Community Mentorship Program 2016
Discussion 4: Rhythm(by handsome, -kevincela-, Frostings)
"Discussions" are Mentorship discord-internal events where Mentors host a public lesson and discussion about a certain topic. This guide is the result of said discussion.
________________________________________
Introduction
(by handsome)
So what exactly is rhythm? I’m sure if you’ve played relax and autopilot you’ll know which one of them is harder. It’s the tapping aspect of gameplay which is basically 90% of the game.
osu!, like other rhythm games, requires some sort of feedback to be played or else the player won’t really be able to “feel” the song. Rhythm plays a major part in this an is pretty much the core of your beatmaps. In the end it doesn’t matter how aesthetically pleasing your sliders or how perfect your blankets are, if the rhythm part doesn’t check out. Our objective of mapping is to create a beatmap that reflects the song and provides a positive gameplay experience to the player.
We have 4 tools in the editor to do that: hitcircles, sliders, reverse sliders and spinners. And among those we have 5 levels of feedback intensity that can be produced:
Hitcircle (accuracy, hitsound, aim)
Sliderhead (hitsound, aim)
Reverse slider (hitsound, aim)
Sliderend (hitsound, aim)
Spinnerend (hitsound)
The above are ordered from most intense to least intense in terms of feedback to they provide to a player. We use these to ‘build’ the foundation of the beatmap, the rhythm of it.
With this in mind we’ll proceed to the general structure of songs and how they’re interpreted.
In a generic song, each measure is made up of 4 beats, and each beat can be divided further (via setting the beatsnap divisor to something that is not 1/1 in the top right of the editor).
If you’ve watched pishi’s video, you’d probably know that a generic song’s structure follows a 1 3 2-4 format, where the first beat is the strongest followed by the third and then the second and fourth.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmCEfh865b4
This works in the beats itself, where the white tick is the strongest, followed by red and then by the two blue ticks. These are the general guidelines most song’s structure is following so if you’re going against that, think twice:
Is this really the optimal rhythm? Is there a better alternative that could have followed 1 3 2-4?
Sidenote: 1 3 2-4 doesn’t apply to all songs.
Another guideline to keep in mind would be concerning white tick triples (triples starting on a white tick): Most of the time, all percussion triples start on red ticks so if you find yourself starting them on whites make sure to give them another listen just to be certain that the triple actually starts there. Please note that this is not always true, but as the part above, applies to most generic songs.
(by handsome)
So what exactly is rhythm? I’m sure if you’ve played relax and autopilot you’ll know which one of them is harder. It’s the tapping aspect of gameplay which is basically 90% of the game.
osu!, like other rhythm games, requires some sort of feedback to be played or else the player won’t really be able to “feel” the song. Rhythm plays a major part in this an is pretty much the core of your beatmaps. In the end it doesn’t matter how aesthetically pleasing your sliders or how perfect your blankets are, if the rhythm part doesn’t check out. Our objective of mapping is to create a beatmap that reflects the song and provides a positive gameplay experience to the player.
We have 4 tools in the editor to do that: hitcircles, sliders, reverse sliders and spinners. And among those we have 5 levels of feedback intensity that can be produced:
Hitcircle (accuracy, hitsound, aim)
Sliderhead (hitsound, aim)
Reverse slider (hitsound, aim)
Sliderend (hitsound, aim)
Spinnerend (hitsound)
The above are ordered from most intense to least intense in terms of feedback to they provide to a player. We use these to ‘build’ the foundation of the beatmap, the rhythm of it.
With this in mind we’ll proceed to the general structure of songs and how they’re interpreted.
In a generic song, each measure is made up of 4 beats, and each beat can be divided further (via setting the beatsnap divisor to something that is not 1/1 in the top right of the editor).
If you’ve watched pishi’s video, you’d probably know that a generic song’s structure follows a 1 3 2-4 format, where the first beat is the strongest followed by the third and then the second and fourth.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmCEfh865b4
This works in the beats itself, where the white tick is the strongest, followed by red and then by the two blue ticks. These are the general guidelines most song’s structure is following so if you’re going against that, think twice:
Is this really the optimal rhythm? Is there a better alternative that could have followed 1 3 2-4?
Sidenote: 1 3 2-4 doesn’t apply to all songs.
Another guideline to keep in mind would be concerning white tick triples (triples starting on a white tick): Most of the time, all percussion triples start on red ticks so if you find yourself starting them on whites make sure to give them another listen just to be certain that the triple actually starts there. Please note that this is not always true, but as the part above, applies to most generic songs.
Advanced Rhythm
With these 4 (not really counting spinnerends since they do provide minimal feedback to the player) levels of intensity we’re trying to capture the song’s rhythm.
