I know in order to get better I need to practice practice practice, but...

[kof_zpt]

but what is your tip?

[basicdrummerman]

Practice.

[HBar]

I see you don't have any FCs or AAAs yet, so my recommendation would be to start with the very easiest songs at difficulty 1 to focus on the fundamentals and then work your way up. That's what I did when I came back to the game after a 13 year gap and wanted to start getting good at the game. Even though it felt kind of boring (the songs that felt the most fun then were in the 20s and 30s, although I couldn't get great scores on them), and sometimes frustrating (it took me more than 80 tries to get an AAA on Fall into Night, which was only difficulty 2), that's the approach that eventually took me from a completely casual player with zero AAAs to one with more than 1000 AAAs and 2000 FCs.

Have you tried playing around with your gameplay options to find the ones that work best for you? What keys are you using? Most players use a spread approach where the index and middle fingers of each hand are on separate keys on the keyboard, like the A, S, K, and L keys, or the ones I use are A, S, Num5, and Num6 (with the keycap swapped on the 5 so there isn't a pip on it).

Other important options to consider are the scroll speed (faster speeds can mean it's easier to hit notes accurately, but harder to react, most players keep it somewhere between 2 and 3.5), and which game UI visuals to include and how to arrange them. Here's how I set up my gameplay editor as an example, I like to keep it relatively simple but I still find the judge accuracy helpful. Yours doesn't have to look like this but you should think about which visuals are helpful to you and which are distractions.



Ergonomics is also essential, to avoid repetitive stress injuries and also to hit notes better. Develop good habits from the start, and it'll become even more important as you improve towards faster and faster songs. Make sure you have a setup that lets you keep your wrists completely straight, your hands shouldn't be tilted up or down or to either side. And your fingers should be in positions where they can press directly down on the keys, you don't want to be hitting them at an angle or with your fingertips bent. It can help to find something comfortable to rest your forearms on, so your hands stay elevated above the keyboard.

Aside from that, if you want more personalized advice, try saving replays of songs you're struggling with and we can take a look at how to improve them.

[Zyxel]

spend time trying to identify what you're weak points are and refine them

for example: if you are comfortable with lvl 15 stream files but struggle with the pattern recognition needed to hit lvl 15 jumps, try to familiarize yourself with those patterns to develop that muscle memory by intentionally practicing.

additionally, having the right settings that you're comfortable with is a game changer and I highly recommend tinkering with a few parameters to find what sits right with you the most. It could be things such as:
- noteskin
- scroll speed
- receptor size
- framerate
- keybinds

there are other options too, but these ones I would consider the most.

But at the end of the day, nothing will help you improve more than playing a wide variety of files-- and a lot of them at that. The simple act to "play more" is unironically the best advice to improve at the game, so try looking for songs you can comfortably play. In your case, I'd recommend stuff between difficulty levels 1-12. Try not to move up from there until you feel confident in being able to play that difficulty range without having to mash certain patterns and rack up a bunch of "Boos". That actually segues perfectly into my next and final point:

I highly encourage you to make a very strong and conscious effort not to mash through songs to make up for not having the necessary reading skills to play through higher difficulties than what is comfortable. Try to keep your "Boo" count as low as possible, and you'll begin to improve much quicker. hope this helps! o7

[SK8R43]

In order to get better you need to play every day, or at least not go a week without playing and expect to get better playing for an hour once a week. 2-3 hour sessions every day for awhile really helped me out.

[_choof]

you seem to be at the skill level where the only real answer to this is to play more often and play stuff that is actually at your skill level. there is nothing to gain by mashing 10s

[Lambdadelta]

Originally Posted by basicdrummerman

Practice.

I endorse this message as an endorsed Stepman.

[Omega Link46]

Focus on enjoying the game and having fun, and getting better will follow naturally

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by HBar

I see you don't have any FCs or AAAs yet, so my recommendation would be to start with the very easiest songs at difficulty 1 to focus on the fundamentals and then work your way up. That's what I did when I came back to the game after a 13 year gap and wanted to start getting good at the game. Even though it felt kind of boring (the songs that felt the most fun then were in the 20s and 30s, although I couldn't get great scores on them), and sometimes frustrating (it took me more than 80 tries to get an AAA on Fall into Night, which was only difficulty 2), that's the approach that eventually took me from a completely casual player with zero AAAs to one with more than 1000 AAAs and 2000 FCs.

