A ton of terms to define charting mentalities

[Arch0wl]

There are a lot of mentalities in discussing charts but 'objective'/'subjective' doesn't define every view. Here are some terms that can navigate charting views more easily:

Rhythmic objectivism is the perspective the majority of chartmakers have, so by definition you probably have this perspective. It's the idea that your rhythms should be exactly as they are in the song, or match the song as closely as possible.

Rhythmic subjectivism is the perspective that you are allowed to have notes in your file that don't exactly match the song's notes; this doesn't harm the quality of the file.

Holism (in charting) is the perspective that your file's ups/downs should follow the song's ups/downs as a whole. You should keep in mind the song's intensity and how your file is varying from, or matching that intensity.

Objective holism is the perspective that you should try to capture these ups/downs, but only with minimal variation from the notes that are actually in the song. This is a rhythmically subjective position, but only kind of.

Subjective holism is the perspective that you're not limited by the notes that are actually in the song in capturing the ups/downs of the song. This allows for a great deal of rhythmic subjectivity.

Rhythmic nihilism is a different mentality some people have where neither the ups/downs nor the exact rhythms matter.

Physicalism (in charting) is the perspective where the chart prioritizes the physical movements of the player in relation to, or independent of, the song. This may be in line with, or opposed to, any of the above terms. The Legend of Max (the DDR chart) is good example of this.

Quantizing is matching your rhythms to the nearest rhythm on a continuum of whatever quantity you've set (16ths/24ths/32nds) -- essentially as if you had used the "quantize" feature on Stepmania. This term already exists, but I've listed it here because I'm gonna elaborate on some other views.

a scenario:

Say you have a song which has an electronic rhythm of (mostly) 16ths. You've mapped this out and you're stepping vocals to it. A great deal of the vocals will fall on the 16ths, but some won't.

For the ones that won't, you're going to create an awkward flam/gallop/grace note thing where the rhythms are way more intense than the song; the most memorable moment of the file may be an insignificant part of the verse where the rapper/vocalist gets ther vocals really wrong and creates a burst of awkward rhythms.

So instead, you quantize it -- you match the closest note on whatever continuum you're using. Since the song is mostly 16ths and the rapper/vocalist is *trying* to rap in 16ths, you'd just shift the 32nds to 16ths. The player won't notice much difference, because they're already tapping to 16ths anyway. Their mind will be attuned to the electronic 16ths.

Classifying this person as 'subjective' wouldn't do it because there's a lot of disagreement that could come about how subjective you're going to make it. Saying they're using 'subjective' charting mentalities is right, to a degree -- but they're not inventing notes to capture the mood of the song, just slightly varying from it. I'd describe a chart like this as an objective holist one.

By contrast, a chart I made to this song has a gigantic 16th run in the climax of the song. There aren't actually 16ths in that part. But they're there because to do anything else would just not match the intensity of that climax, so that's a subjective holist chart.

I recognize that some of these terms come off as pretentious, but I don't know any better way to describe the different mentalities that people have for how you should match button presses to music. So there you go.

[Arch0wl]

oops. meant to put this in the general "Stepmania" forum.

[Wayward Vagabond]

objective holist omg whhy are you labeling me

[Arch0wl]

[icontrolyourworld]

Rhythmic subjectivism and Quantizing are mostly what i do i think xD

[Arch0wl]

thanks to whoever moved it

[Choofers]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

looks a lot like someone I went to church with

[stargroup100]

I feel like these terms and definitions could be good but the explanations are unclear/weak

also I'm not sure I would classify these as "perspectives"

[Arch0wl]

I suspect the point of unclarity was "ups/downs" by which I meant "mood"; if not, feel free to suggest other points of unclarity. I'm down for improving my definitions.

[moches]

it's always absolutely fascinating to try and boil this game down into a study. I don't have a lot to add but I'll ponder it and see if I can contribute anything.

[popsicle_3000]

from the OP, looks like this thread belongs in CT

[Arch0wl]

it's a tossup, for sure. the people who have thought the most about charts, cumulatively, will be in Stepmania; the people most willing to think about charts in this way will be in CT though.

[Ohaider]

Pretty fascinating

[Nick Skyline]

I think I may have something to contribute here...actually, I'll see if I can add on to what Arch0wl has already put.

DISCLAIMER: I may not know what I'm talking about.

I had to split this into 3 posts because it was way too long.

1/3

RO (Rhythmic Objectivism) - Only notes that perfectly match the song are allowed to be in the file. Nothing else counts, and if the sounds in the song are perfectly quantized then the arrows in the file should be quantized to the same amounts. A lot of simfile authors tend to share this viewpoint, although the meaning of "Objective" may differ from one simfile author to another. Usually, this is the way files are meant to be made and if your file doesn't live up to the (usually high) standards of whoever's putting the pack together then it gets rejected.

RS (Rhythmic Subjectivism) - Step the file however you want. This is how I recall files being made back in '05 when I wasn't around. You would make a file, there were no serious restrictions in play (the file just had to be enjoyable...maybe Index-friendly, although there were a few files that weren't, but they were still fun to play back then and some of them are still fun to play now) Note that not every arrow has to match the song millisecond for one-ninety-second.

