A real guide on how to make a good simfile

[jimerax]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

Technical Accuracy vs Fun Factor

[kommisar[os]]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

Layering can be important in songs that are a little more complex. usually i just use single arrows for the main melody (changes in some cases) jumps for the beat or percussion (usually on 4ths or 8ths, 16ths once and a while others are less common) and freezes for holding melodies or short freezes for extra sounds in the song

[operationstrawbarry]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

I think pitch relevencies is a matter of opinion. I got my files tested by many people and although much of the people that tested it said the file and the songs were great, there were some pitch relevency problems. My style of stepping is not to overload the file in a way that 80% of the people playing my files can't do alright in it. I tend to avoid hands, triplets and jacks as much as possible and freezes to also. Probably the best way to describe this is: I create files at the difficulty that I can do reasonably well in. I think this is a good tip for people. Dont make a song difficult, so difficult that you cant pass you're own song. Step it as difficult as possible and as accurate but in a way its easy enough that you can enjoy what you stepped.

I think in my opinion, any step artist out there should branch out on music. People are always stepping reruns of past songs from stepmania. Every file on the FFR archives or in packs are songs that we played some kind of version of. I dothis sometime to, but I think if you really wanna throw you're self out into the community as someone different, you have to step something that no one touched yet. Like for example, I am stepping hard house songs that are from my albums. The are about 2 to 4-5 minutes long depending, but Im not saying pick any song. I spend some time listening to the song and tapping in the air how the song will be laid out. Some songs are worth stepping and some songs aren't and some songs might be worth stepping, but the steps would be horrible. You also need to distinguish between songs that you like and that are interesting to step and also songs that you like but are bad to step. This is a good tip for people that are stepping songs from their CDs.

These are just my opinions though. Im not a famous stepartist, but Im trying. Remember, if the song is not fun, dont play them, because most likely, you wont have fun

I can add more later

[Yesssss]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

Dont make a song difficult, so difficult that you cant pass you're own song. Step it as difficult as possible and as accurate but in a way its easy enough that you can enjoy what you stepped.

I don't think there's any good step artist that doesn't do this. This includes the "hard" files that feels too overloaded for you.

[robertsona]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

I do that.

[Z3ratul]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

@Cetaka: Because your stepfiles end up not being held back in terms of difficulty, it's allowed them to have a bit more freedom in how they are stepped. You do it tastefully, which makes them end up being even more bad ass.

@Fun: It's a subjective quality, and I'll always hold that there isn't a large amount of correlation between fun factor and technicality. Lately, my main focus as a stepfile artist (Cooking By The Book on anyways, prior to that I was experimenting with random styles n ****... play my Air Nad Adrian if you wanna see a good technical file that isn't fun at all) has been trying to makes things be fun to as wide an audience as possible, while still remaining technically sound. This is done through maintaing flow, accurately following the tension in the song, controlling the difficulty of the stepfile, among other things.

@Pitch: It's all a matter of being CONSISTENT. People are all going to have different methods of expressing pitch, and as long as you remain consistent through out the stepfile with your own pitch method, then it's going to work out fine (as long as your method doesn't suck really bad).

[kommisar[os]]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

this

[xinpig]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

nice guide dude.

[xinpig]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

i never thought about slowing down the music to better the steps and rythems

[4_teddybears]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

What if there are a lot of BPM changes and gradual changes? I have found it really hard to keep arrows on time and on their appropriate note measures.

For my first song I have made, I started again from the begining keeping the BPM consistent throughout. Despite all the arrows being random colours, they are on time.

Is it wrong to step a song in this way?

[omgitznpv]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

It's a bad idea to keep the BPM consistent and to have colored arrows everywhere. It's frustrating for players, and it's just technically incorrect. You'll have to practice BPM changes until you get good at them. They'll be difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, they'll be incredibly easy.

