something in mapping that continually fascinates me is the ability to take a dogshit ugly slider and make it look good just by placing the right objects around it. yusomi is one of those few mappers who have the midas touch; he can take literally any awful material and make something great out of it
whole map is good (both diffs are good actually) but the section at 00:25:653 (1) - is perfect in every way. and it's not overdone--anything else would be underdone. i cant see it being mapped any other way. anyway this got last place in pdc
love this map. 20 minutes of utterly charming patterns and delightful ideas. the style pairs with the song perfectly. this probably wasn't easy to map, but the appearance of effortlessness is integral to its charm. there is such a self-assured sense of musicality here, which manifests itself in bizarre unintuitive choices that work against all odds. it's easy to map inside the lines, but how many people would choose to start this pattern on the SMALL white tick? 09:20:565 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) - but this is a million times better than the obvious choice.
i love the usage of stacks, symmetry, the evolving patterns...i don't know. as usual, the best things about good mapping are hard to describe in words. it's the way they interpret the music, organize it, present it to you. you hear the music through their ears. you just like their voice, it's hard to point out anything specific because it's everything.
i'll stop there. it's hard to point stuff out because many great patterns are hardly even patterns, and they dont make sense unless you see them flash before your eyes while listening to the song
truly a joyful map. the description says "my love letter to this game after 8 years" and it feels exactly like that
cookiezi once referred to rrtyui as a "hard worker"; maybe a backhanded compliment, the sting of which is made worse by the fact that rrtyui's best scores, though great, have not stood the test of time, whereas cookiezi's best scores can be considered pretty much immortal at this point. curiously enough the "hard worker" epithet seems to apply to rrtyui as a mapper also, but there's no backhandedness here. i think his maps are truly timeless. for many years it seemed like he was practically reinventing himself for every new map he made; new style, new ideas, new gameplay. in a certain sense he was the hardest working concept mapper. a number of years back (after atomosphere and chirality and so on) he became interested in the more visually iconoclastic styles; you can see the influence in his Favorites tab on his userpage. zev, hailie/cheri, monstrata alien, stuff like that, eventually culminating in experimental outings like giselle, hella deep, and white cube. what separated him from the other mappers was his discipline, his absolute faith in the strength of ideas. nowhere is this more evident than in rainshower--the thing is stuffed so full of ideas on a second-to-second basis that it threatens to overwhelm the viewer. it's actually insane. silentroom is NOT an easy artist to map, especially this track, but rrtyui somehow manages to make what is for me the quintessential silentroom map. all of shuu no hazama's emotion is perfectly conveyed, the map is every bit as chaotic and ambitious and grandiose as the song.
first, as with pretty much any good map, its different sections are so well differentiated, while still working together as a whole. rrtyui doesnt use bookmarks so a while back i made this graphic, kind of scuffed but does the job https://mel-oe.s-ul.eu/a8WZa3H4
00:34:802 (1) - till 00:39:802 (1) - is one long transformation pattern, he uses a lot of them throughout. theyre a great n easy way of creating a sense of progression, especially when the music is a bunch of atonal droning noise
00:45:491 (1,1,2,3,1) - throughout the map he deliberately plays with angles that most people including me avoid like the plague: 90 and 45 degrees. during this section (and some other sections too) he crams in a ridiculous number of patterns, even tiny two-object patterns. what do i mean by pattern? some examples from this section:
00:45:836 (1,2) - this "long-short" sound packet is the building block of the section
00:47:474 (2,3,1) - same visual shape, but also same movement: counterclockwise. connects the "short" sound of the last packet with the "long" of the next.
00:54:112 (1,2) - same thing
00:55:491 (1,2,3,4,5) - new higher pitched sound calls for new pattern: till now the patterns and NCing have been short but this is a 5-object pattern of vertical objects
00:56:871 (1,2,3,1,2) - similarity in movement and visual
00:58:250 (1,2,3,1,2,1) - same thing.
