How to get better at FFR

[naty123502]

ive tried a thousand times to use to hands while playing to get faster but i never can. idkk why. so i just one but my fingers can only go so fast.. any advice?

[PrawnSkunk]

Originally Posted by naty123502

ive tried a thousand times to use to hands while playing to get faster but i never can. idkk why. so i just one but my fingers can only go so fast.. any advice?

It's an obnoxious pattern that takes a while to develop the proper muscle memory for. Like learning jumpstream or other challenging patterns, you want to select "training" songs to immerse yourself in every time you sit down to play. My advice for becoming comfortable with hands is to play Wind Waker Unplugged until your ears bleed. Gradually over time you will come to peace with hands. Good luck!

[Mourningfall]

18 pages later, and it can still be summed up in 8 letters. Practice.

[bmah]

@PrawnSkunk: I believe (through a few typos) that the user is asking about playing faster/more complicated charts with two hands as opposed to one.

Originally Posted by naty123502

ive tried a thousand times to use to hands while playing to get faster but i never can. idkk why. so i just one but my fingers can only go so fast.. any advice?

So you're trying to become accustomed to playing two-handed? I suppose it starts with familiarizing yourself with the key setup you decide to use (e.g. ASKL). Have yourself become comfortable at partitioning the four arrow columns into two separate parts: left-hand columns (left and up arrows) and right-hand columns (down and right arrows).

Now practice songs to familiarize yourself with the various arrow patterns you may encounter. Some patterns will be biased to one of your hands (e.g. left-down-left-down is a left hand-biased pattern). Others will require you to use both hands in cooperation (e.g. left-down-up-right is a pattern that will transition from your left hand to your right).

At this point, it's just a matter of familiarizing yourself with arrow patterns to improve your hand-eye coordination. When you feel like you know how to approach most types of patterns without much thought, then you can focus on improving your finger speed. In other words, know what you're playing before focusing on speed!

[DarkAngelKanna]

Originally Posted by Mourningfall

18 pages later, and it can still be summed up in 8 letters. Practice.

The good sir Squirtle is right. I used to SUCK. I've been on this site for 5 years and I've only just barely hit 300 FC. I use the DF JK spread with 1.5X speed and it works for me. I used to hate double notes, triples even moreso, but I've learned the rhythms and techniques (ie. Strategic Button mashing WTF areas) until I became a skilled player! I still have a long path to go. Good luck <3

[Doug31]

Originally Posted by Mourningfall

18 pages later, and it can still be summed up in 8 letters. Practice.

Ugh, the people need to come up with better suggestions as to how to get better. Here are some:

1. Consider different ways of hitting the notes. As in, slow stairs like in crowdpleaser consider hitting them as short fast, disconnected taps. But in patterns such as
1100
0011
1100
0011
1100
Consider pounding them really hard. It's what works well for me, but maybe not what everyone does.

2. Consider how you attempt to read the notes and what you should focus on. On rolls, you may want to just follow the note that starts each roll and try to just do a roll at the right speed such that it ends at the right time for the next role to start. For running men, consider just paying attention mostly to the one repeated note, and keep hitting it at the right speed, and then just figure each other note is about halfway between one of those taps, and barely look at the rest.

3. Consider simplifying patterns. When you see a
0001
0010
0100
1000
0001
0010
0100
1000
0011
And you can't roll fast enough, most players find they can jump faster than they can roll or trill, so hitting it as though it were
0011
0000
1100
0000
0011
0000
1100
0000
0011
Could end up getting you a better result than trying to hit every arrow just where it is. If you're good at searching for them you may be able to find tons of cases where you want to do things like this.

[Charu]

I've learned that to maintain some stamina and speed, don't hit the keys as hard and tap them lightly. Seems crazy, but it's what worked for me, doho.

[Fission]

Originally Posted by Doug31

And you can't roll fast enough, most players find they can jump faster than they can roll or trill, so hitting it as though it were
0011
0000
1100
0000
0011
0000
1100
0000
0011
Could end up getting you a better result than trying to hit every arrow just where it is. If you're good at searching for them you may be able to find tons of cases where you want to do things like this.

to be honest, unless you are playing in a tourney or you are whoring for AAAs, you shouldn't be trying to cheat patterns at all. it will make you a much stronger player overall if you try to hit every pattern as it is without abusing FFR's frame timing.

this is what makes somebody like stian have such good PA on really hard files compared to most other players; he hits the patterns exactly how they are.

