gameboy42690 finished the primary judge task for January 2015 Set 4. The notes can be seen below; this thread is being moved over to Completed Sets and the results/notes will be updated in the January/February 2015 thread.
[8/10] Azure {Coyote Kisses} (VisD)
10.133: As pointed out on the public thread by almost everyone, quads are quite exaggerated in this file. The music really only suggests a triple at most in any one part of the song. Here, the song is still rather soft so you may only want a jump for this first note.
22.945: The first syllable of "embrace" actually falls on a 32nd, not an 8th. I imagine you stepped an 8th instead because it made the file slightly easier, but seeing as you do use 32nds elsewhere in the file it doesn't really make sense to fudge the vocals like this.
- There may be a few other instances of notes not quite syncing up to the vocals perfectly, but in most cases what you stepped is close enough.
60.601, 70.601, etc.: Missing 16th going to the bass kick. Seems intentional but it feels a bit weird not being stepped.
80.132: The color note theory during the solo seems to have been a “love it or hate it” situation with the public. Personally I really like the idea behind it! But I'm having a really hard time figuring out where the cyan notes fit into all of this. Red is the flute, blue is the guitar, cyan is....? If it's to indicate the flute and the guitar playing at the same time, you already used red and blue at the same time at 86.062 and a few other points to indicate this. Including cyan just makes things confusing.
89.814: Missed a guitar note.
128.881: Should only be a jump, not a triple.
130.131: Going back to the point of excessive quads, this quad should definitely also be toned down.
This is charted really nicely overall! My main gripe really is the quads, but everything else feels really good.
[6/10] Garakuta Doll Play {t+pazolite} (Destroy2777)
3.056: PR during the intro could use some work. Half the time you got it right, the other half it's not really there. These first few steps, for example, could be "3 1 2 3" instead of "1 2 1 2".
7.041, 7.978, etc.: There's a drum being played here that could be stepped as well.
10.556: Again, there's a drum that could be stepped but isn't, which leads to this part of the song feeling a bit empty.
19.345: Missing note going to the vocal sample.
20.869: Vocal sample could be layered in as a jump.
22.920: Same here.
24.033: Missing jumps going to the bass.
26.845: Missing note going to the vocal sample.
29.541: Missing jump.
31.533: Missing jumps going to the bass.
- I see a lot of this sort of thing throughout the file. Underlayering a file is acceptable when the file is meant to be easy, but there's plenty of moments in this file that aren't easy at all. So in this case, underlayering this file makes the file underwhelming. I'm not going to name every instance of a missing note or a note that should have been a jump, because it's pretty much the entire file. I will say that, all things considered, there's a definite structure to the file and it's clear you gave it your best effort.
76.650: These 32nd gallops were a bit awkward to hit.
78.056: Now see, THIS is the kind of pitch relevancy I was expecting in the intro. Good job!
107.412: Not sure what these isolated 16ths/64ths are for. These should have been quarter notes. The last 16th/64th are a pair of ghost notes.
108.056: Going back to what HeZe said in his review on the public thread, this song makes the player expect something brutal to come at the end. The climax of the song should be where it gets brutal... and it doesn't happen. I mean, for what you've stepped it's stepped accurately, but once again it suffers from being very underlayered. It's more of an anti-climax than anything.
This is a very good start, but I don’t think it’s quite there yet. You’ve got an interesting structure but there’s some big holes that should be filled in.
[2/10] Might Like You Better {Vaski} (doggies4life04)
A few notes for when you submit your files to FFR:
Please remember to tag your simfiles correctly. The correct title is just “Might Like You Better (Vaski Remix)”. The correct artist is Amanda Blank; even though it’s Vaski’s remix, the original artist is still given credit. #SUBTITLE and #TITLETRANSLIT should be left blank.
.png's aren't used in FFR. You don’t need to include them in your submissions.
And finally, don't use Beginner when you chart your song. Your stepchart should be on either Light, Standard, Heavy or Challenge.
Moving on to the review itself...
2.571: This file typically makes no effort to utilize pitch relevancy, which means stepping low notes to the left and high notes to the right. It kinda just does whatever. For the first eight notes for example, something like "1-3 1-4, 1-4 1-3" would work better than what you have now.
5.143: Layering is also really random in this file. These next few jumps don't go to anything. The music is playing the exact same thing as 2.571 (minus the vocals), so ideally the steps should reflect that. Suddenly adding in jumps is very confusing.
- A very simple but effective approach to layering this song would be to step jumps whenever you hear a drum being played, and single notes all other times. You may decide later there's other sounds you want to layer with jumps as well, but for now this would make for a good starting point.
9.000: Another recurring problem is that you never really settle on what sound it is that you're stepping. Here you suddenly shift to stepping the vocals and you ignore the background music. There's a lot of this bouncing back and forth between stepping one thing or another. It's very inconsistent and doesn't make for a fun experience.
23.571: Stepping 8th jacks going to the wub would have been really nice.
34.714: 16th minijack doesn't really fit the vocals here. There's a few times where a jack could work such as 42.429, but on the other hand it would lead to a spike in difficulty, so I wouldn't actually step a jack there...