As for me, they were never hard at all so lol

[moches]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

Layering can be important in songs that are a little more complex. usually i just use single arrows for the main melody (changes in some cases) jumps for the beat or percussion (usually on 4ths or 8ths, 16ths once and a while others are less common) and freezes for holding melodies or short freezes for extra sounds in the song

Yeah, I actually really like that method. That's why dr0p and Rapid Stream were so fun and not completely bs-ed.

As for me, I just give each note a single arrow, use short freezes for the melodies and supershort freezes for other sounds, and try to keep pitch relevancy. It's not really big to me if there are some errors in the pr as long as it mostly makes sense and is fun.

[4_teddybears]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

It's a bad idea to keep the BPM consistent and to have colored arrows everywhere. It's frustrating for players, and it's just technically incorrect. You'll have to practice BPM changes until you get good at them. They'll be difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, they'll be incredibly easy.

As for me, they were never hard at all so lol

I realised right away, that once I have the BPM correct at every stage of the song, Putting arrows in the correct places is much easier, I can almost guess where they go. I would certainly prefer to do it that way, as I attempted in the first place. Perhaps I just chose a rather inconsistent song, especially for my first one.

Although the song seems fairly consistent at the begining, some notes do not fall exactly in the right places, later on there are short accelerations and decelerations, and so my file started to have BPM changes on nearly every quarter note. That didn't seem right.

Questions:
1-Is there a way to increase the speed of your song, or is that only done by BPM?
I would not like to have the arrows going so slowly. Sure I can increase the speed before playing in stepmania, to 2x, 3x, 4, 8x...etc, but once the song is uploaded, it will be ridiculously slow and crammed together.
If not I will have to multiply the real bpm by 4 and space the arrows out myself. Is that the wrong thing to do? EDIT:I have discovered that I can use the "expand x2" option to do this.

2-Is there a program that will give a breakdown of the BPM in each part of the song?
The program mix meister tells me that the song has 101.5 BMP, but it is obviously an average.

[Patashu]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

Can I ammend number 13?

If a section of the song repeats itself a large number of times without changing its general form, try changing the style or layering you're stepping it with half way through. (This is only if you CAN do such a thing, of course)

[Patashu]

Re: A real guide on how to make a good simfile

I realised right away, that once I have the BPM correct at every stage of the song, Putting arrows in the correct places is much easier, I can almost guess where they go. I would certainly prefer to do it that way, as I attempted in the first place. Perhaps I just chose a rather inconsistent song, especially for my first one.

Although the song seems fairly consistent at the begining, some notes do not fall exactly in the right places, later on there are short accelerations and decelerations, and so my file started to have BPM changes on nearly every quarter note. That didn't seem right.

If the song is, for example, a rock song or otherwise a live recorded song then the bpm -will- waver slightly. Some bands have the drummer listen to a click track to keep it steady, but not all. And, of course, songs that are just piano will -never- stick to the same bpm.
If you do find that you're changing it roughly every quarter note that's not wrong; it might well be varying that often. If it varies by a LOT each change however make sure you're getting the bpms you set accurate.
And no, it is not easy work at all. If you want to step a song that has unconstant bpm ask yourself how much you want to step this song; if you're only semi-interested you will be turned off by the workload and constant tinkering.

Questions:
1-Is there a way to increase the speed of your song, or is that only done by BPM?

What other way would there be?

I would not like to have the arrows going so slowly. Sure I can increase the speed before playing in stepmania, to 2x, 3x, 4, 8x...etc, but once the song is uploaded, it will be ridiculously slow and crammed together.

In resonance you can change the speedmod you play the song at. Find the song and select a chart to play, and look at the url; near the end you'll see a 3. This is the speedmod. Raise it as high as you want it to be and load the new url.

2-Is there a program that will give a breakdown of the BPM in each part of the song?

Yes, it's called 'break the song into parts that you know are a constant bpm using, say, audacity, then run each separately through mixmeister'.