TempoLock turns timing into numbers so you can see patterns that are hard to hear in the moment. The numbers are useful when they answer a practice question. They are less useful when the only goal becomes making one number as large as possible.
Early, late and timing error
A timing error is the difference between the target beat and the tap TempoLock recorded. Negative values are early; positive values are late. The absolute size tells you how far from the reference the tap landed.
A single +30 ms tap is not the same as “you are a late player”. Look across a run. Direction matters when it repeats.
Average error and consistency
Average absolute error summarises how far taps were from their targets without cancelling early errors against late ones. A run with −40, +40, −40, +40 is not “zero error” just because the signed values average to zero.
Consistency describes how tightly the taps cluster. Two runs can have a similar average error while one has steady small misses and the other mixes near-perfect taps with a few large errors.
Stars are mode-specific milestones
1★, 2★ and 3★ start at 6,500, 8,000 and 9,200, but how the score is calculated depends on the mode, because the task changes. Timing Trials, Tempo Aim and Echo Chain do not measure the same thing.
For Tempo Aim, timing and aim quality are combined, and misses limit how far a run can progress. Echo Chain also cares about whether you remembered the rhythm correctly; excellent tap timing cannot fully rescue a missing pattern.
In Timing Lab, each tap is judged Perfect, Great or Good by how close it lands, and a level’s score is your points as a share of what a flawless run would get. The Timing Lab page lists the timing windows.
Locked In and Perfect
Locked In means a score of 9,800 or more: very tight, though not every part of the run has to be perfect.
Perfect is 10,000. In Tempo Aim, a small human-perfect timing zone and very high aim quality allow an excellent target hit to receive full quality rather than requiring an impossible sub-millisecond tap.
Why scores should not be compared blindly across modes
A 9,000 in Echo Chain and a 9,000 in Tempo Aim are not identical skills. Echo Chain adds memory and pattern accuracy. Tempo Aim adds visual search and target accuracy. The 16 Beat Challenge measures one long internal-timing interval rather than a sequence of taps.
Compare like with like: the same mode, similar difficulty and a meaningful time period. The overall profile can show breadth, but practice decisions should use the metric that matches the skill you are training.
What is a “good” number of milliseconds?
There is no universal millisecond cutoff that separates good musicians from bad ones. Tempo, instrument, articulation, musical style, input hardware and audio latency all affect what the number means.
Check calibration before diagnosing yourself
If nearly every tap is displaced in the same direction by a similar amount, especially on one device or audio route, test the latency setup. A fixed device delay can look like a human timing habit.
TempoLock keeps automatic timing active by default and offers separate audio-output and tap-input adjustments for repeatable device-specific offsets.