Delve into the origins and behind-the-scenes of how a music scene has not-so-quietly taken shape within osu!.
More and more, people have been creating original songs within the osu! community. These works have mostly been created for tournament mappools, proliferating exponentially since around 2020 to 2021.
...What exactly happened to get us here?
This is a story about original songs of the osu! community's creation, and it cannot be told by just one person.
It ranges from early beatmaps entirely of bespoke origin, to the outset of the Featured Artist initiative in 2016, the beginning and increase of osu! originals in World Cups, and the explosive initiative of community tournaments to create even more original music, all dotted with focused works of passion along the way. We can't cover it one article.
Read on below for a deep dive into how this scene formed and flourished proper in this new decade, specifically the community tournament side.
But first...
The songs we're talking about fall under the umbrella of "osu! originals", a term we use to describe any song that was made specifically for or first debuted in osu!. Be it for an event, tournament, a song made for a particular beatmap — if it originated within osu!, that is an osu! original.
It means that osu! originals don't only refer to songs commissioned by the osu! team, such as for the World Cups, but any song created for the community. Whenever such songs are made by Featured Artists and displayed in their FA pages (and thus licensed by the osu! team), they are marked with a pink "osu! original" label.
You can peruse all of the 478 osu! originals over in the osu! originals wiki article. If you're an artist or event organiser and don't see your songs in there, please reach out!
To start off, this topic has been talked about before, just from a different angle! The osu! team organises World Cups, which since the osu! World Cup 2020 started incorporating original music into tiebreaker beatmaps. Have a listen to mangomizer and pishifat's discussion about all of that and how this operation expanded in scope over the years.
Whether it be by coincidental ideas or by the example set by the World Cups, the community sprawled into procuring original music for their own tournaments (and mostly for Grand Finals tiebreaker beatmaps, which is literally over 100 of them).
A whopping 23% of all current tournament originals in osu! originate from the Global Taiko Showdown series. We have in large part Kasumi-sama to thank for that.
Hello! I am mainly known on osu! as Kasumi-sama, with my general username being Kasumi. I have been an all-modes osu! player from 2015 to 2023, and I am mainly known as a tournament organizer since 2018, mainly for the Global Taiko Showdown tournament series, as well as having helped as an administrator for osu!frlive's French tournaments from 2019 to 2022. I've also helped out in the Project Loved as an osu!catch captain in the past, as well as having been a member of the Tournament Committee.
What eventually became a titan of music production splashed into the music scene early in 2021, just a year into its life yet having hosted 4 osu!taiko tournaments in a full spectrum of difficulty tiers. Global Taiko Showdown took the lead to twist an inflection point in osu!'s life into unimaginable heights.
The question is, how and why did it happen in the first place?
The answer to that is actually, like most things in GTS, pretty surprisingly simple HAHA. On November 28th 2020, Sparxe, being one of the composers we've worked with very often since then, DM'd me to ask if GTS had ever thought about incorporating some sort of sound design for it at all. After some discussion with designers, we had decided to have a specific music playing for countdowns of our upcoming tournament, being CGTS 2021, which started in January 2021.
Then on January 3rd, I offered Sparxe to work on that tournament's 4v4 phase's Grand Finals tiebreaker, which would be known as Chicxulub, the first ever GTS original.
If you asked me WHY specifically we asked for a tiebreaker, quite frankly, reading my past messages, I have no idea either. Although, if I had to say, it was probably just myself seeing World Cups start implementing in their respective Grand Finals tiebreaker for each mode, and thinking we could do that for each GTS tournament, but thinking we could do better nonetheless, and it's what we've been striving for ever since then.
And deliver they did; if the World Cup could do it, they could do it too. GTS continued to produce original Grand Finals tiebreakers throughout the following months, with Dz'Xa - COSMOBEAT debuting for RGTS 2021, II-L - Asteroid Field of DECAPLETS for IGTS 2021 and pm04034 - Invenzione No. 3N&3R: Sonatina for a Dying Lord for LGTS 2021.
Then something unprecedented happened. Over the winter and into the next year, Expert Global Taiko Showdown 2021 saw 11 original tracks, forever etching GTS indubitably into the highest echelons of prestige and quality of production. The momentum never stopped and come 2022 GTS debuts 24 songs, EGTS 2022 making up 19 of them. COEGTS 2023 became the first and currently only tournament to feature an entirely original soundtrack of 28 songs.
