Rhythm is not a line. It is a cycle: divided, grouped, accented, layered, and sometimes allowed to drift.
Sound starts only when you ask.
Before rhythm has a shape, it has a pulse: a regular point of reference moving through time.
Tap the stage, press T, or use the button below on each beat. Early and late land gently around the pulse — no score.
The cycle stays the same length. What changes is how we divide it.
Select markers on the ring to silence or restore individual attacks.
Equal subdivisions can feel different when their accents imply different larger beats.
Beat unit: quarter note · shared eighth-note grid
The grid may be similar. The hierarchy is not.
A metre creates expectations. A rhythm can follow them, lean against them, or avoid them altogether.
The pulse stayed where it was. The rhythm stopped obeying it.
Click ring positions to toggle attacks. Shift+click cycles strength: soft → medium → strong. Or use Edit steps below.
Two rhythms can divide the same span of time differently and still return to the same beginning.
Ratio A:B — outer ring divides the cycle into A equal parts; inner ring into B. Coincidences glow where both strike.
Now begin with two identical rhythms—and let one of them move very slightly faster.
Offset 0° · reunion —
Gradual rhythmic phasing is a general phenomenon — useful in composition, not tied to one work.
Everything above is now yours to combine.
Offset 0° · reunion —
Arrow keys move between steps. Space toggles. Plus cycles strength.
Musical Time is an interactive laboratory for hearing how pulse becomes metre, syncopation, polyrhythm and phase. It simplifies some musical details so the underlying relationships remain visible.
Start the pulse, move through the guided sections, then combine the controls in the Laboratory. Headphones can make layered rhythms easier to separate.
The visualisations show structural relationships, not full musical notation. Real musical performance also depends on articulation, dynamics, microtiming, phrasing and context.
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