H (Holism) - When listening to a song, you may notice that it has a "mood" to it, or "ups" and "downs", as Arch pointed out. And when the song calms down and/or the band starts playing slower, you could halve the BPM of the song for the time being. And when they start going full force again, you can return the BPM to where it was (A good idea is to select the region wherein the band plays softer or slower, hit Enter, then go to Tempo and select Compress x2). Sometimes the general speed and force or intensity of the song can influence how dense the chart is going to be. Allow me to bring out TV Tropes' "Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness" to demonstrate here.

The scale goes from 1 (Most pop music) to a possible 11 (Heaviest and most indiscernible form of Death Metal, as well as most Grindcore), with most of the rock music we step falling into the heavier half of the scale. Judging by the level of intensity of a song you would be charting, if you were using holism, I would assume that Level 1 would be underlayered like hell (unless you were stepping something ridiculously glitchy and Breakcore/like), and Level 11 would be the complete opposite. But listening to the songs in that video, how would I step "Demanufacture" by Fear Factory, for example (which is an 8 on this scale)? It's some fast-paced Industrial Metal. That means I may end up doing some layering, but with what instruments and to what extent?

VH (Reverse Holism) - Then again, the mood of the song doesn't have to match your chart's difficulty. There are some difficult files to some rather calm songs (Undiscovered Colors, right here on FFR), just as there are simple files to songs that would scale a 9 on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness (This file). There's a double bass pedal, or maybe a blast beat going at around 240 BPM and you don't feel like stepping it? That's perfectly fine. Want to step it on a different difficulty anyway? Perfectly acceptable.

OH (Objective Holism) - So, if you were going to step a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus pop song, after the first chorus was stepped you would copy and paste all the notes in the 8-16 bar section, starting from where the second chorus begins. And you would copy and paste that section into the third chorus, leaving little to no variation between each part. So you would only have to step three sections of the song, copy and paste, and make minor changes depending on whether or not the vocalist matches his words to whatever arrows you've laid down. Example of a chart like this would be WTFBrandon's Super Bass from FFRCP Winter 2011.

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

[Nick Skyline]

2/3

SH (Subjective Holism) - to spell out some completely random things (i.e. I'm playing a DnB file, and there are no notes for about 20-30 seconds while I see mines spell out "PSY X MOCHES 4 LIFE" and then we get back to the action). But in SH, you're not limited by what's in the song, and can make as many changes to each of the patterns when a certain part of a song repeats as you damn well please, or you could re-step it in a different manner. So you would then have to ask yourself, "What sequence of arrows can I put in that are going to help me capture the mood of this song?" All you would have to do is experiment with the sounds you're given and come up with an expressive chart for them. In Subjectivity, you don't have to match up the arrows perfectly, but rather just get them kind of close.

Then again, some people on here will say that there are some songs aren't just cut out to deserve the Stepmania treatment because it's been done to death by hundreds of simfile authors, no one has heard of it (the few that have may tell you about said song, and you can decide for yourself whether or not it'd make a good simfile), or because it's generally regarded by the public as a bad song (but would still make an interesting dump file IMO). Therefore just about everything that can be done, and shouldn't be done with the file have already been done. Want to step TTFAF at 141 BPM (more on this later)?

P (Physicalism) - The player's movement (assuming they're not using a bar) is prioritized over the actual rhythms of the song. The player would normally assume that they would have to ("Paranoia" from DDR 1st Mix as an example) spin in place when they see a 1342 or a 1243 when you can just move your legs back and forth in time with the arrows (Then again, that's how the game wants you to do it even though DDR does not and has never detected body movement).

OP (Objective Physicalism) - Since the majority of higher-level pad and index players are getting faster on their feet and are becoming able to hit streams of 200+ BPM, I suppose this is what would make a good pad file. Then again, the steps still need to be accurate...but most pad players, I think, don't like rainbows, so I would quantize then to the nearest 16th or 24th note (depends on the song). A common OP technique is, when there are a stream of 16th notes being heard, to step the 16ths and just ignore all else. Whazashmup, for example, has a 48-second long stream of 16th notes at 240 BPM. Despite this ridiculously long stream and the equally-fast-but-shorter ones surrounding it, it's still a good index/pad file.

SP (Subjective Physicalism) - Not much I can do for this one. It's basically the same thing as Objective Physicalism except that there are allowed to be a few notes that do not quite go to the song (Eggman's Quasar, for example...I guess that could be considered a pad file nowadays). But I think I can still provide an example.

"888" from DDR Universe 3 (Excuse the uploader. Video's tilted sideways, but you get the idea) is a rare example of a Konami-made SP chart. It's a 95 second boss piece from DJ TECHNORCH, making what I presume to be his DDR debut. Look at the Oni chart for this file: It goes to the Breakcore-influenced drum rhythms rather than the acid lead (which, I guess, would be taking the easy way) for the first 16 bars, then to the synth lead for 8 more bars, then back to the drums for the rest of the song. I was damn surprised to find that the entire file was stepped very accurately, save for a couple of seconds here and there, and I think it's unusually good for a Konami file (I seriously thought it was a chart that a fan had sent in, and I still don't know if that's true).