To date, Global Taiko Showdown has produced over 70 original songs, half of them being created just last year, and for 3 consecutive years, they've been able to release compilation albums. Perhaps while reading the rest of this article, feel free to have a listen to their latest one with the sounds of GTS of 2023.
The Malaysian tournament scene has seen original music in all game modes, most prominently in osu! Malaysia and osu!taiko Malaysia.
How did their story start? They were asked similar questions as Kasumi, so let's have two of the organisers take it away:
Hi, my name is Marvin, known as Its not Marvin in osu. I am mainly known to be the host of osu! Malaysia Tournament from 2020 to 2023.
It all started in 2021 with the previous host of osu! malaysia tournament, Kumaxione, he wanted to do something special for his last year staffing, so he decided on commissioning a custom song with a local composer, takehirotei.
What was challenging in particular, and definitely in 2023, was that the majority of us volunteering in local tourneys in Malaysia are uni students, so when physical classes restarted, the time and availability that felt like an abundance during the pandemic era is suddenly gone. To be able to plan and run the tourney with the limited time that we had, felt like quite the achievement, as it was exhausting and scary at times, wondering if we can finish things before the deadline of not.
I feel like the taiko side definitely has larger budgets, and may have more sophisticated processes when it comes to the custom songs planning and producing process, as they had a custom song for every round of the osu!taiko Malaysian Tournament 2022, unlike std where we have 1-3 custom songs for the entire tournament.
Hello! My name is Jerry (or NZMJerry), and I'm mostly known for my design works in a number of osu! tournaments and original tracks such as the Global Taiko Showdown (GTS) series, osu! World Cup 2023 and Jaye's One Key Event (JOKE). Besides my designing works, I'm also the host of the osu!taiko Malaysian Tournament (OTMT) series as well as several other events ranging from contests to LANs for the overall osu! Malaysian community.
After wrapping up the first edition of the osu!taiko Malaysian Tournament (OTMT) series back in 2021, the team didn't want to just do the same thing again for the next year and beyond, so we felt that the most natural progression for the series' growth was to start introducing original songs into the mix.
I truly believe that this, along with the introduction of our mascot character, IRIS, helped a lot in weaving a recognizable visual identity for the whole tournament, which significantly enhanced the tournament experience.
Visual arts go hand in hand with music commissions and tournament production, which is itself an interesting topic (that we may cover in the near future!).
The music production process for our team is rather straightforward. We'll usually only specify the particular genre and difficulty that we're looking for to an artist based on the style that they're comfortable with, along with some example tracks provided. Besides that, the artists are given creative liberties to elevate it however they wish.
I think this process works very well as we also have a general channel for all our composers to mingle and share ideas for each other's works, allowing for more constructive opinions to be provided throughout the process by equally skilled individuals.
The Malaysian tournaments collectively have 19 original tracks in total at the moment, but the word on the street is that more is on the way!
While mangomizer and pishifat touched on the process of World Cup music production, how does it fare for other tournaments? Kasumi had this to say:
Kasumi-sama: The production process in GTS is very largely hands-off from us as admins. It all depends on the slot we shoot for, but for tiebreakers for example, we usually just give a general rundown of the structure we'd like, as well as a specific atmosphere we're shooting for. At that point, everything like genre, BPM and length, are basically decided by the artist's wish.
We only ask for relatively frequent drafts, in intervals of 30 seconds to 1 minute, so we can check if we first like the general vibe, as one would expect, and if we can map it accordingly to the planned difficulty, of course.
The other tournament hosts interviewed here said basically the same thing, which means there's only one thing to do.
Hey there, I'm takehirotei, just your normal rhythm gamer that composes music as a side job. If you're from osu!, you might have heard of me from some tiebreaker songs from some tourneys such as osu! (and taiko) Malaysia Tournaments, EGTS, or 4DMWC 2023 and many more, or if you're outside osu!, you might even heard me as the anime song remix guy for remixing some popular titles such as Idol (under the Imaginary Reality alias) or Guitar, Loneliness and Blue Planet.
takehirotei has produced over 20 songs for various community tournaments, 6 of them being for Global Taiko Showdown. Here's their perspective on how it all goes down:
For the production process, the host will set a deadline on the song, as well as some restrictions on the song (e.g. BPM limit, intensity, genres and more) in order to make sure the song will fit nicely to the planned (or not planned) slots. From time to time, we sometimes also send wips of the current state of the song to make sure that the song is going to the correct direction. This will ensure that we dont have to do unnecessary changes later on when the full song is done, which can saves us a lot of time.
