Who is Tom Lehrer?

Tom Lehrer is currently a professor at UC-Santa Cruz, where he has taught for 35 years. He attended Harvard back in the mid 1940s, which is where he began writing polital satire comedy songs. Elements is one of his most popular songs, merely a list of all of the elements found on the Periodic Table, as named in the late 1940s… and set to the music of the Major General’s Song by Gilbert and Sullivan. You can read up more on Tom Lehrer here.

I bring this special release to FFR for a few reasons: 1st, we need comedy on FFR. William Hung just doesn’t cut it for me. I’ve tried contacting some other comedic songwriters that I am familiar with from my days of listening to “Kid’s Corner” on University of Pennsylvania’s radio station back in the early 90s (such as Trout Fishing in America or The Firm [famous for "Star Trekkin'"]), but to no avail. Mr. Lehrer was kind enough to give us permissio to use a few of his songs, Elements included (albiet 6 months after I initially requested permission).

2nd: I feel that it is my duty to bring some culture and history back to FFR. That is why I have given such a strong push towards adding certain Classical pieces. The history behind the songs of Tom Lehrer (or Alan Sherman) are crucial towards the history of the US, tackling various subject matters of the time. Not to mention, they were inspriations to any more modern satirist, such as Wierd Al.

3rd: I just love the song. Modern Major General is such a catchy song, and it isn’t any different with a whole bunch of Elements as the words instead.

So, I bring you Tom Lehrer’s Elements. Located in Misc (upper left of Page 1 for the time being). Steps are by jimerax and are fairly straightforward. Non-static BPM, but fairly constant between 115-121. All 16th notes with a few jumps thrown in. high 3 or low 3.5.

Also, I have 1 other quite amusing Tom Lehrer song that I am looking for someone to step. It is called “Lobachevsky”.

Enjoy,

Tasselfoot & Fight Fiercely, Harvard!

SpinItUP! 3 More Spinfiles, and a Resorted List!

As I promised, three more spinfiles are up this week before I head out on vacation.

Our first one is another MixMasterLar spinfile:

/DJS\ – Comic Bakery [Difficulty: 3] Song Length: 2:05

The second, by newcomer lord_carbo, and what may possibly be our new most difficult:

Saskrotch – Battleman Zero’s Theme [Difficulty: 8] Song Length: 1:45

And one, both song and spinfile, by yours truly

iPatcH – Lovin’ Lime Land [Difficulty: 4] Song Length: 2:34

Also, I resorted the song list for the time being to see how more… “right” it feels.

Here is the difficulty list in its new state:
Read more… »

New Genre Added to FFR! Skill Tokens

You begged, you pleaded, you sent candy and wouldn’t stop calling. Yes, we have finally added skill tokens to FFR. Many thanks to all the beta test members (subscribers) who helped test the functionality and put up with me in the Subscriber Beta Test forum over the weekend.

What are skill tokens?

Skill tokens are a completely new class of tokens that all you to unlock new songs by hitting certain accomplishments on existing songs. For instance, lets say that an AAA on Trip to the moon was needed to unlock. If you did indeed AAA it, at the end of the game on the score screen, a token will appear letting you know that you have unlocked a new song. After that, you refresh and like magic, you have the token in your skill token genre.

For the next 1-2 hours Dance2 and Hip-Hop will be reversed because of some work we are doing. They will be fixed shortly.

Did I mention that 2 skill tokens are available right now? We may create an official list but for right now we will let you guys explore and find them.

Cheers,

Synthlight + Beta Team Forces GO!

Spinfile of the Week

Guess what? There will be even more Spinfiles up this week. Why? Well, I’m going on a little week vacation so I am going to do what I can to have three more spinfiles up by Friday as a token of my appreciation for your patience.

For now, our Spinfile of the Week was made by Yesssss, our contest runner-up and overall super cool guy.

Vospi – Etude Du Soleil Matin [Difficulty: 4]

Don’t forget to give Vospi and Yesssss both a thank-you for their hard work for the quality song and spinfile.

Love,
iPatcH

The 11th Token

Bored at school or work? Want to tackle the very latest token? I will get you started by linking you to THIS PAGE HERE. You may have a hard time at first but look on the Brightside, in Contrast to some of the other tokens, this one is fairly easy.

If you would like to know how many people have each token, you can LOOK HERE.

Remember, you are not allowed to give out hints, link or the location of the token anywhere in public on FFR. Let the spirit of the game live and others have fun with it.

Enjoy

Cheers,

Synthlight

FFR Official Average Rank

Greetings! Welcome to the now-official Average Rank thread. With the permission of Tasselfoot himself, I am creating a thread that will be updated weekly. Every saturday, expect to see your name move up in the lists. Please post in this thread if you feel you have the Average Rank to make it onto the list. I will simply verify that you, in fact, do have the Average Rank to make it onto the list by looking at your levelrank.php.

I will be making two separate lists, however. One list will strictly contain those who have paid and are now Subscribers to this wonderful game. The other, will contain those who haven’t. As you may well imagine, those who pay have quite the advantage, so it’s only fair to make the two lists separate. I will also put a little * next to your name if I know you have the ability to greatly improve your hindered Average Rank. Some people are quite lazy, such that they have a few songs that they haven’t played, and that is keeping their Rank way up there. The maximum Average Rank that the Subscriber List will have is 85, because it’s better to keep the list to a minimum. The maximum Average Rank that the Non-Subscriber List will have is 100, because we have all those Subscriber-only songs keeping us way up there.