01:02:388 (1,2,3,1,2) - horizontal-vertical into vertical-horizontal
01:03:078 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2) - one object can be part of two different patterns
01:05:147 (3,4) - transformation; counterclockwise into counterclockwise-ish
01:08:164 (1) - new section, new genius transformation pattern. easy to tell what's going on here. the vocals here are also beautiful, like a choir from beyond the mountains. very lovely
01:30:319 (1) - this section has three object-chains. the first two end by decreasing in sv. the third has a higher pitched sound, so the chain ends by increasing sv.
01:32:388 (1,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6) - three ncs, each one goes right to left
in section 1a rrtyui is mostly riffing on the same ideas as the music is repeating its rhythms, but in section b he goes absolutely buck wild. there is literally all sorts of shit in here. new patterns stop and start seemingly at random but none of it feels overdone. everything makes sense.
01:56:526 (1,2,3,4,5) - sudden stream cutting across the playfield, very beautiful
01:57:560 (1,2,3,4) - literally materializes out of nowhere disappears and you never see it again
02:00:664 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4) - down, left-right, left-right, up. one of my favorite patterns in the map
02:04:112 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1) - a simple c-curve of circles somehow evolves into an s-curve of sliders
02:05:750 (1,2,3,4,5) - this is just here for some reason. but again, it works somehow
02:06:526 (1,1,2,3,1,2,3) - left-right-left into up-down-up
02:11:009 (1,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4) - beautiful pattern across the top that then peters out downward
02:17:474 (3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) -
02:23:767 (1) - until 02:35:836 (1) - genuinely demented. he sustains tension during the entire climax of the song with vertical sliders, while the entire map is thrashing itself left and right
02:58:250 (1) - brings back slider section (and the same transformation pattern afterwards) to tie the whole map together and prepare for the ending. the first time i saw the last section i was a little disappointed because it didn't go quite as crazy as the middle section, but it has since grown on me in a big way. i like how chill it is, and i like that it gives the spotlight to the climax at 2:25. it also expresses the melody and harmony in a way the other sections don't. when watching the map i never skip the ending anymore. perfect last pattern also
the quality of a map isnt defined by how long of an essay you can write on it. ive seen plenty of complicated idea-heavy maps that i feel didn't work. but to me this one is perfect
whole map is fantastic but everything after the break is some of the most magical mapping in the game to me. particularly after this point 04:03:212 (1) - . somehow he makes a melody out of the drums. the choices he makes here are pure alchemy. there's no simple formula, you can't be taught how to do this.
03:52:192 (1,2,1,2,3,4) - such a beautiful pattern. not only in a vacuum but in that context also
watch this map 10 times, 20 times, 100 times, it's still not enough. you can sense what rustbell wanted from every object. everything makes sense. mapping at its best is like a form of speaking, i don't know how else to put it. without effort you assemble letters to create words to create sentences, to spin from thin air new meaning which wasnt there before.
this is a bit before fanzhen finds his first signature visual style, but it's still a great map, and lots of fun to play.
big fan of the way he chooses to map this melody here 02:04:598 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2) - with the cute low ds doubles.
03:23:132 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3) - two sets of triangle patterns here; love how he insists on the same structure for both, even though the second one now has a note on the last sliderend.
my favorite pattern in this map has always been this little transition pattern here 01:39:781 (1,2,3,1,2,3) - . using visuals to draw a rhythmic parallel between two ostensibly unrelated sounds, creating a new musical structure.