[...] sometimes when a part in the song needs modifications, the host will give some comments on how to fix the issues on the said part. For example, extending certain instrument length, reducing the volume of certain instruments, reduce the spam kicks and etc.
Having experienced working with around 10 different tournament series, are there any differences?
I'd say not too different. The only difference I'd say is how the host handles the procedure. [...] What's different is sometimes, the host might add you into the mapping channel, so that when the mapper has any questions for the composer, the composer can help them with it (e.g. "what snappings are in this part?", "what is the time signature for this part?" and so on).
One of the challenge that I've faced in making songs for osu! tournaments is to do a bit of research on the style the host is going to put me into. As there are many. For example, let's say if the host wants the song to be in DT1 slot for osu!taiko, then I need to do a bit of research on the songs that are usually used in that slot.
But if I'm lucky, sometimes the host will list down a long list of descriptions on how the song will go (thanks Kasumi), this will really help us composers to work on the correct direction. Another challenge that I'm facing while making songs for tournaments (or rhythm games in general) is that these kinds of songs usually don't have many chill parts, and sometimes it's a little bit challenging to make a song when most of the parts are intense parts.
Regarding organisers giving detailed directions, mangomizer explained in the video mentioned in the beginning that this is something the World Cups did initially, but moved away from due to it resulting in less cohesive songs.
Whether to give more creative freedom to the artist or to prompt them with more detail in order to fit mappooling restrictions is an interesting question. takehirotei expanded on this a bit.
For prompting style, sometimes it can really help me to explore the paths that I have never gone before in composing (e.g. trying out new genres), which is something that I really like to do. However, if I'm unable to follow the prompt, usually I'll also give a proposal on how I'll do the song while following parts of the prompt that I'm able to follow, so that the host/mappooler can move me to an appropriate slot or do necessary changes.
But of course, sometimes the hosts also gives me the freedom to do whatever I want (e.g. Finale Battle of the Requiem). This definitely could result in more freedom in composing, as well as the freedom to explore some composing techniques (e.g. usage of polyrhythm, microtonal, etc.)
So I'd say, both styles work well for me, as they have their own challenges and exploration.
It may be a question affected by highly individual factors from the composition, organisation and mappooling sides, as well as different perspectives and expectations for the songs themselves. We'll leave that to future organisers to think about.
Hi! My name is HowToPlayLN, in-game you can call me LN or index. You may know me as an ex-osu!mania mapper (especially polyriddim), ex-mwc player 2019-2022, did some statistics and data science and made storyboards for some tournaments and now a composer. Meanwhile in real life I am doing coding and data science stuff.
Like takehirotei, HowToPlayLN has also composed over 20 songs across a multitude of tournaments. Of course, the first thing to ask is "how did it all start?".
If we're talking on how I started doing music, it would throwback to my first composition which I also mapped it and named it after myself (HowToPlayLN - HowToPlayLN). I think at some point some people were also joking with myself about "HowToPlayLN custom song when". Then... it's just that I decided to do one for an achievement that I would basically just be a jack-of-all-trades for a tournament scene in osu!mania or osu! in general.
My first tournament was actually DDS Tournament for which I offered a piano custom song, and then I decided to participate in osu!taiko Malaysia Tournament with my first tiebreaker custom song alongside with takehirotei's custom remix of my song being presented in osu!mania LN Tournament 3 (Normal Distribution Remix), and I decided to develop the lore to go along with it and another custom song (for those who are interested, see LNCryption) which was the reason I continued to do the custom songs in the tournament scenes.
Whether by having such a rooted connection between their musical identity and osu! or otherwise, HowToPlayLN does not lack insight into how the osu! tournament music scene clicks. These are their thoughts and advice on what it's like to compose for osu! tournaments:
For me, it would be between the composer(s) and the mappers to discuss about the base information of how the song should be, like whether snap divisions on this bpm are suitable to map in this difficulty before shaping my own ideas. I would also consider the song name, the background story, and sometimes I would actually encourage the mappers to try feedback or mapping the demo to determine whether it is alright for the given difficulty.
The ideas are... randomly come to me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but as long as there's a theme for it everything can continue smoothly. Mostly for the tiebreakers, there are at most 2-4 themes (or what we called "motif") for the song, representing each "mood" or side of the stories, each theme will get developed, and getting each turn to shine in their own part.
