StepCon 2023

[M0nkeyz]

Want to preface this by saying that this is my opinion, alot of these comments will have personal bias and aren't necessarily reflective of the quality of the chart itself, but moreso the attributes I value when looking at a chart.

Fat Lip 1: Color Theory felt a bit arbitrary at times and I think the dump sections were too dense for the song, I definitely think dump is a good approach to this song, but it could've been a bit more nuanced.
Fat Lip 2: I think this chart does a few things right, but suffers from alot of PR(pitch relevance) problems and there are alot of unnecessary anchors. There were empty sections where I would expect there to be notes as well.
Fat Lip 3: The patterns in this are quite fun to play, but I think a large portion of the chart has very little relevancy to the music. I also think that 16ths do not work too well when dumping vocals, to me the entire thing felt very ghost-y.
Fat Lip 4: Definitely an approach closer to how I would've done it. I think some of the white notes to the vocals were slightly offputting, we see this type of stuff all the time in accepted charts nowadays so it might just be me, but I find these white ''grace'' notes so hard to read sometimes. I really liked the triple jump motifs to the guitar, they capture the rhythm quite well. I think the short jacks are also quite fun and fit the song.
Fat Lip 5: Really solid entry, the whole chart felt right. Pretty much my only gripe with this one were those 2 spots where you had [23]/[14] anchors leading into a 16th pattern. Those felt a little too dense in my opinion. Other than that though, this one is almost entirely like how I would've approached it.
Fat Lip 6: I knew someone would do this haha, the color theory to the particular vocals does seem like a good idea, but I feel like the spots where the vocals coincided with the rest of the music the chart became a bit too hard to read. There were also a few technical errors that were noticeable from playing the file.

Overall thoughts on the charts and song: I think this is a really difficult song to chart. The rhythms aren't super dynamic and most of the interest comes from the lyrics and the vocals. I think dumping is a viable strategy for a song like this, but I'm personally quite particular when it comes to dumping, I'm not a huge fan of vocal dumps and making an accurate vocal dump is insanely difficult.

Clumsy Communication 1: The chart captured the essence of the song quite nicely, but I was missing a bit of flavor. It could've been nice to have some grace notes or some variety to spice the chart up. PR seemed a bit shoddy in places. The jacks felt a bit jarring, because the rest of the chart is so simple.
Clumsy Communication 2: Dumping doesn't feel right to me for this song. I feel there are enough interesting sounds/rhythms in this song for a regular (does probably need a cut) chart and alot of those aren't being captured because you have a large stream of notes going to the synth. I can tell a good charter made this, because some of the patterns are really fun and capture the music quite well, but the approach doesn't quite work for me personally.
Clumsy Communication 3: I really liked this entry, it was structured clearly and PR felt pretty accurate. I kinda wish you'd deviate a little from the ''jump-to-chord'' structure you have, because I felt certain dynamics in the song could've been captured a bit better (Mainly towards the middle of the song where the lead takes the forefront).
Clumsy Communication 4: The intro did not feel accurate at all to me, I played it several times on lower rates and it's pretty clear these notes are not synced correctly. This is the first song that stepped the grace notes, I really liked that about this chart, I think it's a bit too dense in parts and some parts felt a bit too ghost-y though. The vibrato of the synth is also really hard to capture without long notes, those little trill patterns felt a bit dumpy at times because it wasn't immediately clear to me what you were following.
Clumsy Communication 5: I like how you captured the swingy nature of the song with your chart, but the layering felt really inaccurate. I think this has to do with missing quite a few notes and missing jumps to the chords. Similarly to the previous entry stepping the vibrato of the synth didn't feel super accurate to me.
Clumsy Communication 6: Not sure how accurate some of the notes are, would have to open the chart up in an editor, it felt accurate for the most part. I'm not sure if you were missing jumps to the chords, but the layering definitely wasn't super straightforward, I also think PR could've been a bit better here. The ending cut was pretty bad. I do think out of all entries this one had the most interesting rhythms and patterns.
Clumsy Communication 7: The density in this chart felt a bit weird, there were parts where you put hands to the chords and others where you only put jumps, these felt a bit arbitrary and didn't seem related to the intensity of the sounds. Some parts were quite empty and others were quite full even though the song keeps the same energy throughout. PR could've been better, especially the ending felt really off because you used the same 1-2-3-4-4 pattern even though the pitch changed.
Clumsy Communication 8: This chart started off really strong, the graces felt super fun and the layering made sense, but again I'm really not a fan of how the vibrato is stepped. I also think the chart dragged a bit due to length, the yellow note section was kinda cool near the end, would have to see in the editor how accurate it is though.

Overall thoughts on the charts and song: I think this song is quite repetitive in alot of ways, it isn't really dynamic enough to warrant it being stepped from beginning to end and as such requires a cut in my opinion. Alot of the charts were either too basic and as a result a bit boring or they tried to capture elements in the song such as the vibrato that didn't really work or added minijacks that didn't make much sense. Some of the cuts were also pretty bad and it all stems from the song being uninteresting and hard to step.

AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 1: First and foremost, this is a good chart. However, I do think it suffers from repetitiveness(largely due to the nature of the song itself), I like the color theory spicing things up a bit.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 2: This chart is very dynamic, which is insanely impressive considering the reptitiveness of the song. I really like the 24th patterns to the vocals it adds alot of variety to this. My biggest gripe was that the 3-jump gluts felt a little too aggressive, the entire chart is based on how well you can execute those gluts and it doesn't even really go to a sound that stands out that much to me.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 3: This chart has a distinct lack of jacks, I think it's a shame considering how often the song has sounds that repeat. The layering also didn't feel super intuitive to me while playing.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 4: Not sure how to feel about this one, the structure is quite clear but the difficulty ramps up considerably to a point where the layering almost becomes comically dense. Meanwhile the little drum fills aren't really being stepped. Certain elements of this chart felt great and others were complete headscratchers to me, towards the end where you use 3 and 4-note jacks it was hard for me follow how exactly the chart related to the music.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 5: I really like the majority of this entry, the jumpstream felt nice and the way you layered it went well with the music, there was a point tho near the end where the intensity of the music dropped, but the chart kept the same JS structure. I would've personally thinned the layering down a bit there.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 6: Really solid entry, this felt alot shorter and alot more dynamic than some of the others. The differently colored notes were a nice touch and the layering was understandable and tasteful, I didn't notice the cut either.
AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A FUNKY BEAT 7: This chart really shows how a good use of jumps can make or break a chart, I think the way this chart was structured was head and shoulders above the rest. It wasn't quite as dynamic as some of the others in terms of pattern variety, but because of the changes in jump use it captured my attention the whole time. Using colored notes for the drum fills was also a nice touch. I would've liked to see a few minijacks though.

Overall thoughts on the charts and song: The rhythms are quite interesting in this, but I think the biggest challenge when stepping this is how to overcome the repetitiveness of the song itself. A few charts have done this quite effectively with well placed cuts and the use of color theory or simply clever patterning while others couldn't really keep my attention.

Progressive Temporal Corruption

I couldn't really play any of these submissions so I'm probably not voting on this, but the song itself is quite cool. It's a shame there wasn't an easier chart submitted because I do think this song lends itself well for an fmo/fgo file.