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Explainer

How Reverse Song Scores Your Attempt: Melody, Timing and Limits

By The Reverse Song Team · October 25, 2026

Your Reverse Song score is a number from 0 to 100, and it is made of two parts:

• Melody, worth 60%. How closely the pitch of your reversed-back attempt follows the pitch of the original line.
• Timing, worth 40%. How evenly your attempt follows the original’s pace, and how close it is in length.

That is all it measures. It does not grade your voice, your tone or your words. The rest of this post explains each part in plain terms, what the score bands mean, and the honest limits of the approach.

What gets compared

When you finish an attempt, Reverse Song reverses it back. If you copied the reversed line well, the result should resemble your original recording. The score compares those two things: the original line you recorded, and your attempt after it has been flipped back.

Comparing the reversed-back attempt with the original, rather than your raw attempt with the reversed line, means the score reflects the thing you actually care about: does it sound like the song again?

Melody: 60% of the score

Melody is compared frame by frame. The recording is cut into very short slices, the main pitch of your voice is estimated in each slice, and that pitch is compared with the pitch at the matching point in the original.

Two details make this fairer than it sounds.

Octave is ignored. If the original was sung by a high voice and you sing an octave lower, the notes still count as matching. A deep voice copying a high line is not penalised. This matters a lot in practice, because many people record a line in one voice and attempt it in another, or share challenges between friends with very different ranges.

Near misses earn partial credit. If a note is close but not exact, within roughly three semitones, you still get some credit for it. A note that is well outside that range does not help.

Melody carries the larger weight because pitch survives reversal cleanly. A note is the same note forwards or backwards, so it is the most dependable signal of whether you copied the line. Our explainer on why reversed audio sounds so strange covers why words and consonants are much less reliable.

Timing: 40% of the score

Timing looks at two things.

1. Evenness of pace. Does your attempt follow the original’s rhythm steadily, or does it rush in some places and drag in others? An attempt that starts at the right speed and then speeds up will lose timing points even if the total length is close.
2. Overall length. How close is the length of your attempt to the length of the original? A line that took six seconds forwards should take about six seconds in your attempt.

Timing is where many good attempts lose points. People concentrate so hard on the strange reversed sounds that they hurry through the parts they know and slow down on the parts they do not. The tips to improve your score post has specific fixes.

Score bands

The app labels each result with one of four bands:

Score	Label	What it usually means
90 and above	Nailed it!	Melody and pace both closely follow the original
75 to 89	So close!	Recognisable, with small drifts in pitch or pace
50 to 74	Getting there	The shape is there, but notes or timing wander
Under 50	Keep practising	Large parts of the melody or pace do not line up

A score in the 50s on a Hard line can be a better effort than a score in the 80s on an Easy one. Compare yourself with your previous attempts on the same line rather than across songs. The app keeps your best score per song, which makes that easy.

When there is no score

If Reverse Song cannot hear a voice in your attempt, it does not try to score it. It asks you to try again instead. This usually happens when the attempt was too quiet, the phone’s microphone was covered, or you stopped recording before you started singing. Giving a number to silence would just be noise, so the app does not.

What the score cannot judge

This is the part worth being honest about.

It does not judge singing quality. A rough, untrained voice that follows the tune and the pace can score higher than a polished voice that rushes.

It does not judge tone. Breathy, nasal, bright, dark: none of that changes the number, as long as the pitch is there.

It does not check words or pronunciation. The score does not listen for whether “Amazing grace” actually sounds like those words when reversed. It compares pitch and timing only. In practice, copying the reversed sounds well tends to help your melody and timing too, and it is what makes the result sound like the song to a listener, but the score itself is not reading words.

It cannot always hear spoken lines well. Because melody is most of the score, a line that is spoken rather than sung has less pitch to compare. Free lines that are sung on clear notes work much better.

It is affected by the recording. Background noise, music playing in the room or a second voice can confuse pitch detection. See why your reversed attempt sounds wrong for practical fixes.

So treat the score as a useful guide to two specific things, not a verdict on your singing. Your ears are still the best judge of whether the reversed-back attempt sounds like the song.

How to use the score well

• Watch the trend, not one number. Several attempts on the same line tell you more than one.
• Fix timing first. It is usually the quickest gain. Slow down and keep the pace even.
• Then fix the notes. Use the 0.5x playback to hear each pitch clearly.
• Pick the right difficulty. If you are stuck under 50 on a line, try an easier one from the songs page and come back later.

Summary

Part	Weight	What it checks	What it ignores
Melody	60%	Pitch frame by frame, partial credit within about 3 semitones	Octave, tone, voice quality
Timing	40%	Evenness of pace, closeness of total length	Words, pronunciation

The scoring page has the same information in brief. If you are new to the challenge, start with how to sing a song backwards, and if a score surprises you and you want help, the support page is the place to ask.

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