Trills...

[jvizzlez]

I've been getting much better at Stepmania lately, to the point that I can Ace RATO, but although my technique and 'sightreading' have gotten better, my agility hasn't gone up at all.

With this said, I find myself constantly failing to songs like Minami Ikebukuro and sometimes even Oh Delia (the chart with all of the trills). My question is, how can I get better at them? I figure that simply "doing more trills" will increase my agility no doubt, but is there anything specific I can do, like training files or other various games of the sort?

[qqwref]

Originally Posted by jvizzlez

I've been getting much better at Stepmania lately, to the point that I can Ace RATO

Is that so?

Originally Posted by jvizzlez

With this said, I find myself constantly failing to songs like Minami Ikebukuro and sometimes even Oh Delia (the chart with all of the trills).

Those are vibrating files. You sort of tense your forearm until your hand starts shaking, and with practice you can control it to hit 12+ tps jacks for relatively long periods of time. (Hitting trills is the same idea, just on two keys at once.) It's a useful technique to know but I think most people would say that it's not impressive to score well on files based entirely around it.

[bmah]

I suppose you're more concerned about one-handed trills (such as left-down trills) as opposed to two-handed trills (such as down-up trills), since you've mentioned finger agility. Assuming you use a typical spread setup, two-handed trills take less energy to execute because you only have to use one finger from each hand to perform the task. With one-handed trills, you need to use two fingers from only one of the hands, which is more exhausting.

Practicing trill-heavy files will build you some endurance, sure, but I have a few physical tips:
- Be more conscious of how heavy/how much pressure your finger exerts on every tap you make on your keyboard. This might sound very obvious, but most people will unconsciously press harder than they need, which tires them out faster. You really have to imagine yourself playing very lightly. A keyboard with flatter, thinner keys will allow a greater freedom of exertion. A keyboard with thicker keys must unfortunately be pressed with more force just to register those taps (on the other hand, these keyboards will help build up finger endurance).
- Curve your fingers a bit and hit keys on the fingertips. If you've played the piano, you'll realize that this is important in retaining your flexibility in hitting keys, and it's no different for FFR. Don't attempt trills with flat fingers.

Now all I've pointed out was the execution of trills. Hitting them with accuracy consistently is a different matter.

Vibrating is a different technique altogether; unfortunately, I'm not of much use to that.

[DossarLX ODI]

Minami Ikebukuro Hardcore Custom (MIHC) is a vibrating file that only a few players have passed, that's not trilling lol. Same with Oh Delia if it's the 24th trill version.

[jvizzlez]

[quote=qqwref;3879428]Is that so?

Usually I get B's, but on my good days I can get an A- (using CS6, not sure how that translates over to default skin).

Anywho, I guess I kind of misworded this thread. I did sort of mean vibrating (since, during faster trills, that's all I ever do (I.E, on Eruption I'll do normal trills where I actually focus on pressing, and on Eruption Gamma I just vibrate basically throughout the entire song)), but you all helped greatly anyway. Thanks everybody.

on an unrelated note, I learned about some game called "World's fastest drummer" thanks to IcyWorld. It's nothing but doing trills as fast as you can for 60 seconds each round. I'd be curious to see how well you all do on it XD