"umm it says TRICK but its not TRICKY enough??"
who gives a fuck about the diffname man just look at the map. this is like looking at notch hell and saying "umm but where are the NOTCHES?" if u dont like the map in general thats fine but i feel like that criticism in particular is dumb
incredible song, and i dont think ive had so much fun playing a map in years. it knows when to stay and go according to the ebb and flow of the harmony. the chords refuse to resolve themselves, and to reflect this the map keeps itself in a state of perpetual rhythmic tension. it's not just the awkwardly bunched up notes, but the spaces between them: the airiness of the 1/2 sliders, the pre-kiai 1/2 gaps that then progress into the relentless kiai. it's a constant push and pull that never really finds release until the final note.
also working spectacularly with the tension of the song is kiddly's customary tidy linear cs5 style; it's like a molecular structure that is never broken and thus preserves its anxious energy. the contrast between structure and release is made especially stark in the modern-day mapping era, where mappers have liberated themselves from structure—rendering kiddly's style that much more effective here. this particular dynamic really only works with a song like nightwear; thus kiddly brings something new out of the song, and the song brings something new out of kiddly.
forever gutted that i never managed to nab that first fc on this. i sank hundreds of plays into it over the course of that week and i dont regret it. a truly beautiful map
it's by no means an unsubtle map, but one thing that is delightfully unsubtle about it is its sense of unrelenting drive. it doesn't let up for even a second. crucially, when the song slows down at 00:18:721 (1) - chloe keeps spacing and sv relatively high, and this sets the tone for the rest of the map. at 02:40:054 (1) - many other mappers would dissemble and break up the section with patterns and kicksliders to follow the guitar. but chloe elects to follows the spirit of the law rather than the letter, and we're subjected to the blunt force trauma of a double deathstream that is perfectly in keeping with the fearlessly direct approach of the map.
the other thing so instrumental to the atmosphere of the map is how structured its distance spacing is. it's the "subtlety of unsubtlety"; a very curious paradox. he paints in broad strokes and doesn't fiddle with the minutia of patterns--distances are large and constant, sliders long and powerful, jumps come in neatly ordered shapes, streams are unfussy and straightforward, slider arrangements are ostensibly as conventional as they come. and yet, with all these blunt, almost obvious patterns, chloe somehow manages to express the more subtle aspects of the song.
neither of these are choices that would necessarily work in many or even most other songs, which makes it all the more delightful that they fit so perfectly in this one.
i mean, i could go on pointing out patterns forever. and it's not that any of these patterns are individually gamechanging, it's the overwhelming amount of them and the unwavering faithfulness to structure, coupled with plain good music sense, that produces a beautiful accumulatory effect. this map is also surprisingly rich in that specific flavor of mapping that asian countries in particular are so good at, and is also so hard to describe: a delicate balance between line and curve that implies the horizontal/vertical axes without referring to them directly.
dont know if any of that made sense, these concepts are some of the hardest concepts in mapping to translate into words, at least for me. but these are fun to write.
semi-hidden tobe map, his name isnt in tags and if you search tobebuta this won't come up. while not as brilliantly invigorating as life is game or as groundbreaking as rin to shite saku hana no gotoku, this is still a lovely map to accompany an even lovelier song.
something peculiar he does is he'll cut through the song with two totally nonsensical sliders. they make no rhythmic sense, almost to the point of farce, but they're still somehow beautiful:
00:23:755 (1,2,3) -
01:55:581 (1,2) -
and more obviously, 02:13:581 (8,9,10) -
what was he cooking? what went on in his brain? we'll never know. he does something similar in life is game at 00:27:330 (1,2) - . this is the last rhythm you would ever think of but it's infectiously playful.
about old maps in general: it's so interesting to see all the praise heaped on icebeam's agony, especially by mappers who don't like any of the other old classics. the song is gorgeous and the map is truly a timetravel map with great rhythms, but it largely amounts to nothing more than a mediocre 2016 map: the only thing of value they can appreciate in an old map is that it resembles a half-decent new map.
taste is taste, and there are certainly plenty of old maps i dont like either, but one begins to suspect that there are entire dimensions of mapping going completely unnoticed by the current crop. the steady increase in player skill as well as the still growing emphasis on visuals at the expense of all else has resulted in a type of musical myopia; they can't see the forest for the trees, they hear the music with a permanent microscope. gone is any sense of musical structure, of the musical or melodic sentence, the phrase, progression, or any playfulness of musical interpretation. in fact, there's often more musical sensitivity from a novice mapper than an experienced mapper, because an experienced mapper has slowly trained it out of themselves. for all its innovations over the last decade, mapping has narrowed considerably.