Have you tried playing around with your gameplay options to find the ones that work best for you? What keys are you using? Most players use a spread approach where the index and middle fingers of each hand are on separate keys on the keyboard, like the A, S, K, and L keys, or the ones I use are A, S, Num5, and Num6 (with the keycap swapped on the 5 so there isn't a pip on it).

Other important options to consider are the scroll speed (faster speeds can mean it's easier to hit notes accurately, but harder to react, most players keep it somewhere between 2 and 3.5), and which game UI visuals to include and how to arrange them. Here's how I set up my gameplay editor as an example, I like to keep it relatively simple but I still find the judge accuracy helpful. Yours doesn't have to look like this but you should think about which visuals are helpful to you and which are distractions.



Ergonomics is also essential, to avoid repetitive stress injuries and also to hit notes better. Develop good habits from the start, and it'll become even more important as you improve towards faster and faster songs. Make sure you have a setup that lets you keep your wrists completely straight, your hands shouldn't be tilted up or down or to either side. And your fingers should be in positions where they can press directly down on the keys, you don't want to be hitting them at an angle or with your fingertips bent. It can help to find something comfortable to rest your forearms on, so your hands stay elevated above the keyboard.

Aside from that, if you want more personalized advice, try saving replays of songs you're struggling with and we can take a look at how to improve them.

Thank you for the reply and tips!
I have my four keys as: DFJK.
I don't know what AAAs or FCs are but I assume they are perfect runs. I'll def try to get some AAAs and FCs, focus on quality rather than mashing.
My scroll speed is at a default 1 , i'll def mess with that a bit and see what happens

[kof_zpt]

xD no doubt.

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by Zyxel

spend time trying to identify what you're weak points are and refine them

for example: if you are comfortable with lvl 15 stream files but struggle with the pattern recognition needed to hit lvl 15 jumps, try to familiarize yourself with those patterns to develop that muscle memory by intentionally practicing.

additionally, having the right settings that you're comfortable with is a game changer and I highly recommend tinkering with a few parameters to find what sits right with you the most. It could be things such as:
- noteskin
- scroll speed
- receptor size
- framerate
- keybinds

there are other options too, but these ones I would consider the most.

But at the end of the day, nothing will help you improve more than playing a wide variety of files-- and a lot of them at that. The simple act to "play more" is unironically the best advice to improve at the game, so try looking for songs you can comfortably play. In your case, I'd recommend stuff between difficulty levels 1-12. Try not to move up from there until you feel confident in being able to play that difficulty range without having to mash certain patterns and rack up a bunch of "Boos". That actually segues perfectly into my next and final point:

I highly encourage you to make a very strong and conscious effort not to mash through songs to make up for not having the necessary reading skills to play through higher difficulties than what is comfortable. Try to keep your "Boo" count as low as possible, and you'll begin to improve much quicker. hope this helps! o7

"spend time trying to identify what you're weak points are and refine them" I love that! i'll mess with the reply function I didnt know there was!! Thank you for the reply.

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by SK8R43

In order to get better you need to play every day, or at least not go a week without playing and expect to get better playing for an hour once a week. 2-3 hour sessions every day for awhile really helped me out.

I don't know if I am that committed yet but I do feel like my fingers are starting to understand something as I play more.

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by Omega Link46

Focus on enjoying the game and having fun, and getting better will follow naturally

Thanks! I been using the favorite function to save some of my favorite files
It feels great when I do something i coudnt before, def fun

[HBar]

Originally Posted by kof_zpt

Thank you for the reply and tips!
I have my four keys as: DFJK.
I don't know what AAAs or FCs are but I assume they are perfect runs. I'll def try to get some AAAs and FCs, focus on quality rather than mashing.
My scroll speed is at a default 1 , i'll def mess with that a bit and see what happens

Yeah, an AAA is a perfect run where you hit every note with perfect or amazing accuracy. Perfect means within 50 milliseconds, amazing means within 17 milliseconds, FFR treats them the same for scoring purposes but paying attention to the difference can help you improve your accuracy. And then a FC is a full combo where you hit every note in the song without missing any, I was wrong and you did have a FC and a FC* (FC* means you got a full combo once but it's not your best score), but that's still not a lot and I bet you can get a lot more if you focus on improvement.