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

[Nick Skyline]

3/3

NP (Nihilistic Physicalism) - Think of an oldschool DDR chart from the late 90s or the early 2000s. How do you remember seeing the arrows coming up? You may see a sequence of two-note gallops, random jumps and freezes that don't seem to go to anything, random slowdowns and pauses for no reason other than to fuck up your score ("Chaos" from DDR SuperNOVA is filled with pauses, for example), the "main part" of the song that most people think should be focused on is swapped out for a weird crossover pattern...but to be fair to files like MAX 300 and Paranoia Survivor MAX, I thought they didn't ruin the feeling of the file at all some parts were accurately stepped. (There are several charts from DDR 1st Mix to DDR Extreme, and even several that still exist today that qualify as an NP chart.)

Q (Quantizing) - Putting all the notes of a segment of a song, or the entire chart to the nearest x of a measure (Usually 16th or 32nd). There was a time when this was extremely popular to do. Back in 2005 simfile authors would quantize the hell out of their files, but occasionally there was that one simfile author that put in rainbow notes every once in a while. It's basically what Arch0wl said.

Nowadays quantizing isn't that big of a deal. There are some simfile authors that quantize

RN (Rhythmic Nihilism) - This is a different mindset that some people who are just getting started with Stepmania have; it involves the belief that the ups and downs of the song do not matter to them and just instead step what they hear, as opposed what most other players would hear. IMO this is a bad mindset to have when making a file. Honestly, why would you step the vocals and only the vocals throughout the entire duration of the song when there's so much more going on with every other instrument (Going back to Sonic the Hedgehog songs, "His World" has a simple 16 measure guitar solo without vocals. Even if the BPM and syncing were spot-on, it would be really awkward to have all the notes in the chart go to the vocals and not have to hit anything during this solo.)? A good example of an RN chart would be that one Rogdor reviewed.

AN (Arrhythmic Nihilism) - Short Answer: Not even trying to make a decent file by many players' standards...not just those on FFR, but those on Stepmania.com and many other Stepmania-based gaming websites (ThirdStyle comes to mind) as well.

Long Answer: Not only do the ups/downs of the song not matter, not only do the rhythms of the song not matter, but the BPM and beat synchronization of the chart in relation to the song no longer matter with this mindset...which, in my and many others' opinion, is a terrible mindset to have when making a file. Some of the worst simfiles in history have a tendency to be this, as most people don't have the ability to figure out or even approximate the BPM of the song and if it was 188 BPM on the dot (Which this song is), then Arrythmic Nihilistic simfile authors would tend to step it at a BPM well out of the song's range, poorly sync the vocals (for example, the Sonic Heroes chart in SS Sonic Style goes at 150 BPM, which the uploader of that file points out). If the song (or audio clip if you prefer) has no discernible BPM, then Arrythmic Objectivism (or Arrythmic Subjectivism, if you want) would come into play here if you're still willing to step it accurately despite this (rare example of either AO or AS being Wayward Vagabond's "Classical Guitar Solo" from FFRCP2). I guess one technique for an AN chart is to put a random quad or quad hold that may or may not go to anything directly at the end of the file.

I don't know what you guys think, but for me, any and all AN charts have no purpose being showcased here (Seriously, Youtube "Stepmania (whatever song you'd like to put here)" and chances are you'll likely find either an RN chart or an AN chart).

So there are my thoughts on how people make files, and perhaps the one or two letter abbreviation can help us to determine the quality of the file. I can understand if you're going to put a long stream of 8th notes...someone might like that, but if you're not even going to try to match up the BPM or if you generally have no rhythm, then I believe that Stepmania note-charting is not for you.

AND THAT'S ALL I'VE GOT GO NUTS EVERYONE

[stargroup]

I just got around to reading this and what NS wrote is pretty darn nice and detailed

now the question is what to do with this lol

[Jousway]

forget about it and never talk about it again like every other thing in the history of stepman

[TC_Halogen]

Very nice post, Nick. I can definitely attest to a lot of your concepts being true being that I'm very active in both keyboard and pad charting -- your point of SP is very noteworthy, especially for songs that are in the PIU series. Many charts allow for a subjective take on how to do particular areas because of PIU's mechanic of freezes. Normal freezes can be counted as a perfect judgment if the player's foot is simply on the panel (minus the PIU Pro series), but freezes that have a tap immediately before it have to be stepped on (because the judgment would count for the initial step, from which the freeze mechanic triggers afterward). Sections with freezes every 8th note on the same step can be stepped on in a 4th note rhythm (see Love is a Danger Zone 2 Full CZ for an example).

In addition to this, charts like Phantom CZ and The People Didn't Know CZ have sections that put in streaming with very distinct, fun, and memorable patterns/rhythms that people enjoy. See these sections here:

Phantom CZ -- intense rhythms with pretty awesome turns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tndnqoapnbs#t=1m17s

The People Didn't Know CZ -- really fun, light turning:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zKpx__GQKk#t=1m29s

This can be really thoroughly examined in games that aren't directly keysounded.

[Snapps]

888 is dukamoks