"When we look at the sculptures of the past every single one is a work of genius, yet I don't for a moment think that even the least of their sculptors were also geniuses." the language of the older era lends itself perfectly to an understanding of musical structure: the tidy visuals suggested by the grid and inherited from ouendan, and especially the reliance on symmetries to make sense of the overwhelming density of objects. player skill and musical perception had not yet advanced far enough for mappers to forsake the sentence for the letter; they still had to contend with music as a series of phrases, and they had to learn to group sounds together into discrete packets of objects. over the years we've liberated mapping from these ancient strictures and this has brought us incredible innovations and opportunity, but as a result we've also liberated the innate understanding of musical structures that was previously the free birthright of older eras, and we've never since rediscovered it.
if back then any average joe could shit out a reasonably musical map, then imagine what a genius with an intuitive understanding of the possibilities of the medium could do. taste is still taste, but it becomes harder and harder to believe that there are people who look at something like basara and think, what gives? how does someone remain totally deaf to such inventiveness, such verve, such confidence?
you can dislike what you hear, but at least be able to hear it first. once you hear it, you'll never forget it.
one can only guess what ancient, personal dimension he was tapping into to produce this kind of rhythmic alchemy. the map itself sings alongside the song: sliderends exploding on white ticks straight into bizarre 1/2 stops, faithfully following the drums only to at a moment's notice abandon it for some vocal or instrumental nicety, ingenious patterns blossoming and wilting away in the span of a second, generous spacing ranging haphazardly across the entire playfield, whimsical syncopation—he leaves no stone unturned, exploiting every single second of blue amber's varied drumline to weave together this intricate tapestry of rhythmic innovation. totally unpredictable and with neither rhyme nor reason, but when all's said and done everything makes frighteningly perfect sense. a true wizard of the editor
a bygone age where, when a novice mapper was faced with a blank canvas and had no clue what to do, they found their way by mapping not with their eyes but with their ears, their hands, and their heart. but all that aside, 100pa- uploaded this map a month after he made his account.
there's nothing really special about this one, if only because fanzhen's mapping career is absolutely littered with these casual masterpieces. this just happens to be a personal favorite of mine. starting from 2:00 the map unleashes about 40 great patterns in a row until the excellent finisher at 3:34, where fanzhen proportions out a dizzyingly virtuosic 20-second long progression sequence that takes you all the way to the final spinner.
a plainly remarkable map from 2011. lizbeth takes a supremely effective method of copypaste patterning to one of the most lush songs i've ever heard. the juxtaposition is illuminating; equanimity in mapping doesn't diminish a song's emotionality, but actually heightens it. a hidden gem for sure
something in mapping that continually fascinates me is the ability to take a dogshit ugly slider and make it look good just by placing the right objects around it. yusomi is one of those few mappers who have the midas touch; he can take literally any awful material and make something great out of it
whole map is good (both diffs are good actually) but the section at 00:25:653 (1) - is perfect in every way. and it's not overdone--anything else would be underdone. i cant see it being mapped any other way. anyway this got last place in pdc
love this map. 20 minutes of utterly charming patterns and delightful ideas. the style pairs with the song perfectly. this probably wasn't easy to map, but the appearance of effortlessness is integral to its charm. there is such a self-assured sense of musicality here, which manifests itself in bizarre unintuitive choices that work against all odds. it's easy to map inside the lines, but how many people would choose to start this pattern on the SMALL white tick? 09:20:565 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) - but this is a million times better than the obvious choice.
i love the usage of stacks, symmetry, the evolving patterns...i don't know. as usual, the best things about good mapping are hard to describe in words. it's the way they interpret the music, organize it, present it to you. you hear the music through their ears. you just like their voice, it's hard to point out anything specific because it's everything.