For more detail on some of the fundamentals to focus on, the first one would just be getting the timing right on lone taps, everything else in the game builds off that skill. Passengers [Beginner] is a good song for practicing timing, it just has lone notes without any jumps or patterns. It might take some practice to get your timing accurate and consistent, but once you start getting the hang of it you should be able to get a AAA on Passengers and move on to some of the other fundamentals.

One of the next things to practice is jumps, where you hit two notes at the same time. Form [Part 1] is a good song for practicing jumps, it has 15 of them (and two hands, which are when you need to hit three notes at once). An important aspect of practicing jumps is to get the timing synchronized between both notes, you don't want to split your jumps and have the two notes register at different times. And then it also might take some practice to get comfortable with jumps and to see them like any other note, not something you need to tense up for. And eventually with practice you'll also see hands and quads (a quad is all four arrows at once) like any other note.

Then once you're good with hitting lone taps and jumps with consistently perfect accuracy, you're ready to branch out and practice all the other patterns you'll encounter in the game, the picture dictionary gives an introduction to some of them. Certain types of patterns like jacks and trills might take a lot of practice to consistently hit them accurately. Some things to pay attention to in other tricky patterns are the note colors, they're often color-coded by timing (although legacy songs will have all blue arrows, and some sections of some songs will use other colors for artistic reasons or based on some other pattern). And another thing to pay attention to is the blank space between successive notes, sometimes on patterns with tricky timing it can help to think of a blank space with 0 arrows as its own kind of note. And one final tip is to keep your eyes focused on the receptors, it's natural to want to look at the moving arrows instead, but if you do that you'll have a harder time with the arrows you're not looking at, and your timing will be less consistent than if you keep your eyes in one place.

If there's one particular section of a song you want to practice, you don't have to play through the whole song again to reach it, you can start at a particular note by using the Isolation Start setting under Settings->General to specify the note number to start at (and the Isolation Notes setting specifies a number of notes to play after that, you can keep it at 0 if you want to play through the rest of the song or quit/restart manually). If you're having trouble keeping up or reading a pattern, you can also use the Song Rate option to practice it at a slower speed, a common approach is to practice at 0.5x, then 0.6x, and so on until you're back up to 1.0x. Just remember that your score won't save if you forget to set the Song Rate back to 1.0, the Isolation Notes setting resets after your practice session but the Song Rate doesn't, you always have to set the Song Rate back to 1.0 manually.

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by HBar

Yeah, an AAA is a perfect run where you hit every note with perfect or amazing accuracy. Perfect means within 50 milliseconds, amazing means within 17 milliseconds, FFR treats them the same for scoring purposes but paying attention to the difference can help you improve your accuracy. And then a FC is a full combo where you hit every note in the song without missing any, I was wrong and you did have a FC and a FC* (FC* means you got a full combo once but it's not your best score), but that's still not a lot and I bet you can get a lot more if you focus on improvement.

For more detail on some of the fundamentals to focus on, the first one would just be getting the timing right on lone taps, everything else in the game builds off that skill. Passengers [Beginner] is a good song for practicing timing, it just has lone notes without any jumps or patterns. It might take some practice to get your timing accurate and consistent, but once you start getting the hang of it you should be able to get a AAA on Passengers and move on to some of the other fundamentals.

One of the next things to practice is jumps, where you hit two notes at the same time. Form [Part 1] is a good song for practicing jumps, it has 15 of them (and two hands, which are when you need to hit three notes at once). An important aspect of practicing jumps is to get the timing synchronized between both notes, you don't want to split your jumps and have the two notes register at different times. And then it also might take some practice to get comfortable with jumps and to see them like any other note, not something you need to tense up for. And eventually with practice you'll also see hands and quads (a quad is all four arrows at once) like any other note.

