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A student walks into a lesson with that familiar mix of excitement and nerves.

This week, my student got stuck on something deceptively small: a change that wouldn’t land cleanly, a coordination moment that kept falling apart, a short passage that refused to feel smooth. They tried it once, then again. Their shoulders tightened. They sighed. The old story started to creep in: “I’m just not good at this.”

So we slowed down.

We isolated the hard moment. We tried it at a gentler tempo. We let the mistakes happen on purpose, listened, adjusted, and tried again. After a minute that felt longer than it was, the student made it through—still not perfect, but undeniably better. Then they looked up and said something I’ll never forget:

“Isn’t it kind of good that it was hard? It feels like my brain is learning.”

I smiled, because that sentence is the sound of a growth mindset being born.

That didn’t happen by accident. Over the years, I’ve become deliberate about what I praise in lessons. I don’t celebrate students most when they succeed at what’s already easy for them. I celebrate them when they stay with what’s difficult—when they try, miss, reset, and try again. I tell them the truth: struggle isn’t a sign you’re failing. It’s often the sign you’re training.

Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle: the more you use it, the more it grows. Practice doesn’t just “add” skill; it changes the brain. Neural connections form and strengthen most when we’re working at the edge of our ability—especially when we make mistakes on something challenging, rather than repeating what we can already do comfortably.

What this means is simple and liberating: ability isn’t fixed. Skill isn’t a trait you either have or you don’t. One of the best ways to grow your capability is to embrace the moments where you might struggle and fail—because those are the moments where learning is actually happening.

Not everyone realizes this. Dr. Carol Dweck has studied mindsets toward learning for decades. She found that many people tend to operate from one of two mindsets: fixed or growth.

A fixed mindset assumes you’re either “talented” or “not,” and that ability is largely set in stone. People with a fixed mindset often focus on tasks where they have a high likelihood of success and avoid tasks that might expose difficulty. That may protect confidence in the short term—but it also limits learning.

A growth mindset understands that capability can be developed through effort, struggle, and even failure. People with a growth mindset lean into challenges and understand that tenacity and effort can change outcomes. Over time, that difference compounds.

The good news is that mindsets can be taught. They’re malleable. What’s especially fascinating is that researchers have developed “growth mindset interventions,” showing that small shifts in communication—seemingly innocuous comments—can have long-lasting effects.

One powerful example is how we praise. Compare process praise with talent praise:
• Process praise: “I really like how you stayed with that hard spot.”
• Talent praise: “You’re a natural!”

Process praise acknowledges effort, strategy, and persistence. Talent praise can unintentionally reinforce the idea that success (or failure) is determined by a fixed trait. In lessons, process praise teaches students to value the work that creates progress.

And here’s a surprise: by reading this piece, you’ve already completed the first half of a growth mindset intervention. Research suggests that simply being exposed to these ideas—such as knowing the brain often grows most by getting things wrong before getting them right—can begin to shift how someone thinks about learning.

When a student asks me what matters most, I try to leave them with one thing:

As long as you embrace struggle and mistakes, you can learn anything.

When we started building TAP Rhythm, I assumed the hard part would be the rhythm: subdivisions, levels, scoring, “is this musically fair,” etc.

Nope.

The hard part was getting taps to behave consistently across devices, especially iPad Safari, which has its own mysterious laws of physics. This is the short version of how the app went from “why won’t it tap?” to v1.91: actually solid on iPad, iPhone, and desktop.

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The goal (simple, but not easy)

TAP Rhythm is supposed to feel like practice, not a twitch game:
• clear notation
• progressive difficulty
• reliable timing
• scoring that feels fair across devices

That last bullet is where the real fight lived.

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Problem #1: Safari’s “shrink behind the overlay” nonsense

One of the earliest issues: the app would load looking fine… then a tiny swipe would make the whole stage shrink behind an overlay like it suddenly changed its mind about the viewport.

That’s not just ugly—it breaks trust. If the stage resizes mid-session, users stop thinking about rhythm and start thinking about the screen.

The fix was basically: stop reacting constantly. Let Safari finish its little settling routine, then refit once. Measure deliberately. Commit. Move on.

Once we handled orientation/viewport changes calmly (instead of chasing them), the layout stopped “breathing” in weird ways.

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Problem #2: The iPad tap mystery (“it only works on staff lines?!”)

This was the one that made me feel insane.

On desktop and iPhone: taps felt normal.
On iPad: taps often didn’t register… unless you tapped directly on a staff line.

Between the lines? Nothing.
Outside the staff area? Nothing.
Staff line? Perfect.

That’s when it became clear we had an input-layer problem: invisible elements, scaling, overlays, and Safari quirks were combining into “your finger did not, in fact, touch anything.”

So we got ruthless:
• the stage became the true, reliable tap surface
• we made sure nothing invisible was stealing pointer events
• and we made the tappable area visually obvious (including that mint green stage wrap so nobody has to guess)

We also updated the help overlay so it clearly explains where taps count. If something is intentionally “not tappable,” users should know, immediately.

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Problem #3: Difficulty that turned into “no one can score”

After we fixed the resizing and tap registration, we hit the next wall:
• On iPad, once sixteenth notes showed up (Level 5), scoring felt almost impossible.
• On iPhone, scoring beyond Level 1 felt unfair even at normal tempos.

This is where a rhythm app can accidentally become a rage generator. If the same person does the same tapping and the score depends on the device… the app is wrong.

So we tightened the timing system and scoring approach—more “musical intent” and less “you missed because the browser hiccuped.” The big idea: don’t trust the browser to be perfectly punctual. Use smarter scheduling and a stable evaluation window.

Once we did that, everything snapped into place: the same tapping started producing consistent results across devices.

That’s the moment TAP Rhythm stopped feeling fragile and started feeling like an instrument.

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The milestone: v1.91

v1.91 wasn’t one magic fix—it was a pile of small, careful decisions that finally added up:
• viewport/orientation changes handled cleanly
• taps register reliably (especially on iPad)
• the stage is visually and functionally “the place to tap”
• scoring works the same on iPhone, iPad, and desktop
• difficulty is challenging without being sadistic

In other words: the app became teachable. I can put it in front of a student and trust it won’t derail the lesson.

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What I learned (the hard way)

If you’re building anything that depends on touch + timing:
• Layout stability is part of timing. If the stage shifts, your timing app is lying.
• iPad Safari is not iPhone Safari. Treat it like its own platform.
• If taps only work in “weird spots,” it’s usually layering. Something invisible is stealing events.
• Scoring has to tolerate real-world jitter. Otherwise you punish users for browser behavior.
• Clarity is a feature. People shouldn’t have to guess where to tap.

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What’s next

Now that TAP Rhythm is stable, we get to do the fun work again:
• better progression and pacing
• more musical feedback
• more “practice tool” polish and less “debugging Safari” time

We didn’t build this to win a tech demo. We built it so users can practice rhythm and actually feel themselves improving.

And after a ridiculous amount of chasing invisible gremlins… it’s finally doing that.