research. - Danielsen, A., Waadeland, C. H., Sundt, H. G., & Witek, M. A. G. (2015). Effects of instructed timing and tempo on snare drum sound in drum kit performance. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(4), 2301–2316. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4930950
Expert drummers asked to play laid-back, on the beat, or pushed could do so deliberately; laid-back snare strokes were also played louder. - Câmara, G. S., Sioros, G., & Danielsen, A. (2022). Mapping timing and intensity strategies in drum-kit performance of a simple back-beat pattern. Journal of New Music Research, 51(1), 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2022.2150649
Drummers expressing laid-back or pushed feels used strategies such as playing everything slightly early/late, or one drum early/late against another. - Frühauf, J., Kopiez, R., & Platz, F. (2013). Music on the timing grid: The influence of microtiming on the perceived groove quality of a simple drum pattern performance. Musicae Scientiae, 17(2), 246–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864913486793
Listeners rated a perfectly quantized rock drum pattern highest; larger timing displacements got lower groove ratings. - Kilchenmann, L., & Senn, O. (2015). Microtiming in swing and funk affects the body movement behavior of music expert listeners. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1232. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01232
Expert listeners moved more to music with human microtiming than to quantized versions, contradicting the idea that exact timing is always best. - Hennig, H., Fleischmann, R., Fredebohm, A., Hagmayer, Y., Nagler, J., Witt, A., Theis, F. J., & Geisel, T. (2011). The nature and perception of fluctuations in human musical rhythms. PLOS ONE, 6(10), e26457. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026457
Human rhythmic performance always drifts in small, long-range-correlated ways, and listeners prefer that over the random 'humanize' fluctuations in music software.