Thank you for the kind words, I put a lot of effort into the sound design and music!
You're on point with conveyance of the mechanics, should've had other people playtest it before submission but it was done near last hours of the jam. I'll definitely brush up the tutorial a bit and try to make it easier to understand and less of an infodump after the voting.
On the meter emptying, it's because you pressed Q too far off beat. There's a Metronome up top, and if you pressed it too far out of the middle bit, it resets the bar. Maybe it was too punishing and I didn't catch it, I was trying to mimic the feeling of losing your combo streak in a rhythm game. Also, I could've made the feedback more poignant with texts saying PERFECT or MISS to compliment the SFX, that's another great point you brought up about visual cues.
Anyways, thanks again for the encouragement and feedback, I really appreciate it :)