Rhythm Lab 4+

Great

I love this app. It’s so underrated. Perfect to learn basic music and rhythms. The one thing that I think should be clarified is that when creating your own pattern, you need to click on the white space below the scale. I use it to practice patterns with a steel tongue drum.

Great App for students!

I am a piano and voice teacher and one of the things students struggle with most is reading rhythm. This app allows you to create whatever 8 measure rhythm pattern you want and then test if you can tap it correctly! It’s great for assessing student literacy!! Also, big shout out to the developer/creator Jon! He took the time to meet with me on zoom to address some problems I was having with importing rhythms I had created in Finale. Super nice and responsive to users! So happy to have this app in my tool box for teaching!!

Custom pattern entry is slow and confusing

The editor affordance gives no feedback as to where the cursor is or how the notes are being input. The difference between insert, edit and measure modes seems inconsistent. Beams and triple groupings are incorrect (a triple 16th in 4/4 doesn’t work and constantly resets to an eighth note).

After half an hour of struggling to enter a single measure of rythmn dictation, I gave up. It’s easier to do it by hand.

Maybe this app is better at showing example rhythm, seems geared towards British music curriculum. I didn’t look at that very much because I just wanted a quick tool to check rythmn dictation.

Developer Response ,

Hello, coldnebo,
Thank you for your review. Feel free to use the Contact page at https://www.rhythmlab-app.com/contact/ with any concerns - I'm more than willing to help you. There are help pages with explanations of how to use the Custom Screen Insert Mode (https://www.rhythmlab-app.com/knowledge-base/screens/custom-screen/custom-screen-insert-mode/_ , and the Edit, and Measure Tools (https://www.rhythmlab-app.com/knowledge-base/screens/custom-screen/custom-screen-editing/). They are actually not difficult, and are designed to be quick. Placement of the cursor in Insert mode is done with a quick tap, while insert is done with a long press. Edit mode uses a drag of the finger anywhere in the white space to select any contiguous group of notes, which produces the standard edit context menu. Measure editing simply requires a tap inside the measure you want to edit.
Please contact me to explain what you mean about beams being inaccurate. Beaming is done in Edit Mode, and is completely dependent upon the user's choice of which notes to beam or flag. Tuplets follow the MusicXML convention of replacing the "normal" number of notes (for example, two 8th notes) with an "actual" number of notes (for example, three 8th-note tuplets). You would need to send me a screenshot of a 16th-note triplet reverting to an eighth note, because I am unable to reproduce that. If it's a bug that you've discovered, I'd appreciate the opportunity to find it and fix it. Otherwise, I have no idea what you are referring to.
I will be producing a video soon to demonstrate actual examples of editing functions and it will be placed with the growing number of help / quick tip videos. Perhaps an in-app tutorial screen on the Custom Screen would also be helpful.