anyway heres some cool patterns
00:23:649 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,4) -
00:32:060 (4,5,6,7,8,1,2) - stacks
00:35:985 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) - this is what im talking about. this isnt even a pattern theres nothing to point out. but its good, feels natural
00:55:051 (1,1,2,1,2,3,4) - fun repeat slider
01:05:985 (4,5,1,2,3,4,1,2,1,2) -
01:08:369 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3) -
01:14:116 (3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5) -
01:30:939 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) -
01:55:612 (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,1,1,1,1) -
02:38:088 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) -
03:05:705 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) - what a choice to do this here
03:09:630 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6) - splitting this into 6s, very fun
03:17:481 (4,5,6) - ecstasyYyyY
04:42:714 (1) - until the break. note where they use a 1/1 pause and where they don't, and then listen to that section again with that in mind. very important. similar concept in the last kiai of fanzhen's n.o.
06:01:079 (13,14,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12) - fun
06:08:509 (3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1) - repetition of that top area
09:09:630 (1,2,3,4,5) -
09:15:238 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) -
10:29:256 (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3) - grouping into 3s for no reason. so fun
10:48:322 (9,10,1,2,3,4) -
11:41:172 (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3) - visuals. slowly rotating straights, then curving off into another place
12:03:462 (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1) - ok
12:59:537 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11) -
13:09:770 (1) - love the tension building choice here. all triples
17:55:612 (4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6) -
i'll stop there. it's hard to point stuff out because many great patterns are hardly even patterns, and they dont make sense unless you see them flash before your eyes while listening to the song
truly a joyful map. the description says "my love letter to this game after 8 years" and it feels exactly like that
cookiezi once referred to rrtyui as a "hard worker"; maybe a backhanded compliment, the sting of which is made worse by the fact that rrtyui's best scores, though great, have not stood the test of time, whereas cookiezi's best scores can be considered pretty much immortal at this point. curiously enough the "hard worker" epithet seems to apply to rrtyui as a mapper also, but there's no backhandedness here. i think his maps are truly timeless. for many years it seemed like he was practically reinventing himself for every new map he made; new style, new ideas, new gameplay. in a certain sense he was the hardest working concept mapper. a number of years back (after atomosphere and chirality and so on) he became interested in the more visually iconoclastic styles; you can see the influence in his Favorites tab on his userpage. zev, hailie/cheri, monstrata alien, stuff like that, eventually culminating in experimental outings like giselle, hella deep, and white cube. what separated him from the other mappers was his discipline, his absolute faith in the strength of ideas. nowhere is this more evident than in rainshower--the thing is stuffed so full of ideas on a second-to-second basis that it threatens to overwhelm the viewer. it's actually insane. silentroom is NOT an easy artist to map, especially this track, but rrtyui somehow manages to make what is for me the quintessential silentroom map. all of shuu no hazama's emotion is perfectly conveyed, the map is every bit as chaotic and ambitious and grandiose as the song.
first, as with pretty much any good map, its different sections are so well differentiated, while still working together as a whole. rrtyui doesnt use bookmarks so a while back i made this graphic, kind of scuffed but does the job https://mel-oe.s-ul.eu/a8WZa3H4
00:23:767 (1) - slider section. to create a little extra structure he groups the sliders into twos 00:23:767 (1,1) - 00:26:526 (1,1) - 00:29:285 (1,1) - 00:32:043 (1,1) - . the ability to actually shape the music beyond just putting objects where sounds are--very important. he also alternates between slider-circle 00:24:802 (1,2) - and slider 00:24:802 (1,2,1) - to further separate the pairs.
00:34:802 (1) - till 00:39:802 (1) - is one long transformation pattern, he uses a lot of them throughout. theyre a great n easy way of creating a sense of progression, especially when the music is a bunch of atonal droning noise
00:45:491 (1,1,2,3,1) - throughout the map he deliberately plays with angles that most people including me avoid like the plague: 90 and 45 degrees. during this section (and some other sections too) he crams in a ridiculous number of patterns, even tiny two-object patterns. what do i mean by pattern? some examples from this section:
00:45:836 (1,2) - this "long-short" sound packet is the building block of the section
00:47:474 (2,3,1) - same visual shape, but also same movement: counterclockwise. connects the "short" sound of the last packet with the "long" of the next.