Then once you're good with hitting lone taps and jumps with consistently perfect accuracy, you're ready to branch out and practice all the other patterns you'll encounter in the game, the picture dictionary gives an introduction to some of them. Certain types of patterns like jacks and trills might take a lot of practice to consistently hit them accurately. Some things to pay attention to in other tricky patterns are the note colors, they're often color-coded by timing (although legacy songs will have all blue arrows, and some sections of some songs will use other colors for artistic reasons or based on some other pattern). And another thing to pay attention to is the blank space between successive notes, sometimes on patterns with tricky timing it can help to think of a blank space with 0 arrows as its own kind of note. And one final tip is to keep your eyes focused on the receptors, it's natural to want to look at the moving arrows instead, but if you do that you'll have a harder time with the arrows you're not looking at, and your timing will be less consistent than if you keep your eyes in one place.

If there's one particular section of a song you want to practice, you don't have to play through the whole song again to reach it, you can start at a particular note by using the Isolation Start setting under Settings->General to specify the note number to start at (and the Isolation Notes setting specifies a number of notes to play after that, you can keep it at 0 if you want to play through the rest of the song or quit/restart manually). If you're having trouble keeping up or reading a pattern, you can also use the Song Rate option to practice it at a slower speed, a common approach is to practice at 0.5x, then 0.6x, and so on until you're back up to 1.0x. Just remember that your score won't save if you forget to set the Song Rate back to 1.0, the Isolation Notes setting resets after your practice session but the Song Rate doesn't, you always have to set the Song Rate back to 1.0 manually.

Great tips! I shall read it more in-depth later
I been setting my scroll speed at 2 and I like how it feels been working on FCR and AAAs, harder than I thought even on level 12 songs.

[kof_zpt]

"For more detail on some of the fundamentals to focus on, the first one would just be getting the timing right on lone taps, everything else in the game builds off that skill. Passengers [Beginner] is a good song for practicing timing, it just has lone notes without any jumps or patterns. It might take some practice to get your timing accurate and consistent, but once you start getting the hang of it you should be able to get a AAA on Passengers and move on to some of the other fundamentals."-AAA DONE

Forms1/2 AAA'ed

[Zyxel]

YO i saw this thread bumped up again so i went to take a look at your scores and there is some serious improvement even within this short time! Getting those AAAs and other single-digit-good (SDG) scores is really good. keep up the progress! i really like how intentional your practice is and your ability to utilize the advice in this thread

[kof_zpt]

Originally Posted by Zyxel

YO i saw this thread bumped up again so i went to take a look at your scores and there is some serious improvement even within this short time! Getting those AAAs and other single-digit-good (SDG) scores is really good. keep up the progress! i really like how intentional your practice is and your ability to utilize the advice in this thread

Thank you very much I practice when i have time it's good fun.

[domenprevc]

I know that in order to get better at anything, I need to practice, practice, practice. But sometimes, I feel discouraged or bored by the repetition. That’s why I try to find ways to make my practice more fun and engaging. For example, when I practice my English skills, I use different sources of input, such as books, podcasts, movies, and games. I also challenge myself to use new words and expressions in my output, such as writing, speaking, or chatting.

[Boyachi]

My tip for practicing is:
-Try all the step files. Whether you are trying a new beginner song or a new Guru song, you will see how much better your accuracy and speed has increased since you last checked.
-Note songs that have specific things like easy 8th/16th/32nd notes (depending on your skill level), doubles, syncopation that are around your level or slightly beyond and practice each of these.
-Try different genres. Even if you don't necessarily like a song, the stepfile might be a great training tool. Remember you can always mute your speakers.
-Having played this game too much and focused on FCs, Blackflags, and AAAs I will tell you what brought the FUN back into the practice:
--Find a song you really like and put it off limits. What I mean is you do not try to FC, Flag, nor AAA it. Ever. Play this song as the last song you play for the day as a sort of resting point/palette cleanser.
---I made my choice once I knew I could pass every song and that choice was/is Playdoh. I don't restart it, I just monitor my progress, see which fingers are working and what step combinations make me struggle. Why? Because if you are working so hard on a hobby that it stops being fun, it is no longer a hobby it is just work