Brandish Headless [73 or 71]

[TC_Halogen]

After a little bit of deliberation (and a few plays of this file), I can't help but feel like this file is a touch overrated. First off, let's observe a few statistics before digging into the actual structure.

This file has been out since December of 2008, and at the rating of 73, it's put up with some decently high FMOs (remember: the Guru area starts at 76). Since that time, there has been 78 AAAs, and top 200 requires 8-0-0-2 or better. While these statistics aren't entirely uncommon for this difficulty, the chart structure doesn't demand some extreme skill or speed.

The song is 110 BPM (yeah, it really is that slow), and the chart does not use any notes faster than 32nds. A large majority of the chart is just 16th streaming with intermittent jumps/jacks to layer the background guitar, but at this speed, it's very tame compared to some other ex-FMO rated charts. Occasionally, the song tosses longer spurts of jumpstreams, but they're very roll-heavy in structure:



There are a few instances of longer streams involving guitar riffs, but most of the patterns are very fluent...


...or are considerably shorter (despite their somewhat trickier patterns):


Let's not neglect any of the faster patterns. There are also some occasional drum fills that force a few bits of jumpstream -- however, the patterns are relatively simplistic in most cases, and at 220 BPM, shouldn't pose a huge difficulty boost for any real reason.

There's a tiny little one-handed bit in the beginning here, but the patterns in the slightly longer blips are more than manageable:


Split jumping, but the patterns after the split jumps are basic scaling, so there's no big issue here:


Nothing too hard in this one; most of the patterns go in one direction:


The toughest pattern of the bunch in my opinion, but only because it switches directions in the roll into a stream-heavy guitar solo. Paying attention to the tail end of this pattern will guide you into and out of it no issue.


The drum fills listed above repeat themselves multiple times and aren't necessary to mention repeatedly.