First and foremost, your rhythm should be clear and identifiable, there’s nothing more annoying to play than random switches between vocals, melodies and percussions. The golden rule of thumb in this context is to choose an instrument and sticking with it, unless the song itself swaps these but even then switching shouldn’t be completely abrupt.
Basically even though the music might have multiple layers, that doesn’t mean you have to map all of them to reflect the music. Similar to musical layers you can have multiple layers of intensities generated from hitobjects: In a song with melodies going all over the places, it’s usually a safe bet to leave percussions on sliderends as well. Since sliderends are able to produce feedback to the player through hitsounds as opposed to no feedback at all.
Thus you sometimes might encounter problems when the song’s melody is a constant ½ spam. Common sense would say “to capture the song’s rhythm we should use ½ circles all the way”, but rarely any song has ½ melodies with a constant monotonous sound (and if it does, you might want to consider getting a different song because that seems like the most boring thing ever), so we have to use rhythm techniques to provide different levels of feedback (there’s spacing too, but well let’s ignore that for now).
Firstly if the melody is slowly approaching in intensity, the rhythm can start with ½ slider reverses, then ½ sliders and then circles. They still all capture the main melody but along with that also the gradual buildup in intensity:
You can observe that the clicks go from 1 time to every two beats (two times) and then up to four times. This is an example of using contrast to create a sense of feedback. Similarly the opposite can be done to express a drop in intensity in the song:
Another common example would be this kind of stream patterning, where the reverses start on weaker beats (2 and 4) whereas the stream starts on louder beats (1 and 3). You can observe that the click per beat goes from 4 per beat to 1 per beat and back to 4 per beat and back to 1
By using hitcircles, sliderheads, reverses and sliderends appropriately we can create varying levels of intensity. Extreme examples of maps that don’t do this:
Paraclete by Kroytz or quaver by Monstrata.
With these 4 (not really counting spinnerends since they do provide minimal feedback to the player) levels of intensity we’re trying to capture the song’s rhythm.
First and foremost, your rhythm should be clear and identifiable, there’s nothing more annoying to play than random switches between vocals, melodies and percussions. The golden rule of thumb in this context is to choose an instrument and sticking with it, unless the song itself swaps these but even then switching shouldn’t be completely abrupt.
Basically even though the music might have multiple layers, that doesn’t mean you have to map all of them to reflect the music. Similar to musical layers you can have multiple layers of intensities generated from hitobjects: In a song with melodies going all over the places, it’s usually a safe bet to leave percussions on sliderends as well. Since sliderends are able to produce feedback to the player through hitsounds as opposed to no feedback at all.
Thus you sometimes might encounter problems when the song’s melody is a constant ½ spam. Common sense would say “to capture the song’s rhythm we should use ½ circles all the way”, but rarely any song has ½ melodies with a constant monotonous sound (and if it does, you might want to consider getting a different song because that seems like the most boring thing ever), so we have to use rhythm techniques to provide different levels of feedback (there’s spacing too, but well let’s ignore that for now).
Firstly if the melody is slowly approaching in intensity, the rhythm can start with ½ slider reverses, then ½ sliders and then circles. They still all capture the main melody but along with that also the gradual buildup in intensity:
You can observe that the clicks go from 1 time to every two beats (two times) and then up to four times. This is an example of using contrast to create a sense of feedback. Similarly the opposite can be done to express a drop in intensity in the song:
Another common example would be this kind of stream patterning, where the reverses start on weaker beats (2 and 4) whereas the stream starts on louder beats (1 and 3). You can observe that the click per beat goes from 4 per beat to 1 per beat and back to 4 per beat and back to 1
By using hitcircles, sliderheads, reverses and sliderends appropriately we can create varying levels of intensity. Extreme examples of maps that don’t do this:
Paraclete by Kroytz or quaver by Monstrata.
Advanced Rhythm (by -kevincela-)
There are also times where some beats are intentionally left out by only using 1/1 clicks. This can be useful for creating even more contrast in buildups and happens quite often in more technical maps where a song starts gaining intensity rather slowly.
Another thing that can be very important is how you use a slider. Sliders have been used in a lot of ways throughout the years, currently mappers have started using sliders for its hold more than for its start and end.
This matters because holding a button can also be correlated to feedback and there are a lot of songs where having a hold element is important. These are mostly wub maps but not only that. E.g. there are rock songs with guitar riffs on offbeats and using ½ sliders instead of notes is a really good way to emphasise their duration rather than their starts and ends. An example for this would be nano - Omoide Kakera.
In particular, you can see how I switch my usage of sliders on 00:49:020 - :
From 00:39:420 - I've been following mainly the vocals and some of the percussions, and this can be seen quite well, but from that point you can see lots of red tick sliders coming into play.
