Listen to four reference beats, then tap eight times through the silence. Choose Normal or Friday and review each tap after the round. This is independent fixed-reference practice; Daily uses its own warm-up calibration.
How to play Tempo
- Choose Normal or Friday, a difficulty and one to five sets. One set here is one Tempo round. For a mix of skills, use Unlimited or Custom rounds.
- Press Start, read the round instruction, then press Ready with sound enabled. Listen to the four loud reference beats. IO does not need warm-up taps.
- When the game says it is your turn, tap the pad eight times. You can use touch, mouse or Space. Keep the same pulse through the silence. Friday places your taps halfway between the imagined beats.
- The eighth tap completes the round. Read your target, actual timings and early/late differences before choosing Next round or See full results.
- Use Play again for fresh targets, or Retry same challenge to keep the same targets and settings. Completed sessions join your existing History on this domain.
Keep the tab in the foreground. If the round is interrupted, use its retry control; a partial sequence is not a completed score. Easy, Standard and Hard change the generated tempo range. They do not create a universal conversion between your scores.
Normal and Friday: change phase, keep the spacing
At 100 BPM, each beat lasts 600 ms. Measured from the final loud reference beat, the first Normal tap belongs at 600 ms; Friday starts at 300 ms. Both continue with one tap every 600 ms. Friday does not mean tapping twice as fast.
Normal: 600, 1,200, 1,800, 2,400, 3,000, 3,600, 4,200, 4,800 ms.
Friday: 300, 900, 1,500, 2,100, 2,700, 3,300, 3,900, 4,500 ms.
Friday’s quiet halfway ticks during the reference demonstrate the gaps. Carry that phase into the silent continuation. To practise the other Friday variations too, play the full Friday set.
Read your timing, not just the score
Your result keeps the reference BPM, average tap interval, mean timing offset, timing jitter and weighted error. The eight-row table compares each target with your actual tap, in milliseconds since the final reference beat. Positive differences mean late; negative differences mean early. The plot shows the same differences around zero.
- Mean timing offset: your average early/late difference. A steady set can still be consistently late.
- Average tap interval: the mean gap between your seven pairs of successive taps. Compare it with the reference period to see whether your pulse was faster or slower.
- Timing jitter: the population standard deviation of the eight timing differences around their mean. A gradually changing pace can increase this number too; it is not a separate diagnosis of random hand movement.
Weighted error = 0.6 × |mean offset| + 0.4 × jitter
Score = round(100 × exp(−0.5 × (weighted error ÷ tolerance)²))
IO uses a 60 ms tolerance in Normal and 85 ms in Friday. All eight original tap times enter the calculation; displayed values are rounded only for reading. The complete scoring guide explains the curve and session grades.
Three constructed Normal-mode examples
These examples all use a 600 ms reference period. They illustrate the existing IO formula, rather than measured player performance or a device-delay test.
| Eight timing differences | Mean offset | Jitter | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every tap 60 ms late | +60 ms | 0 ms | 84 |
| Alternate −60 and +60 ms | 0 ms | 60 ms | 92 |
| 0, +20, +40, …, +140 ms | +70 ms | 45.8 ms | 60 |
The first set has even spacing but a fixed offset. The second averages to zero offset while still varying. The third averages a 620 ms interval and grows later each time. Use those differences to choose your next attempt: keep the spacing, keep a consistent input setup, and inspect whether the error repeats. One result cannot identify its cause.
Why Daily can give a different score
This IO exercise compares your eight taps with its fixed scheduled reference. The original-style Daily game calibrates from warm-up follow taps. Generated targets, calibration and browser/audio conditions can differ, so a practice score is not an equivalent official Daily result or a population percentile.
The same challenge link keeps the IO seed, mode, difficulty and set count. Use it when you want to repeat matching targets or compare with a friend. A comparison is self-reported, and different devices may still have different timing conditions.
Sound, interruptions and saved results
Start audio yourself with Ready. Check device volume, the tab’s mute setting and its audio output. Keep the tab visible and avoid changing audio devices mid-round. If Bluetooth feels delayed, compare another output under otherwise similar conditions; a fixed offset alone does not prove a hardware problem. See sound and loading help.
Your completed sessions use History on this domain, separate from IO records, including its JSON backup, import and 100-session limit. Save & leave preserves completed rounds; an unfinished eight-tap attempt restarts. A saved mixed-skill set opens in Unlimited so none of its skills or answers are removed.
After this device reports that offline practice is ready, this page and the IO practice games can work offline while the cached files remain available. Daily still needs a connection. Existing install and update controls remain available in the footer.
Choose your next practice
Back to Tempo practice ↑Play all five skills →Play the full Friday set →Understand scores →