[James May]

Originally Posted by Mourningfall

18 pages later, and it can still be summed up in 8 letters. Practice.

this

[Fission]

it really isn't that simple though. there is heuristics that can be used to increase your rate of improvement. i really don't want to get into it since this will turn into a really long winded post, but the information is out there.

[0]

spend $100 on a keyboard

[LLaMaSaUceYup]

Practise > Practice

Originally Posted by 0

spend $100 on a keyboard

Laughed at this. Did it back in the day on a tarantula & I ended up totally glitch/destroying it with vibra SMtrax only weeks after.

[Fission]

[FFR_masterj]

hi, i hope some1 reads this and responds eventually. Ive been playing this off and on since like 2005 and have just decided to become serious at it. When i first started i was doing 1 handed on the arrow keys like any1 new to this kind of game would do. Eventually when i got decent at the game i learned that i HAD to use 2 hands in order to do the harder songs. So i used 2 hands on the arrow keys and then learned that i should switch my controls to the keyboard so its easier to hit the keys. I didnt learn about this spread style until i had already developed my own style which is S,D,I,K. It's kind of like spread except its in the shape of the arrow keys. It goes like...

Left Middle finger(Left): S
Left Index finger(Down): D
Right Middle finger(Up): I
Right Index finger(Right): K

Now ive browsed through the forums for about an hour now and havent seen any1 use this type of style and im wondering if i will be able to be as good as FCing a song like Red Wings Over Baron with this method. The spread style is very awkward to me but im not terrible at it, its just a pain to get used to and ive already trained my right hand in the position that i use. Will i have to learn spread style if i ever hope to become the best at this game? Currently the best I do using my method is FCing CIA Rave.

Tl,Dr - Wondering if my style can compete with the all famous spread style. Thank you for reading and I hope that any vets can give me advice

[L.B.D.D]

i use WEUI

[HalfStep]

I don't even understand how SDIK is in the shape of arrow keys, that's such a weird setup lol.
Anyway, I'm sure you can get decent enough with a setup like that, but to reach higher levels of speed, a spread setup is the most optimal and gives you the most control.

[FFR_masterj]

Originally Posted by HalfStep

I don't even understand how SDIK is in the shape of arrow keys, that's such a weird setup lol.
Anyway, I'm sure you can get decent enough with a setup like that, but to reach higher levels of speed, a spread setup is the most optimal and gives you the most control.

lol if u were to put IK on top of SD they are kinda in shape of arrow keys but thanks for the reply. I guess if spread is really the only BEST way then i will get used to it, but i will miss my way so much =[

[L.B.D.D]

i used to play QW86 as well to mimic the arrow key shapes (3 bot 1 top) but then it'd make me slip up a lot so i changed to linear WEUI

[Patrik333]

I feel like I'm reaching my skill limit already, and I'm only playing at about 35-55 difficulty. Can anyone give any tips?

I use a spread setup - SD KL, although I used to play AS, Down, Right but that shouldn't matter because I'm accustomed to SDKL now.

One of the big problems I have is that my fingers simply don't go fast enough - as an extreme example, I tried "Flight of the Bumblebee" and even though most of the sequences were simple enough that my brain could keep up, I just couldn't mash the keys fast enough to keep up with the arrows.

In most songs at the moment, this isn't such an issue because they're not so fast, but any amount of conscious effort I have to put into pressing the notes fast enough is wasted brain-power that could be spent concentrating on getting the sequences right.

The other issue I have is that there is just such a large selection of songs, I'm kind of overwhelmed. I want to try them all, but that means I never get very good at each individual song. IMO, I have performed a song well enough when I've hit about 90% of the notes, regardless of perfect, good, or average, but since there's such a large selection, I'm getting bored of one song before I've even hit 60% of the notes...

So, if I was going to focus on a song to learn, should I pick one that is in the lower or upper end of my difficulty range? If it's too low, I learn it quickly but I don't feel as though I'm improving. If it's too high, I might just get daunted and put off... Should I try to learn really hard songs by using the rate modifier, even though it won't give me score/credits if I slow the song down?

That's pretty much the core of my problem - as long as I can keep recognizing that I'm getting better, I'm motivated to keep getting better. But if I start feeling like I'm just as good at the songs as I was a few weeks ago, it's a bit demotivating.

[Kibblre]

Your brain/muscles get used to playing faster songs if you keep practicing. Just keep trying to play harder songs and not focus on replaying the songs you're already good at.