56.143: ...Speaking of which. Actually, the jack should have started on the 4th note, not the 16th. But as I said before, jacks are a difficulty spike considering the relatively lower difficulty of the rest of the file, and I would avoid using them here.
57.857: I don't hear 12ths here.
59.857: This 12th is also a ghost note.
60.000: But now there's actually a stream of 12th wubs being played here, which are completely ignored. Very very strange.
73.714: And yet this stream of 12th wubs was stepped. See what I mean about inconsistent stepping? If you step a sound once, you should usually step it every time.
The rest of the file is more of the same kinds of problems. There's no clear structure to the file at all. Needs significant work before this can be considered for FFR.
[5/10] Someone Anyone {Anberlin} (HeZe)
5.549: 8th minijacks could be redone to fit the synth better. The synth does a sort of "duh, duh, duh-duh, duh, duh, duh-duh-duh-duh-duh" rhythm, so the start of each minijack should correspond to each note that's played in that rhythm (I can provide a screenshot of how this would look if that’s easier for you, just send me a PM). You actually follow that rhythm exactly once you start layering the jumps, so I'm confused why the intro doesn't follow it that well.
10.839 & 11.192: The guitar is playing the same note here as it was at 10.487, so both jumps should be the same.
11.368: The second jump is going to a higher note than the first, so the second jump should be changed to reflect that.
11.721, 12.074, 12.427: Also the same exact note as 10.487.
- The same rhythm repeats itself a few more times every two measures with little variance. While you shouldn't necessarily copy & paste the exact same thing, the positioning of the jumps should stay uniform.
14.366: An one-handed anchor like this is pretty rude. That’s not to say you should never step an anchor like this, but it did feel out of place in this particular file.
24.250, 27.073, etc.: Break up the 8th jack here to accent the guitar riff. This would also be good to not have so many 4-note 8th jacks in a row.
33.604: These 8th jumps seem like they're just thrown in because the music changed a bit, but it doesn't actually go to anything.
44.368: A jump on every 4th note instead of every 8th note (only accenting the snare with jumps) would work better here.
47.189: Jump usage during the chorus doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sometimes it's very clearly going to the vocals (which is a little unusual considering you haven't been stepping the vocals at all up to this point, although I personally don't mind the switch), and then other times it kinda just does its own thing, whether it's spamming jumps or that jump-jump-single-single pattern you do a bit later.
69.778: Missing jump going to the snare.
71.190: Repeat of the intro. Same notes apply. There’s some extra jumps here that don’t go to anything.
83.013: Same issue as 33.604, although this time it bothers me even more since musically it's the same thing as 21.777, not 33.604.
93.778: Repeat of 33.604, so why the sudden switch up in layering? Instead of the jumps landing on the snare, they land on the bass kick.
104.808: Ghost 16th note.
106.484: PR is completely backwards. Similar to 44.368, there should only be jumps to accent the bass kick and the snare.
156.603: This quad doesn't fit at all.
164.721 & 166.132: Missing notes going to the vocals.
184.839: Things got strangely empty here. You should have continued stepping the guitar too instead of suddenly only stepping the vocals.
190.486: The ending could be more expressive if you only stepped jumps where the guitar and drum played at the same time, instead of making every guitar note a jump.
201.515: Missed some 16ths at the very end of the song. The last triple should only be a jump at most and might even work as a single.
At least two people on the public thread described this file as being "anchor after anchor after anchor". That's a pretty accurate description of this file. The repetitiveness of the file makes playing it a chore. It needs more variety in order to stand out. It may also help to cut the song to a more manageable length. Three and a half minutes is an awfully long time to be hitting nonstop anchors. Cutting the second verse out entirely would probably be the best way to cut the song; you really don't gain anything new from stepping it.
[4/10] {The Traveller} {Cornandbeans} (HeZe)
OFFSET CHANGED To -3.075
3.076: Pitch relevancy is pretty much absent during the intro... and pretty much everywhere else in the file, too.
13.917: Starting here, the synth is playing 16ths that you could have stepped to add some much needed variety into this file.
24.758-46.441: On a technical level, there's not necessarily anything wrong with what you stepped. The 16ths in the background could have been included, the loud handclap could have been stepped as triples, but technically what you did isn't wrong. Unfortunately, it's downright boring. It's just an 8th jumpstream that goes on for what feels like an eternity.
47.796-69.478: Same sort of issue here; these alternating jumps get old VERY fast, and it goes on for over 20 seconds. Again, it feels like an eternity.
69.478: Missing jump.
91.160: Lack of layering during the slowdown feels pretty weird after coming out of a 16th jumpstream.
98.872 & 102.020: Missing 16th.
139.004: Random mini-jack doesn't really make sense.
165.691: Missing jump.
177.757: Oh dear, it's those neverending jumpgluts again.
Ultimately I think the biggest problem here is the song itself. It's just way too repetitive and doesn't offer much for unique steps. No disrespect meant to cornandbeans, it's just not a very steppable song and you’re going to have a very difficult time coming up with something fun and engaging.