my thoughts:
Pink Cloud (feat. Max Collins)
- song: What a bright, fun introduction to the tournament with a slow but upbeat pop song.
- chart: Certainly harder than past tournaments, especially with the addition of hands and some drum triplets. Lunar Landing was the first song for D1 in a past tournament and it's nothing in difficulty compared to this.
Insignia
- song: I'm not a fan of trap music...just feels like a buildup that leads to a deflated section in terms of energy. The last part of the song is nice and bouncy though.
- chart: Probably harder than past tournaments as well, but I felt the difficulty was appropriate. Not much else to say; file is stepped well.
Follow You (feat. Danyka Nadeau) (Rhythmics Remix)
- song: Great high-energy song in my opinion. I like this better than the original which is a house song.
- chart: This is a fast song, and it has some dense layering that definitely makes this one harder than past D3 starter songs. I watched Trumpet play this file endlessly on his Twitch streams. Song also BEGS for a harder difficulty.
Red Sphere, Blue Sphere
- song: Cool Sonic 3 remix with a nice beat that I could dance to!
- chart: The first half of the file is pretty typical Silvuh material, with very conservative layering. But then the second half surprises me with denser layering and jumpjacks in streams that I don't usually see from him. What really took me off guard though were the two 32nd trills near the end!
Funny Function
- song: I haven't heard happy hardcore from t+pazolite in quite a long time, so this is a nice change from the usual hardcore or j-core from t+paz.
- chart: Tricky file but stepped well and I love it. I almost sightread AAAed this but something towards the very end tripped me up. I'm a sucker for minijacks though.
Le carnaval des animaux, Movement no. 14 ”Finale”
- song: Pretty lively classical song from the Romantic era of the mid 1800s. What a good one to step.
- chart: Well-stepped; no one part is super difficult, but for some reason I have difficulty piecing everything together for a AAA. The 24th trills are, in my opinion, hardly an issue. I think the scarier parts are actually the 8th jack section 2/3rds through the song, because you can easily get a boo from the layering of hands and jumps. Oh, and that down arrow 8th jacks towards the end is troll, even though I have yet to mess up on that spot.
oppIrish (GYPSYCOREremix)
- song: Sounds like someone bastardized traditional Romanian folk music into breakcore. Kinda funny to hear, but not a fan of the song, including the original oppIrish song. Bird tweets at the end of the song = what
- Actually stepped pretty well, with exception to the transitioning of the [14][23] jumptrill with the 32nds. Pretty fun, but at this BPM and length of song, really draining. My fingers feel like death after playing this.