00:54:112 (1,2) - same thing
00:55:491 (1,2,3,4,5) - new higher pitched sound calls for new pattern: till now the patterns and NCing have been short but this is a 5-object pattern of vertical objects
00:56:871 (1,2,3,1,2) - similarity in movement and visual
00:58:250 (1,2,3,1,2,1) - same thing.
01:02:388 (1,2,3,1,2) - horizontal-vertical into vertical-horizontal
01:03:078 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2) - one object can be part of two different patterns
01:05:147 (3,4) - transformation; counterclockwise into counterclockwise-ish
01:08:164 (1) - new section, new genius transformation pattern. easy to tell what's going on here. the vocals here are also beautiful, like a choir from beyond the mountains. very lovely
01:30:319 (1) - this section has three object-chains. the first two end by decreasing in sv. the third has a higher pitched sound, so the chain ends by increasing sv.
01:32:388 (1,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6) - three ncs, each one goes right to left
01:48:940 (1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6) - very cool stop and start stream. the end of one section and the start of another section are both part of the Same Pattern
in section 1a rrtyui is mostly riffing on the same ideas as the music is repeating its rhythms, but in section b he goes absolutely buck wild. there is literally all sorts of shit in here. new patterns stop and start seemingly at random but none of it feels overdone. everything makes sense.
01:56:526 (1,2,3,4,5) - sudden stream cutting across the playfield, very beautiful
01:57:560 (1,2,3,4) - literally materializes out of nowhere disappears and you never see it again
02:00:664 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4) - down, left-right, left-right, up. one of my favorite patterns in the map
02:04:112 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1) - a simple c-curve of circles somehow evolves into an s-curve of sliders
02:05:750 (1,2,3,4,5) - this is just here for some reason. but again, it works somehow
02:06:526 (1,1,2,3,1,2,3) - left-right-left into up-down-up
02:11:009 (1,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4) - beautiful pattern across the top that then peters out downward
02:17:474 (3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) -
02:23:767 (1) - until 02:35:836 (1) - genuinely demented. he sustains tension during the entire climax of the song with vertical sliders, while the entire map is thrashing itself left and right
02:47:043 (1,2,3,1,2,3) - you can consider the third slider in each of these the "payoff." notice how he delays payoff here 02:52:216 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3) -
map has a lot of these "folding/unfolding sliders" transformations
02:25:405 (1,2,3) - 02:26:095 (1,2,3) - 02:30:664 (1,2,3,4,5) - 03:24:457 (1,2,3) - 03:35:147 (1,2,3,1,2,3) -
02:58:250 (1) - brings back slider section (and the same transformation pattern afterwards) to tie the whole map together and prepare for the ending. the first time i saw the last section i was a little disappointed because it didn't go quite as crazy as the middle section, but it has since grown on me in a big way. i like how chill it is, and i like that it gives the spotlight to the climax at 2:25. it also expresses the melody and harmony in a way the other sections don't. when watching the map i never skip the ending anymore. perfect last pattern also
the quality of a map isnt defined by how long of an essay you can write on it. ive seen plenty of complicated idea-heavy maps that i feel didn't work. but to me this one is perfect
whole map is fantastic but everything after the break is some of the most magical mapping in the game to me. particularly after this point 04:03:212 (1) - . somehow he makes a melody out of the drums. the choices he makes here are pure alchemy. there's no simple formula, you can't be taught how to do this.
04:03:212 (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4) - little movements here
it's incredible how much mileage he gets out of these simple lines of 1/2 circles. 04:14:998 (2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1) - 04:05:202 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - 04:08:110 (1,2,3,4,5,6) - 03:53:416 (1,2,3,4,5) - 03:57:549 (2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2) - nothing fancy is needed, simplicity is complicated enough already.
