[DossarLX ODI]

bmah finished the primary judge task for July/August 2015 Set 1. The notes can be seen below; this thread is being moved over to Completed Sets and the results/notes will be updated in the July/August 2015 thread.

[7.5*/10] Crystalline White {IX} (DarkZtar)
- 18.42s: misplaced 16th (should be prior to following 4th jump)
- 19.84s: extraneous 8th
- 20.16s: missing 16th as per your previous pattern
- 22.12s: a matter of preference, but to me this is a missing 16th. I usually go by completing patterns at the end of a measure/section when I do some sort of transitioning.
- 29.40s,43.31s: preference, but I think this is pretty clear to be an 8th jump with the melody and drum
- 30.05s: considering this is a trance song, might I suggest adding an arrow to all 4th drums for the second half of this repetitive section? Would be a good gradual increase in challenge for a novice player. This would pretty much mean only a few more jumps.
- 43.53s: excellent PR overall. If you want to improve it slightly, change the right arrow at 44.84s to an up.
- 84.18s: while I love this minitrill, it -might- be slightly out of place with the overall difficulty of the file. Maybe change the pattern. Either way, I leave this up to you.
- 84.84-85.16s: same as above, but I even more strongly recommend changing a four-arrow jack than a trill.
- 113.10s: some people might consider the colored arrows here to be overboard. I'm currently on the fence with this. It's quite a lot of arrows, but at the same time, the melody is pretty obvious and takes long breaks in between.
- 140.49s: not an eight-arrow 32nd roll...listen again at a slower rate.
- Summary: Great file with lovely structure, but with a few easily-fixable but glaring errors. I highly suggest fixing the stuff at the beginning with a few misinterpreted patterns, and the last 32nd pattern at the very end - those are erroneous. The trill and the jack I'll leave up to you, though I'd recommend changing the jacks for a file that is overall fairly tame in difficulty.

[0.5/10] my addiction {goreshit} (HeZe)
- props for proper syncing at least
- 5.63s,6.84s,etc.: with exception of the first occasion (where the sound clip sorta echoes), I'd consider these areas to be ghost arrows. Remove them.
- 16.13s: why a jump here? Why not just a single 8th?
- 17.62,22.49s,27.36-27.44s,etc.: ghost 32nds; don't make things harder than they need to be.
- 22.99-23.60s,etc.: at 197 BPM, jump jacks of three or more sets in a row is painful and you shouldn't do it, especially if it all ends in a quad.
- 37.91-38.21s,etc.: these patterns are even worse at this speed, nevermind same-jump jacking. In fact, most of these sounds only warrant a single arrow, not jumps. Stepping jumps to heavily emphasized sounds, regardless of how many sounds actually exist, can lead to a contrived, artificially-inclined difficulty.
- 43.09-52.83s,etc.: is this a joke? If not, then I apologize and should point out that most of these sounds should be single arrows as opposed to a mixture of jumptrilling and jumpjacking. If you did step this knowingly expecting what someone would probably think, then please...
- 52.83-62.58s,etc.: but even the non-jacky sections are still overstepped. Perhaps the mp3 is just overly loud and grating, but this is an example of where jumps should not necessarily be equated to density of stepping.
- 91.82s: more overstepping + unforgiving jumpjacks,etc. Again, be much lighter on the stepping.
- subsequent sections include 32nd trills at 197 BPM, hands layered in for simple bass drums, more jumpjacks, speedups, and more.
- 135.37-139.03s: no way...
- 140.25s: why is this entire section filled with 16ths? What do they follow?
- Summary: Don't get me wrong - this song is completely steppable. However, I can't help but question the intentions of submitting this file as it currently stands.

[8.5/10] Salieri's Laughter {Leaf XCeed} (DarkZtar)
- 15.54s: considering the song's energy, this file is definitely not 125 BPM. It is twice that fast, so I recommend doubling up the BPM.
- 38.70s,40.62s,42.54s,etc.: the beat is constant without a break. Maybe breaks in the stepping are structurally interesting, but it doesn't feel right, so fill in the holes. The guitar strumming seems to be the only aspect that is non-continuous, but the beat goes on. I won't demand you to change this however, because the continuous beats go on for a very long time and so I can see some merits in giving some breaks to the stepping.
edit: the more I play this file, the more I think you can just dismiss what I said. Perhaps fill in some holes, but leave some open.
- 93.62s: ignore this 12th, not really worth acknowledging this guitar twang
- 95.22s: missing jump to cymbal crash (it's possible I may have glossed over a few more of these, so please double check).
- 98.10s: omit this 4th jump; it serves no purpose.
- 110.58s: patterns are PR, but plays rather strange. I recommend changing the patterning a bit, especially the area where 321 repeats twice (111.06-111.30s).
- 112.14s,112.62s,113.34s: since this part of the song has a dominant solo, I'd avoid placing these 16ths for purposes of only being a filler. They distract from the main melody.
- 114.90s: the 3434 24ths are somewhat awkward to expect.
- 169.14s: triple to the cymbal.
- 184.50-185.94s: this section is not too heavily layered, so no need to skimp out on layering the drums just because a simple running melody is playing here.
- 186.30s: missed 32nd.
- 197.34s: missed 32nd jump.
- 229.74s: really smooth 32nds until you get to this triple up arrow anchor pattern here. Maybe change it? Up to you.
- 251.22s,278.58s: hand to cymbal (and again, I may have missed a few other occasions).
- It would be great if you can cut this song, because it's almost 5 minutes long with a lot of repetition (both musically and step-wise).
- Summary: In some ways, this file reminds me of Holy Orders (which annoyingly enough also had a halved BPM that did not represent the speed of this song). It is very well-polished and plays well but I'd be lying if I said I didn't yawn at its length. I'll leave that up to you but overall, great job.

[1/10] Seven {DJ Sharpnel} (DarkZtar)
- 9.98-14.02s: the colored arrows to the voice samples are really messy, even moreso when this occurs again later on in the song layered with other instruments (85.82s). If the song is repetitive and boring, I can see why it'd be more interesting to acknowledge the voice sampling, but careful consideration should be used in terms of the amount and placement of such arrows. In this case, I find them more confusing than interesting, so I'd ignore them altogether.
- 18.82-19.91s,48.67-49.75s,etc.: even when you interpret the 48th rolls as 24th jumptrilling, consider both the transitions and the BPM of the song. This song is 193 BPM and the entry point to the first set of 48th rolls is a 2323 32nd minitrill which is essentially [23][23] jacks, and that doesn't work at all. Same goes for the following 2323 32nds which then leads to [12][12] jacks (this pattern is mirrored or slightly varied in other cases). These very high difficulty spikes can be feasible if the patterns and transitioning were better.
- 25.18-44.78s: Clown vomit?? This sure is a colorful section, but it's also a very obvious example of an artificial difficulty spike. Each "roll" is pretty much worth one arrow. This reminds me somewhat of the 32nd gallops in DevouR, but much more forced.
- 63.59-64.68s: a five-arrow 32nd trill at this BPM is just awful. And the 64th rolls at this BPM? I wouldn't try that either, because jumptrilling would still be a quad jack of [1234][1234], which is also really unsavory.
- 113.64s: [14][23] 32nd jumptrilling at 193 BPM? No way...
- 128.41s: oh my lord...2413 pattern in 64ths. Definitely a no-no.
- Summary: Not feasible.