For other composers who may or may not play osu! or rhythm games in general, I think the communication is also challenging between mappers and composers. All I want to say is please do not be hesitate to stay connected to each other! For osu!mania or osu!taiko it can be potentially more straightforward because they can be mapped to other rhythm games easily, but for other modes, it is okay to give the direct feedback and opinions on how this can be charted, these would help composers a lot in decision making of how to progress the song further.
Having a lore or story sometimes would help us as well! It would shape us ideas on how the emotions or the atmosphere should be in the song, and when and how to make the "chaos" or "resolve" in the song given the bpm and difficulty constraints. At least it helps with creativity a lot!
In short: communication is key, beware of differences in the game modes and... (pause for drama) use storytelling to your advantage. That last one is also an entire topic in itself, maybe for later.
Cool things can happen when people work together. That's also true for artists — there are plenty of songs in osu! composed by multiple people.
As for how exactly it works, read below how our duo of artists today explained song collaborations with the example of GTS Orchestra Team - Akatsuki - Tokoyami no Yoru ga Aketa Toki - (by rN, SiLiS, HowToPlayLN and takehirotei), and feel free to tap that showcase video above for reference.
For collabs, I mostly become more of a melody person. Like Akatsuki, I was more in charge of the middle part and SiLiS and takehirotei was in charge of extending the idea from left to right while rN was in charge of adding dynamics to my orchestra. We often planned beforehand what to do after the initiative was done, it's important to have the "theme" to the song for us first before deciding how we develop them, and that's how we create the collaborations in the workflow perspective.
Mostly my part of the collaboration would be stored in MIDI before adjusting dynamics. For the gluing parts together, mixing and mastering, mostly other artists who are more specialized will do the work. So big appreciation for them for handling all of these actually.
For collaborations, let's say we have n composers, we usually split the song into n parts, where each composers focus on that particular part (unless there are composers who want's to collaborate with another composers for their part).
We also sometimes planned the whole song out in a Google Sheet first before composing the real thing. For example, in GTS Orchestra Team - Akatsuki - Tokoyami no Yoru ga Aketa Toki -, in the beginning, we all decided to go for a "SEGA sound team chunithm boss song" kind of song, then we decide the order of SiLiS doing the front part, HowToPlayLN and rN do the middle part, and I do the final part.
But of course, the sheet you're seeing now is not what we have planned at the beginning, as more progress are made, we sometimes needed to change the flow a bit in order to "fit the flow", and sometimes there are also times where some composers (including myself) are busy at irl activities, so we sometimes let the other composers do their part first, then only go back to the original composer to connect the previous part and the next part together.
But of course, this is not the only method to collaborate. Another method that I've known is one composer in charge of composing most of the structure of the song, then another composer would do the instrumentation of it. So this way, both the composers signature style would be presented at the same time without much clashing. For example, in Essence, HowToPlayLN did most of the composition and planning on the song, as well as some instrumentations, while I do the rest of the instrumentation, mixing and mastering on the song.
For more details, we have written an article last year on how we made the song, so please give it a read if you're interested :D
Passion often comes with trials, and the most ambitious projects have by no means been easy achievements.
We'll leave you with what these creators dearly remember.
[...] I think the story behind COEGTS' Main Mappool Showcase and it getting finalized, like, at all, is one of my absolute favorite experiences as the main organizer of GTS.
First off, I believe everything related to creating this mappool showcase starts on July 10th 2023, being one day after our Qualifiers Mappool Showcase was released, and three weeks prior to the actual mappool showcase at COE, on July 31st.
At that point, we had most songs ready to go, except one was not given by the composer yet, and the tiebreaker had just gotten finalized that very day. 7 out of the 16 songs had an artwork for it made at all, and 2 of them had their video ready. Of course, lore was not even remotely created. As you can see, setting ourselves up for success here.
The design channel then turned into an absolute war zone for the next 21 days, with designers, especially Transendium who has worked on 8 of these songs alone, managing to keep finalizing a few artworks here and there every day, even if some days were empty, due to them also working on other tournaments.
We had gotten our last song for it to be mapped and make its video finalized on.. July 20th.
Fast forwarding again, we arrive at July 27th, where both of us admins, being myself and TaikoMom, along with every single designer for GTS, our main voice actress for our female characters being Ethereal_Winter, and some of our composers who were working on the lore part of things, being blobdash (for BGM), and NormalM (as a voice actor), literally stayed in VC for the next 4 days right up to the showcase day, where we kept rotating between everyone passing out at some point, but generally working on finalizing the design and videos for songs, writing the entire lore, recording all voicelines for lore between July 29th to July 30th, where I was forced to stay up until 9am to record voicelines LOL. It was honestly just a very fun experience overall.
