Thanks for your feedback!
About starting position: the game concept is that each level would have more than one valid solution; by choosing different starting positions, the required rhythm would be different, so each player could get a different melody in their playthrough. Therefore, I chose not to limit the starting position, but I guess that backfired horribly by making the game way too difficult. The hints were added to remedy the issue but they weren't quite effective. Will definitely try to balance the puzzles more for the post-jam version.