Groove report
demo
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.
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
No Claude feedback for this take. Run analyze without --no-coach (and with an API key) to get feedback, exercises, and fills.
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.