Time Hero: Feel The Beat

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.

Love this game, it helps you learn complex polyrhythms in a fun and engaging way. The UI is difficult to get used to, I’m color blind so the red markers on dark back ground are hard for me to see, adding the green makes it even more confusing. The shapes are also very small, hard to see sometimes when the tempo picks up in the harder levels and the loop restarts. When I got to the here be dragons level, the beat is moving quickly so the pattern is split into two measure which is not introduced at lower levels. Since the red markers are into two different bars in one shape, it makes it super hard to tell what’s going on and find where the game even wants me to start performing. Very meditative and enjoyable game though and I fully support this type of app being developed ! Thanks!

I found this app while scrolling on instagram and after 2 minutes I was completely hooked. I have always admired the indian classical tradition and now I have an accessible way to immerse myself in it thanks to this app. This app may just prompt me to purchase a tabla and a shruti box. As a music educator and performer of early music, I am impressed by the developer’s pedagogical sensitivity and want to write more about it but, short version: you’re essentially getting an aural skills lab. The visual and embodied modes of transmission make this app feel natural and authentic to learn from. Seriously impressed. Thank you. I am not ashamed to say I will be using this while commuting, and while on the toilet. I strive to write quality reviews for products I like which may prompt some to think I was paid to say this but I can assure you I found this randomly 20 minutes ago and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.