Hey all, new player here.
I've started learning taiko recently and have been having a lot of fun, but I've heard that learning to full alt is really beneficial for higher sr and I want to try picking it up.
Currently I use kddk to singletap, except for patterns like ddk, kkk, ect.
The trouble is, I'm not entirely sure what full alting looks like in taiko, because the abundance of buttons makes it much less clear cut than in o!standard.
To give you a better idea of what I mean, consider the following pattern:

d k d k ddk kkk

The way I see it, there are three approaches to this pattern that sound like full alting:

1. switching hands when 2+ notes of the same type are b2b
l l l l lrr lrl

2. switching hands after each note
l r l r lrl rlr

3. switching hands for each color separately
l l r r lrl rlr


Option 2 feels like the most intuitive answer, but frankly I have no idea.

Additionally, I'm a little confused about large notes.
When full alting, to you reset to the same hand after every large note, or do you alternate based on the last note before the large note? Does it even matter?

What do guys think? Thanks in advance for your help.

Option 2 is full alternating (and obviously with a kddk layout), reducing the strain that you have when singletapping with only one hand which can be a matter on fast Oni maps that don't give you rest moments and have streams as well, putting your main hand under a lot of pressure.
Personally I use the hand I didn't use on the last small note after big notes but I'm not sure if it's actually important because I'm pretty bad at taiko.

Endaris wrote:

Option 2 is full alternating (and obviously with a kddk layout), reducing the strain that you have when singletapping with only one hand which can be a matter on fast Oni maps that don't give you rest moments and have streams as well, putting your main hand under a lot of pressure.
Personally I use the hand I didn't use on the last small note after big notes but I'm not sure if it's actually important because I'm pretty bad at taiko.

Thanks a million

AAYYY TEXTWALL INCOMING

Man... This is something I still have to get a perfect answer. But for a year and a half, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly people mean by full alt. I'm doing 100% full alt since I started playing taiko (I don't have a main hand), a year and a half ago. I can get a +97% basically in any 4* and I'm trying to do that for the 5* maps.

First of all, I'll be talking about kddk only, kkdd is a whole different story.
One thing is for sure, people usually refer to alternating as alternating hands.
When you do a "ddk" as "RLL", that's a roll. I wouldn't consider rolling as alternating.
Also, there are players that are said to be full alternating, when they actually singletap 1/2 sequences.

shinchikuhome

Let's take this video as an example (yeah i'm a shinchikuhome fanboyyy).
People say that shinchikuhome does full alt, but as you can see in the video, he does not alternate everything, just for the easy parts (proportionaly to the map lol). All those 50+ notes streams he always start with the left hand, and things like a "ddk d ddk" he will do as "LRL R LRL" as it's very easy to play the isolated 1/2 "d" with the off hand.

The "Japanese" Full Alt

People seem to believe that full alternating is just not rolling.
I watched some replays from these really good japanese players since I started playing taiko, and as far as I know, they don't play 100% full alting. And because of that and from my experience, the Japanese full alt is the best option for kddk, as it probably gives the best accuracy overall. The definition of it is to have a main hand, and with that, play with your off hand just when it's easy (or necessary, like 400 bpm)) to do it. This is the way I see is the best to play kddk without rolling (rolling is not good because of the finger control you need to get acc, but obviously you can practice getting acc with rolling like xx_Skull_Kid_osugamer_xx).
I think it's really good to play like this because of the accuracy but also, you will have a decent stamina at speed maps and be able to play things like deathstreams. Also, double notes spam intersected with some single notes are really difficult to 100% full alt (like dk k dk d kk d dd k kd dkd kd k kd [MAN THIS WOULD BE INSANE TO 100% FULL ALT AT HIGH SPEEDS]), so you could just start with the same hand so your brain doesn't fry lol.

Big Notes

N = big note: "n N n" are just hard to do as "L ­ ­ R+L ­ ­ R" (or the oposite).
It depends on how much you want to invest in taiko, I would say that not alternating is the best if you think it's a problem. I just use a skin without big notes so I can play without thinking about it. Later I intend to play with big notes and full alternating, I just need to get better at those doubles.

Recommendation

I think you just need to think a bit about what you want with taiko (do not be like myself about playstyles, at the end you will be able to play bascially everything if you invest time and effort into taiko, even if you start playing just singletap).
If you want to just play for now, just play the game and you will have fun, no need to think about playstyles.
If you want to be really good at it, investing in learning to alternate 1/4 patterns (until 5 notes at least) is a great start.
If you want to be a god, think a way to play already from the start and play like that until you reach your goals, but you need to know that will take a lot of time and suffering to get it.

tl:dr;

Good question, even after reading this thread I'm not completely sure what my playstyle exactly is but at least I hit the notes (most of the time) lol. The second option seems the most intuitive to me too and I believe OP can just ignore the big notes as they only seem to give a score bonus (?) but I find them very satisfying to hit though lol.

Thanks flr for your post, helped me understand a lot more about possible playstyles but also made me a bit confused as I previously thought full-alternating was just playing with all four fingers and semi-alternating with three and single tapping with two. Is this a misconception?

just updated my post

mayoneeze wrote:

Thanks flr for your post, helped me understand a lot more about possible playstyles but also made me a bit confused as I previously thought full-alternating was just playing with all four fingers and semi-alternating with three and single tapping with two. Is this a misconception?

first let me just ensure something: you can play taiko with 2 hands and press all 4 buttons, this is what i do, as i simulate the original taiko no tatsujin arcade experience. 2 fingers doesn't mean that you have 1 color for each hand (i'm talking about kddk), this would be called crosstap

i don't think you are wrong in any way as i don't think there isn't a right way of calling a certain way a playstyle on taiko.
but i think most people in higher ranks would call full alternating switching between hands and not playing with all four fingers necessarily.
then, the only criteria for you to alternate hands is if you are using both hands. so you can alternate with 2 fingers (one for each hand), 3 fingers (one for one hand and 2 for the other) and 4 fingers (two for each hand).
(obviously this is the best player speedwise, so don't think you can copy him without practicing the same amount as him.. he is just on another level from anyone else)

there are examples linked for each case of shinchikuhome playing, as he played with 2 fingers, then started playing with 3 fingers (the main hand was just 1 finger and the offhand was 2 fingers), and then the ultimate shinchikuhome mode that should be forbbiden because it's too op: standard 4 fingers.

@flr I see, your explanations are very helpful. Yeah, in my post I was making the assumption based on my own playstyle that literally everyone plays with four fingers. Never heard the crosstap term before, I'll use it in the future when referring to non-alternating "single-tapping".