[M0nkeyz]

I think there needs to be quite a bit of overlap between ''additive-oriented'' stepping and "aurally-oriented" stepping for an additive approach to work.

What I've called people out for when judging their files is them combining sounds that don't play a prominent role in the music and creating artificial hands and jumps that way. For example combining a closed hi-hat and a bass note to create a jump (two sounds that tend to fall into the background when there's alot of other stuff going on).

The way I view songs in relation to stepping is that they're a choreography of musical instruments that move in and out of prominence and make room for eachother. Additive layering makes sense for a song in which the elements stay the same, but in a dynamic song where there is a constant ''ebb-and-flow'' in how the instruments interact with eachother the chart becomes way too convoluted with a strict additive layering scheme.

I disagree that all layering styles are equal, what if someone decides to take a ''subtractive or inverse'' approach where they start with 4 notes for basic sounds, but remove a note for every other sound that comes in. It makes logical sense and there's some clear thought behind it, but does it feel accurate to the music? No.

Ofcourse I'm being a bit ''Tongue-in-cheek'' with my example above, but it examplifies why I think the intensity of the music is important. additive layering naturally follows the intensity of the music, but it needs to be done carefully and it needs to consider more prominent elements of the song over others, because it's very easy to overlayer your chart otherwise.