04:04:437 (1,2,3) - big movement to highlight the drums, BUT the exact same sound is later represented by a simple line of circles 04:09:335 (1,2,3,4) -
then the same sound, now represented by a simple slider 04:14:233 (1) - 04:16:682 (1) -
and finally he switches it up again with three sets of 4 04:18:518 (2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1) -
03:52:192 (1,2,1,2,3,4) - such a beautiful pattern. not only in a vacuum but in that context also
watch this map 10 times, 20 times, 100 times, it's still not enough. you can sense what rustbell wanted from every object. everything makes sense. mapping at its best is like a form of speaking, i don't know how else to put it. without effort you assemble letters to create words to create sentences, to spin from thin air new meaning which wasnt there before.
this is a bit before fanzhen finds his first signature visual style, but it's still a great map, and lots of fun to play.
big fan of the way he chooses to map this melody here 02:04:598 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2) - with the cute low ds doubles.
03:23:132 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3) - two sets of triangle patterns here; love how he insists on the same structure for both, even though the second one now has a note on the last sliderend.
my favorite pattern in this map has always been this little transition pattern here 01:39:781 (1,2,3,1,2,3) - . using visuals to draw a rhythmic parallel between two ostensibly unrelated sounds, creating a new musical structure.
"umm it says TRICK but its not TRICKY enough??"
who gives a fuck about the diffname man just look at the map. this is like looking at notch hell and saying "umm but where are the NOTCHES?" if u dont like the map in general thats fine but i feel like that criticism in particular is dumb
@dada this one is just two adjectives man its not that hard. the other ones idk
incredible song, and i dont think ive had so much fun playing a map in years. it knows when to stay and go according to the ebb and flow of the harmony. the chords refuse to resolve themselves, and to reflect this the map keeps itself in a state of perpetual rhythmic tension. it's not just the awkwardly bunched up notes, but the spaces between them: the airiness of the 1/2 sliders, the pre-kiai 1/2 gaps that then progress into the relentless kiai. it's a constant push and pull that never really finds release until the final note.
also working spectacularly with the tension of the song is kiddly's customary tidy linear cs5 style; it's like a molecular structure that is never broken and thus preserves its anxious energy. the contrast between structure and release is made especially stark in the modern-day mapping era, where mappers have liberated themselves from structure—rendering kiddly's style that much more effective here. this particular dynamic really only works with a song like nightwear; thus kiddly brings something new out of the song, and the song brings something new out of kiddly.
mafiamaster is him
transportive + hypnotic
an all timer, everything about it works like a dream. the visual structure here has a looser feel, akin to towards the tower. perfect bg
what he doin
a lost art. who can put the genie back in the bottle?
nee doushite
1. 00:59:198 (2,1,2,3,4,5) -
2. 01:48:178 (2,3,4,5,6,7) -
funky
1. 00:19:555 (1,2,3,4,5,6) - 00:49:096 (2,3,4,5,6,7,8) -
2. 01:33:025 (1,2,3,1,2,3,4,1) -
this map is literally fine, i have no idea wtf you guys are on about. i kind of like it actually
forever gutted that i never managed to nab that first fc on this. i sank hundreds of plays into it over the course of that week and i dont regret it. a truly beautiful map
he is simply built different
it's by no means an unsubtle map, but one thing that is delightfully unsubtle about it is its sense of unrelenting drive. it doesn't let up for even a second. crucially, when the song slows down at 00:18:721 (1) - chloe keeps spacing and sv relatively high, and this sets the tone for the rest of the map. at 02:40:054 (1) - many other mappers would dissemble and break up the section with patterns and kicksliders to follow the guitar. but chloe elects to follows the spirit of the law rather than the letter, and we're subjected to the blunt force trauma of a double deathstream that is perfectly in keeping with the fearlessly direct approach of the map.
