[Wiosna]

No but seriously, this implied idea of "dumps" being this exhibition of random notes farted all over the place is massively disrespectful. Even dumps that are often taken seriously by players had some form of structure and musical relevance in it, as tenuous as it can appear to charters who are much more acclimated to the idea of "placing notes to the start of peaks". This idea of dumps being a dumpster fire is heavily misguided and it annoys me to no end that this is still being brought up in god's year 2022.

And it has been at least 12 years since then (20 if you want to be generous). With the general communal acceptance in both Etterna/StepMania and osu!mania that dump charting and more literal charting are not separate islands, but that dump charting is an extension of literal charting, and the increased prominence of charters who chart both literal charts and dump charts (Tim/Valedict, DourGent/Sanctuary, Ptet, Windoze, Zeta, Celebellian, Monheim/Civilization, Vortex, hana, etc.), many dump charts have become much less freeform and loose in structure and have become much tighter and rigorous in structure. Not all dumps are like this, but the modern Etterna/osu!mania dump worth its salt has at least some form of visible structure. You might disagree with the structure (and I definitely do for most), but they are valid charting all the same. So why is this idea that dumps are giant blobs of amorphous notes still around when this idea has been curbed at least seven years ago?

And even the dump batch I think isn't going to accept all types of dumps -- improvisational ones (where the chart provides a secondary voice to the music rather than following the music proper) are getting shafted here. I think that the idea of valuing consistency above all else and that a section has to be represented the same way throughout the chart to be backwards as well. We're not computers processing objective characteristics of music; we are heavily influenced by the sections that come before and after them. We also tend to make patterns or point out specific things in music that we want to emphasise that might not be prominent in a spectogram. It can also be in good taste for charters to willingly grab the attention of the player by focusing on specific elements in the song that they might not necessarily focus on otherwise. This is less of an indictment on the head judges working on the dump batch, but more of a disparagement of maximal musical consistency as a positive, which is what klimt is espousing as "high quality" in this discussion -- because that's what is being primarily judged in FFR judging today.

Yes, dump charts have a profoundly different feel from literal charts. Each individual note and chord will feel notably weaker than literal charts, because most notes in literal charts go to the attack of each sound -- they are sharp and pronounced. Dumps do not have this correlation. But players don't seem to mind this anywhere as much as people who are against dumps believe that they do. They aren't necessarily looking for a literal transcription of sound to chart (otherwise charts that go to quiet 32nd arpeggios would get praised from end to end, but charting quiet sounds to bolster difficulty has been eschewed by many charters and often times many players too) -- they're typically looking for a chart that is holistically apposite to the music at hand. Dumps accomplish that goal well.