They are being used to underline this aspect of the guitar, which has been introduced just in this part.
Keep in mind that this aspect can work with many other songs, and you don't necessarily have to use sliders only for the hold, handsome already showed another way to use them in relation to the intensity of the song. However I believe that having a good balance between these elements can be a plus for the player, giving more direct feedback.
Just be aware that this kind of usage exists while mapping, and that it is heavily used in wub maps nowadays. Moving on to spinners: They don’t give any real feedback to the player, however they can be effective to emphasise a fade in or fade out or again a buildup. Green lines work really well on them, mostly to regulate the amount of sound you hear while you’re spinning. Keep in mind that if a part can be easily mapped out it’s usually better to map it out instead of forcing a spinner in somewhere.
There are also times where some beats are intentionally left out by only using 1/1 clicks. This can be useful for creating even more contrast in buildups and happens quite often in more technical maps where a song starts gaining intensity rather slowly.
Another thing that can be very important is how you use a slider. Sliders have been used in a lot of ways throughout the years, currently mappers have started using sliders for its hold more than for its start and end.
This matters because holding a button can also be correlated to feedback and there are a lot of songs where having a hold element is important. These are mostly wub maps but not only that. E.g. there are rock songs with guitar riffs on offbeats and using ½ sliders instead of notes is a really good way to emphasise their duration rather than their starts and ends. An example for this would be nano - Omoide Kakera.
In particular, you can see how I switch my usage of sliders on 00:49:020 - :
From 00:39:420 - I've been following mainly the vocals and some of the percussions, and this can be seen quite well, but from that point you can see lots of red tick sliders coming into play.
They are being used to underline this aspect of the guitar, which has been introduced just in this part.
Keep in mind that this aspect can work with many other songs, and you don't necessarily have to use sliders only for the hold, handsome already showed another way to use them in relation to the intensity of the song. However I believe that having a good balance between these elements can be a plus for the player, giving more direct feedback.
Just be aware that this kind of usage exists while mapping, and that it is heavily used in wub maps nowadays. Moving on to spinners: They don’t give any real feedback to the player, however they can be effective to emphasise a fade in or fade out or again a buildup. Green lines work really well on them, mostly to regulate the amount of sound you hear while you’re spinning. Keep in mind that if a part can be easily mapped out it’s usually better to map it out instead of forcing a spinner in somewhere.
Examples (by Frostings)
The map used for this is LiSA - Rally Go Round
The participants mapped in Rhythm difficulty while Frostings mapped in Sample, if a participant was late and the Rhythm difficulty doesn’t exist anymore they should just create a new one.
How they’re going about creating the rhythm in this beatmap is following a very particular style, which should be applicable to almost any song: It involves identifying the coolest beats in the song, mapping those first and then filling the rest.
Starting from the beginning 00:01:264 - please listen to the first couple bars. I want you to listen for the strongest sounds, and put circles where they are. We're looking for only about 3-4 sounds here.
If you update Sample, you'll find what I have and what I mean for reference:
In this rhythm style, this part is the most important thing: Identifying which beats have the highest priority over all others. Next part of this is finding out which of these circles can be turned into sliders. For example this could go like this:
Anything that makes sense, and feels good when you listen to it, or play it so let’s insert another one:
Just fill in the rhythms step by step:
You'll find the objects that I deem the most interesting in Sample difficulty now. Convert any of those circles into sliders when it makes sense. After this the only thing remaining is filling in the rest. Any sounds you missed you put them in, based on what you have already:
[]
Starting from here 00:03:790 - now:
First thing to do is finding the sounds you deem absolutely necessary and placing circles on them. Here’s what i got for this:
I tried to pick a song that has very obvious beats, but it's ok if yours is a little different. Next step would be converting any of those into sliders:
This process of rhythm-ing is pretty good, because you're giving priority to the most exciting beats in the music as the basis of it. It also allows you to put more sliders into your maps.
One thing I like to mention about this rhythm-ing technique, is that when you convert your strong circles into sliders and both 1/1 slider and 1/2 slider work, you want to prioritize the 1/1 slider.
[]
00:08:842 -
1. Strong beats
2. Convert to slider
3. Filler
[]
00:11:685 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Filler
Step 1 is the most critical, I can't really explain it too well though. Most people will say you'll be following the main instrument, or melody, but for me, it's more subconscious, based on feel.
Step 2 you prioritize 1/1 sliders than 1/2 sliders whenever they fit (also don't forget about 1/2 reverse sliders and the likes).
Step 3 is more open, you can change up some of the rhythming to fit with your intensity, or to make a specific pattern.