Except when we thought we finished the showcase entirely at 4am, when I personally had to go away to take my train for COE too, then we ended up realizing the overall mappool showcase video trolled us, with lore having had to be re-rendered twice, some gameplay being at 30FPS for no understandable reason, and TaikoMom then having to re-render all of that while I was gone, and needing to ensure we would actually have the correct video by uploading it on: MEGA / Google Drive / a USB key / Her Switch's SD card.
Absolutely no stress whatsoever in that experience, of course, apparent by the fact that even on the very last Sunday before July 31st, we had no clue if any of this would even be done by the time we had to be at COE, honestly.
Still loved it! Glad we've done what we did honestly.
Every time we present the custom song, the reaction from the players, viewers is always a special moment for me. For std atleast, the planning of the next custom song starts almost immediately after the current iteration of the tournament ends. So to see that everyone is surprised and hyped for the final song and final presentation feels so satisfying, knowing that the time and effort my team and I put in was so worth it.
Kicking off the OTMT series back in 2021 felt like I was thrown into the deep end of a pool, with almost none of my past tournament staffing experiences being applicable. Covering every role with the extremely small group of staff that we had was tough, but in hindsight I think that experience was necessary for us to gain insight into what worked and what didn't, which then helped alot in addressing any issues for the 2022 edition.
Even then, this still did not make OTMT2022 any easier to manage. Production levels were higher, our team grew larger, and expectations were now compounded too with the increased number of eyes on the project (special thanks to Kasumi-sama). Nevertheless, I think all the countless sleepless nights of work that we poured into the project was all worth it. Having the opportunity to work with some of the most amazing people I've ever met in music composition, character artworks, graphic designing, and many more for the project is perhaps one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.
The most significant challenge that we faced during OTMT2022 was, of course, the realistic aspect of hosting these kind of projects — the cost. However, thanks to the insane generosity and support from the community, we managed to fully fund the costs of the tournament solely through community donations. This is something that I'll forever be grateful and proud of, and is also what keeps me motivated to continuously find new ways to up the scale for this series :)
[...] I will be sharing one of the memories that has left a lot of impact in my heart. The first one is during the process of making Essence with HowToPlayLN. This is my first time collaborating with someone (as in 2 ppl collab) on making a Grand Finals tiebreaker. At first, we are just trying to put in the tiebreaker copypasta into a tiebreaker song, but as time goes by, our ideas become crazier and crazier. At one point we even decide to make a section where the time signature changes every bar.
After the tiebreaker was made, things got even more crazy as the media team is cooking the lore. At first we only have the tiebreaker, then soon enough, we all decide to make a song for each cutscene that shows before the mappool showcase begins, and also a rearrangement of Essence for the credits theme. This is perhaps the most precious memories that I have ever been through at that point as a composer.
There are so many moments in music journey which reminded me that my life has meanings. Some other people would tell me directly that my compositions are emotionally touching to them, like Akatsuki, or Essence, or some actually perceived them as "insane". Especially if those are meant to be portraying my emotions at the time I was composing them, I would feel grateful a lot. It feels like somebody understood me and my intent of doing my best in my own hobby.
The most significant ones would be Essence, which I considered one of the significant moments of my life at that time. It was the biggest and the most emotional project we have ever done. I cannot stop going back and watch the reactions of the viewers at that time to the reveal of the tiebreaker song... It was both insane and emotional, and was the conclusion of the most productive session I've done at that time.
The other one which probably less or more related which is osu!mania LN Tournament 3, I also did more than 10 custom maps for that tournament, including the custom song "LNCryption", which was actually the space for the mappers to write and imagine the "hell" they faced somewhere else. It probably is worth to give them a read.
I would also give an honorable mention to remembrance; image of him before departure from Vietnamese National osu!mania Cup, which I composed in one day, during one of my depressive episodes. It was meant to be something that is lighthearted and healing me up. Quick compositions like this can also help me coping through hard times as well.
There is nothing more awesome than to witness a home-grown scene form out of the love of rhythm and music. We're privileged to have so many with the stubborn passion to go above and beyond to make the osu! community something entirely our own.
—Walavouchey
kazoo ily
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