Hi nerds,

This is my first forum post. Mods, if this post is illegal, or has a better place to be in the osu! forums, please take this down and take out my firstborn child with a nuke or whatever.

So, I want to consistently get high accuracy plays, but my UR is very inconsistent. Even on the same map, some of my plays would have an UR of 120, and other times it's 300+. The problem is that I don't feel a difference between these plays. To minimize this issue, I try to actively listen/feel the music. Although they seemed to help a bit, after a few weeks, I noticed that my UR was still inconsistent.

So, my question is this:

1. When playing osu!, what did you do to consistently tap on the beat?

I tried looking up advice online, but there is little to no discussion about this topic. Is it that rudimentary? Help a goofy-ahh 6 digit out onegai 🙏

Also, I look forward to hearing your input, and thanks in advance!

If your ur is 300, you're not just tapping to the beat inaccurately, youre tapping to the completely wrong audio cue. The way I think about it is that you read visually to tell approximately when to hit the note, and then you wait until you hear the cue in that window that you identified and then tap. It's impossible to acc by just listening to the music and not paying attention to reading (and vice versa)

Thanks for replying within the hour, Naiad! I feel like I incorporate this idea when I play (e.g. bursts/streams = tapping eighths/sixteenths notes). However, I never concretely visualized this as a blend between audio cues and reading, so I appreciate that. I do not think my ability to read is the issue. I think it's the tapping itself.

One thing that I've noticed is that I lift my fingers pretty high off the keyboard whenever I do jumps. When I do this, I move my wrist up and down, and alternate my tapping with two fingers. Just wondering, how do you tap when you play?

No problem! Regarding my tapping, I exclusively full alt. When I tap jumps, the primary movement is within my fingers, but my wrist is definitely still doing some work. I don't raise my fingers very much. When I tap streams and generally other 1/4 or faster patterns, (and sometimes 1/3 depending on the bpm) my wrist ends up doing most of the movement. I don't think my wrist ever moves vertically.

There's a lot of variety among techniques though and many top players are very different from me so I won't insist any of my playstyle is some golden standard. I find it kind of strange that your wrist moves up and down when you alternate but I also don't see why it would have to result in a lack of tapping consistency. I could see lifting your fingers high causing high stamina drain but I also don't necessarily see why it would make your tapping so inconsistent. Not sure I have any great answers for you.

I actually am a Taiko mode player. When I saw you're 4kpp though, something immediately crossed my mind "this guy not HD ing things at all". So, I noticed that in converted Taiko maps there are a lot of 1/2 snappings which means it differs greatly from Taiko where tapping snaps are way more brutal. I'm saying even in high level STD you don't just casually stream 1/4 then suddenly it goes 1/6 and 1/8 like in taiko. Usually it's presented in form of reverse sliders yes?

The main problem is you're just sight-reading things and not considering the audio quite enough. Or at least, that's quite a frequent cause in osu! Taiko as far as I can see. So, the problem is consistency and intuition as far as I'm concerned. You can hone it via many ways, one of them is recognizing the consistent beat of *1/1 and* 1/2 (and your 1/4 will improve also), another way is learning how to do HD auditorily, and you can also gain it from slower maps with more complex beats like Reol's songs where picks are often present (I mean those 1/4 doublets) and even you can gain the skill from maps with wide snappings arsenal like 1/3 1/6 sounds would also help.

The thing is you don't read only with eyes, but with ears and brain also. In Taiko there are things called as 'ninja notes' where generally 1 or 2 notes consecutively scrolls at insane unreasonably unreadable speeds. But when you have that intuition I'm talking about you can hit those notes on your first try just based on you knowing a little bit of the song. When you're good enough you get to hit it in consistent beat without even flinching. On the other side of the coin, STD is not an aim and tap. It's also a rhythm game don't forget.

Good luck, and please consider this a subjective view.

All good! Your explanation is very thorough, giving me a new perspective on this problem. Maybe if I describe how I tap with greater detail, you could catch a potential error in my tapping method. Even if you're unsure with your advice, it is always nice to have another person offering a new solution or dimension to this.

When I do jumps, I notice that I would bounce my hand up and down. It's akin to knocking your desk with your finger tips while the base of your palm/wrist rests on the table. However, I think I tense up my hand in long jump sequences, causing me to tap higher and press quicker. It feels as if my palm/wrist is jumping from each key press like a whip. However, it sounds like I'm banging hammers onto my keyboard sometimes (which in retrospect, doesn't sound good). When I do 4* jumps or very slow/easy flow aim, I tend to keep my fingers a lot closer to my keyboard. It is the same palm/wrist jumping motion, expect my hand is relaxed and doesn't bounce nearly as high. However, for streams/flow aim, my fingers are glued to the keys.

Basically, when I play, I bottom/full press each keystroke. To practice, do you think I should keep my fingers as close to the keys as possible, keeping my hand as relaxed as possible, and press less with the keys?

A range between 100 to 200 UR is expected when you pass a map. 300 simply means that you have no idea the rhythm of the music you're playing to (or you're trying to play EZ :>).

You can try play and notice the difference when you're playing aim-focused, straightforward map like beatmapsets/569503#osu/1222417 and then more technical, often confusing map like this one beatmapsets/1079970#osu/3075535

Simply put, consistency is when you're really comfortable playing on a certain level to a degree that basic aiming, tapping, and reading becomes automatic. You're only focusing on the hard part of the map as you're breezing through the rest.

If you know how the map is played, you can be really consistent with your tapping. Alas, don't try your best to 'predict' to hit but rather follow along the music. idk if I can said it precisely though. Don't overthink when to hit.

Reading will only give you a rough idea of the beat timing, listening deeply to the music will give you that ultra sharp crisp low UR goodness.

To lower your UR it takes a lot of mindful practice. Get used to having your focus on your accuracy and when your timing feels off (because of tapping or listening to the music incorrectly) take note of that feeling and correct it. Keep playing around with how you tap and how you listen to the music and you will find ways to lower your UR.

Nanofranne wrote:

A range between 100 to 200 UR is expected when you pass a map. 300 simply means that you have no idea the rhythm of the music you're playing to (or you're trying to play EZ :>). [...] Alas, don't try your best to 'predict' to hit but rather follow along the music. idk if I can said it precisely though. Don't overthink when to hit.

I noticed that my UR is usually between 180-140 on average. Just on streams, they go all over the place lol. Feels nice to hear that a UR of 100-200 is expected.

Fxjlk wrote:

Reading will only give you a rough idea of the beat timing, listening deeply to the music will give you that ultra sharp crisp low UR goodness. Get used to having your focus on your accuracy and when your timing feels off (because of tapping or listening to the music incorrectly) take note of that feeling and correct it.

This is actually something I've tried doing before making this post, and at one point, it helped me get a very low UR score. I just didn't know if that was because the map was too simple, or just sheer luck. Glad to read your input, supporting this approach to playing. I'll keep on actively listening to the songs!

Shirai- wrote:

The main problem is you're just sight-reading things and not considering the audio quite enough. [...] The thing is you don't read only with eyes, but with ears and brain also.

You're absolutely right, and thank you for the detailed response! I usually play jump maps with very consistent 1/8 rhythms, causing me to focus on aim instead of actively listening. Because of this, I never truly treated osu! as a rhythm game. The solution was under my nose the entire time, and it was so simple too:

Shirai- wrote:

It's also a rhythm game don't forget.

Basically, I just have to use my ears way more than thinking about the distances between the circles on my screen 💀💀