As a little incentive, I will double-asterisk (**) the person who has improved their average rank the most that week, and that person will receive 750 credits personally from me. This may seem unfair because many people have higher Average Ranks, but eventually they’ll all be down there in the teens, with just as much trouble as the rest of you. This “Credit Transfer” will occur one day following update day. This is to give a chance to those who just haven’t had the time to play every song yet.

Subscribers and their Average Rank:

Previous Rank to Current Rank) Name – Current Average Rank – Last week’s Average Rank

1 1) Shashakiro – 1.0511 – 1.0478
2 2) dAnceguy117 – 3.2372 – 3.5071
3 3) Jimerax – 5.3488* – 5.1818
7 4) darkshark – 11.3674* – 20.6124
4 5) Exag0n – 11.6325* – 11.3971
5 6) ZZ_Sprite – 12.5162 – 14.1913
6 7) XXXsmittyXXX – 15.5627 – 15.7224
8 8 ) Tasselfoot – 22.2604 – 23.2009
10 9) HammyMcSquirrel – 38.5116 – 40.6698
11 10) Doug31 – 49.7395 – 50.0956
12 11) stlunatic0124 – 66.8139* – 53.2296
9 12) Bahamut-X – 72.4093* – 36.2392
14 13) Silver_Brian – 78.7441 – 79.1148

Non-Subscribers and their Average Rank:

Previous Rank to Current Rank) Name – Current Average Rank – Last Week’s Average Rank

1 1) ieatyourlvllol – 5.8697 – 6.2631
2 2) xjohnieboyx – 8.8837 – 8.5502
3 3) ledwix – 9.7255* – 11.3732
4 4) eurostud4 – 16.0930* – 15.5215
5 5) Tayfun – 28.3581* – 28.4306
6 6) Hakulyte – Play EHHS – 41.0861
7 7) izlude77714 – 37.0651 – 45.8421
9 smartdude1212 – 48.1395* – 53.4210
8 9) dawg4321 – 51.4837 – 49.3875
10 10) Ryusei_ – 63.9906* – 65.1674
11 11) sc979 – 89.1627* – 87.2775

See the FFR Official Average Rank thread in the forum for more info and a special thanks to xjohnieboyx for compiling this.

Songs of the Week, 4th week of March

SotW #1 is Jurs OP, the song name means “Opening Theme of JurseyRider734“.
Song is by Kil – He is well known for OP of FFR people and Gaussian Blur series. Also he is a stepfile maker for Stepmania.
Steps are by hi19hi19 – Now one of the authors who have released stepfiles for FFR the most.
It’s a piano solo song, basically slow but some parts/rhythms are fast and complex.
Difficulty rating is 4/6 (Very Difficult).
You can find this song in Classic section.

SotW #2 is Tribal Revival. Originally this song is for R2, then also released for R1
this time. In the future more R2 songs will be in R1.
Song is by Prophecy – He has provided cool songs like Pondering Stuff, Tribal Transcendency,
Snowflakes for FFR, and Tribal Revival is one of them.
Steps are by Silver Brian – An upcoming FFR stepfile author, many songs stepped by him are now in the queue of future FFR songs.
It’s a bit harder song because it has fairly many jumps and a mini-jack.
Difficulty rating is 4/6 (Very Difficult) as well.
This song is currently in Funk section.

Have fun with SotW,

JX

Come Play With Us A Success!

So a few weeks ago we started our “Come Play With Us” program. Basically this allowed anyone who wants a t-shirt but doesn’t have the cash to help out FFR in other ways. In return for your help, we send you a shirt! It worked very well and continues to work well. Everyone placing CPWU links seems to be getting inbound links.

This week alone we sent out 2 new t-shirts. One all the way to Israel and another to a member in the US. Congrats to heyitsmee and lxd for working hard and FOLLOWING THE RULES with the links. We are happy to have had the opportunity to mutually benefit each other. And from the looks of it, we have additional people creeping closer to that 5000 link mark.

For those of you who don’t know. “Come Play With Us” is a way to help out FFR by helping us get new people interested in the site. Basically you place a specific link on your blog, myspace or other sites(follow the rules!). Once 5,000 legit unique people click on that link, you will get a t-shirt coupon sent to you. No charge for shipping, no charge for processing.. nothing.. Just pick your shirt, enter the coupon and order. You get the satisfaction of helping FFR grow and at the same time get an extra shirt from your favorite site. Win/Win

Want to use a “Come Place With Us” link on your site? It’s easy, just go here:
http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/signature/SiggyEdit.php

You can copy the generated link right out of there and place it on your sites. It couldn’t be easier!

Thanks to everyone who has participated. We have done so well that we may be lowering the requirement of uniques this week in order to make getting a shirt even easier!

Cheers,

Synthlight

Token #10 Makes It’s Appearance

I would like to thank token #10 for participating and being a part of the FFR community. If you are looking for token #10, I really can’t help you. You will have to look to other people tonight for your clues.

Cheers,

Synthlight