[]
/00:14:211 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Fillers
[]
00:16:264 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Fillers
Some final words:
This isn't the "right" way to map rhythm (there isn't a right way)
but following this can help you with proper emphasis and variability
emphasis from step 1 and 2, and variability from step 3
this technique isn't as useful if you like circles more than sliders in your maps
but sliders are cool, so this is pretty good (in my biased opinion
)
and it should be extendable to almost any song
[]
Frostings made a difficulty on LiSA - Rally Go Round which is fully mapped following this method. For easier following, the chat-log of the discussion is on the thread.
The map used for this is LiSA - Rally Go Round
The participants mapped in Rhythm difficulty while Frostings mapped in Sample, if a participant was late and the Rhythm difficulty doesn’t exist anymore they should just create a new one.
How they’re going about creating the rhythm in this beatmap is following a very particular style, which should be applicable to almost any song: It involves identifying the coolest beats in the song, mapping those first and then filling the rest.
Starting from the beginning 00:01:264 - please listen to the first couple bars. I want you to listen for the strongest sounds, and put circles where they are. We're looking for only about 3-4 sounds here.
If you update Sample, you'll find what I have and what I mean for reference:
In this rhythm style, this part is the most important thing: Identifying which beats have the highest priority over all others. Next part of this is finding out which of these circles can be turned into sliders. For example this could go like this:
Anything that makes sense, and feels good when you listen to it, or play it so let’s insert another one:
Just fill in the rhythms step by step:
You'll find the objects that I deem the most interesting in Sample difficulty now. Convert any of those circles into sliders when it makes sense. After this the only thing remaining is filling in the rest. Any sounds you missed you put them in, based on what you have already:
[]
Starting from here 00:03:790 - now:
First thing to do is finding the sounds you deem absolutely necessary and placing circles on them. Here’s what i got for this:
I tried to pick a song that has very obvious beats, but it's ok if yours is a little different. Next step would be converting any of those into sliders:
This process of rhythm-ing is pretty good, because you're giving priority to the most exciting beats in the music as the basis of it. It also allows you to put more sliders into your maps.
One thing I like to mention about this rhythm-ing technique, is that when you convert your strong circles into sliders and both 1/1 slider and 1/2 slider work, you want to prioritize the 1/1 slider.
[]
00:08:842 -
1. Strong beats
2. Convert to slider
3. Filler
[]
00:11:685 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Filler
Step 1 is the most critical, I can't really explain it too well though. Most people will say you'll be following the main instrument, or melody, but for me, it's more subconscious, based on feel.
Step 2 you prioritize 1/1 sliders than 1/2 sliders whenever they fit (also don't forget about 1/2 reverse sliders and the likes).
Step 3 is more open, you can change up some of the rhythming to fit with your intensity, or to make a specific pattern.
[]
/00:14:211 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Fillers
[]
00:16:264 -
1. Beats
2. Sliders
3. Fillers
Some final words:
This isn't the "right" way to map rhythm (there isn't a right way)
but following this can help you with proper emphasis and variability
emphasis from step 1 and 2, and variability from step 3
this technique isn't as useful if you like circles more than sliders in your maps
but sliders are cool, so this is pretty good (in my biased opinion
)and it should be extendable to almost any song
[]
Frostings made a difficulty on LiSA - Rally Go Round which is fully mapped following this method. For easier following, the chat-log of the discussion is on the thread.
Questions and Answers during the discussion
Q: How and where can I find the right hitsounds for my map?
A: Not exactly related to rhythm but:
https://osu.ppy.sh/u/3265023
https://mega.nz/#F!949EkByL!Sp4yr1pwpFMVY600J2fqVw
Q: How about spinner for like repetitive stuff? For example, a buildup, when is the point that I need to put spinner?
A: at one point they just start to get annoying: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/179758
A: basically if there isn't a clear identifiable rhythm thats snapped to, a spinner usually works as a compromise
Q: By the way, how about rhythms like ⅓? If the entire thing is in ⅓ how does 1 3 2-4 apply?
A: It’s just 1 3 2 then.
Q: How and where can I find the right hitsounds for my map?
A: Not exactly related to rhythm but:
https://osu.ppy.sh/u/3265023
https://mega.nz/#F!949EkByL!Sp4yr1pwpFMVY600J2fqVw
Q: How about spinner for like repetitive stuff? For example, a buildup, when is the point that I need to put spinner?
A: at one point they just start to get annoying: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/179758
A: basically if there isn't a clear identifiable rhythm thats snapped to, a spinner usually works as a compromise
Q: By the way, how about rhythms like ⅓? If the entire thing is in ⅓ how does 1 3 2-4 apply?
A: It’s just 1 3 2 then.