Hello! This is a bit of longer post. I wanted to tell a story about a discovery I made. Call it obvious or laugh at it if you want - but I wanted to share a moment of epiphany.

So, ever since I found this map by Pishifat, I've been obssessed. I absolutely adore this map, and it's probably my favorite map ever. I used to study its structure: how different sections are mapped differently (for example 00:59:535 - VS - 01:12:937 - VS - 01:47:715), the consistency within each section, and what recurring themes and patterns come up in each. I was studying it again tonight. But eventually, after around 30 minutes, I came across this pattern at 03:41:832 (2,3,4,1)





I was completely stunned, and just stared at it in complete confusion. What is this madman doing?! He's neither emphasizing the snare drum on 03:42:038 (4) NOR the strong vocal on 03:42:244 (1)! This obviously makes ZERO sense! Is this a mistake or something? No... he does it again, less than 5 seconds later. I mean, I guess because he repeats it, it's now part of the "structure" of the map? Okay, but just because you repeat something for "muh structure" doesn't automatically mean it's a good idea! You can repeat a garbage idea - just because it has a structured logic and concepts to it, doesn't mean that logic is good.

But this is Pishifat! He's literally a master at what he does, and I've religiously watched all his videos - why would he do something so blatantly... against his advice? After all, everyone knows the basic advice about spacing and emphasis. It's obvious!

Loud sounds in a song should be emphasized by having large spacing.

This sentence reverberated through my head as I just continued to stare, dumbfounded. This is LITERALLY one of the first things you learn... As I started to zone in and focus on the spacing - between each and every note - all the alarm bells started going off, and I saw problems everywhere:

"What the hell is this spacing between 01:02:833 (1,2)? These both have identically loud sounds, yet 2 has HUGE spacing, and 1 is RIGHT NEXT to the one before it?"

"What is this at 01:35:514 (3,4,1,2,3,4,5)? Once again, the snare and vocals are both barely being spaced far apart!"

And as I continued to hop around the map, I saw more and more examples of 'bad' spacing. Some of them could be explained through structure (i.e: I've done it this way before so it's okay), but others seemed completely unexplainable. After a while, I came to a turning point when I saw 01:36:648 (1,2,3,4,1). Frustrated, I asked myself:

"If you're following the vocals, should you not emphasize every strong vocal lyric??? Why is the last note here basically right next to 4? It's literally just as loud as the first 1! It's like there's some mystical cooldown before he emphasizes something again!" And then it hit me:

If everything is emphasized, then nothing is.

I rewatched the section at 03:37:269, this time, not worrying about anything and just vibing with the music, and I realized: even though he is following vocals / drums, if he had emphasized anything BUT only the strongest of sounds, the special moments wouldn't feel special, like 03:40:595 (1,2,3).

I'm still grappling with everything that's going on in the map, but the lesson I've taken away is that when you're deciding on spacing, you shouldn't ONLY consider how exciting the section is, what part of the music you're following, and how loud the particular sound is - You should also consider the phrases within each section (each phrase is usually about 4 measures or white ticks long). Consider where you are in it, and think about how you want lead up to and express the absolute most important parts of the phrase. Sometimes this can mean sacrificing the importance of some loud sounds to make the even louder ones feel amazing. Sometimes this can mean devalueing strong sounds you were emphasizing before.

Let me know what your thoughts are! I'm still a little overwhelmed by the idea, but looking at other maps, too, I can see that not all strong sounds are emphasized, even ones that sound similar in volume. It seems as though emphasizing two strong sounds that are right next to each other can actually have the opposite effect of making both sounds feel weaker.

to me this just looks like he's focusing on emphasising the snares in the fast parts; the lack of a jump to the snare in 03:41:832 (2,3,4,1) and other similar patterns can be chalked up to either the snare receiving enough emphasis because of tapping strain, pishi wanting to avoid jumps in patterns with consecutive 1/2, or both

the concept you picked up on is real, though, and the key to it is the word "contrast"

sometimes you just need to downplay some things to give another thing the attention it deserves

also you kind of said this as well but it can be detrimental to rely on the volume of specific sounds in the song for emphasis as much as you seem to imply by the frequency at which you use the word "loud", there are a bunch of other things that can make a part of the song important e.g. musical structure, lyrics, unique melody/rhythm/timbre/whatever

I guess the point I was trying to make is that I was under the impression that contrast is created simply by making all loud sounds that you're following in the music straining and all quiet ones not straining. But at 03:41:832 (2,3,4,1), both the snare and vocals are not straining or spaced out at all, which confused me, because if you're following the vocals or drums, shouldn't the loud sounds be straining?

But I realized from the map that contrast doesn't come only from mapping strong sounds strongly and mapping weak sounds lightly. It also comes from contrasting weak sections of a phrase vs strong parts of a phrase, and this means that even strong sounds in the weak part of the phrase need to be downplayed as well. It seemed to conflict with the idea of "If you hear the same sound, it should be mapped the same way"

This man is very factual

This man is very factual

This is a cool post, Xelasto. Keep it up.

Gsun