the other thing so instrumental to the atmosphere of the map is how structured its distance spacing is. it's the "subtlety of unsubtlety"; a very curious paradox. he paints in broad strokes and doesn't fiddle with the minutia of patterns--distances are large and constant, sliders long and powerful, jumps come in neatly ordered shapes, streams are unfussy and straightforward, slider arrangements are ostensibly as conventional as they come. and yet, with all these blunt, almost obvious patterns, chloe somehow manages to express the more subtle aspects of the song.
neither of these are choices that would necessarily work in many or even most other songs, which makes it all the more delightful that they fit so perfectly in this one.
and that's not to say that's all there is to the map either. a plucky attitude alone doesnt achieve anything without great patterns to give it substance. listen to how these patterns function with the song:
00:17:722 (1,2,3,4,5,1) -
00:26:721 (1,2,3,4,5,6) -
00:29:388 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1) -
00:34:721 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3) -
01:02:721 (1) - 01:41:388 (1) - he uses these kinds of abnormal sliders sparingly so they're all the more effective when they do pop up
01:05:388 (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3) - the line of circles cutting through the middle of the song is fantastic
01:16:054 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,1,2,1) -
01:18:721 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) - counterclockwise, followed by 01:21:388 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5) - clockwise
01:27:721 (1,2,3,4,1,1,2,3,4,5,1) - that feeling of structure
01:37:388 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,1,2,1,2) - again
01:40:054 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) - 02:06:721 (1,2,3,4,5) - 02:17:388 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1) - he loves these, i love these
i mean, i could go on pointing out patterns forever. and it's not that any of these patterns are individually gamechanging, it's the overwhelming amount of them and the unwavering faithfulness to structure, coupled with plain good music sense, that produces a beautiful accumulatory effect. this map is also surprisingly rich in that specific flavor of mapping that asian countries in particular are so good at, and is also so hard to describe: a delicate balance between line and curve that implies the horizontal/vertical axes without referring to them directly.
dont know if any of that made sense, these concepts are some of the hardest concepts in mapping to translate into words, at least for me. but these are fun to write.
jenny rom on osu. irresistibly upbeat song, loads of fun to play
semi-hidden tobe map, his name isnt in tags and if you search tobebuta this won't come up. while not as brilliantly invigorating as life is game or as groundbreaking as rin to shite saku hana no gotoku, this is still a lovely map to accompany an even lovelier song.
something peculiar he does is he'll cut through the song with two totally nonsensical sliders. they make no rhythmic sense, almost to the point of farce, but they're still somehow beautiful:
00:23:755 (1,2,3) -
01:55:581 (1,2) -
and more obviously, 02:13:581 (8,9,10) -
what was he cooking? what went on in his brain? we'll never know. he does something similar in life is game at 00:27:330 (1,2) - . this is the last rhythm you would ever think of but it's infectiously playful.
01:04:190 (4,5,6) - little things like this
02:02:886 (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1) - and this
another delightful pattern is this megastructure at 01:49:581 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14) - . we encounter a similar idea in fanzhen's flow of life.
about old maps in general: it's so interesting to see all the praise heaped on icebeam's agony, especially by mappers who don't like any of the other old classics. the song is gorgeous and the map is truly a timetravel map with great rhythms, but it largely amounts to nothing more than a mediocre 2016 map: the only thing of value they can appreciate in an old map is that it resembles a half-decent new map.
taste is taste, and there are certainly plenty of old maps i dont like either, but one begins to suspect that there are entire dimensions of mapping going completely unnoticed by the current crop. the steady increase in player skill as well as the still growing emphasis on visuals at the expense of all else has resulted in a type of musical myopia; they can't see the forest for the trees, they hear the music with a permanent microscope. gone is any sense of musical structure, of the musical or melodic sentence, the phrase, progression, or any playfulness of musical interpretation. in fact, there's often more musical sensitivity from a novice mapper than an experienced mapper, because an experienced mapper has slowly trained it out of themselves. for all its innovations over the last decade, mapping has narrowed considerably.
"When we look at the sculptures of the past every single one is a work of genius, yet I don't for a moment think that even the least of their sculptors were also geniuses." the language of the older era lends itself perfectly to an understanding of musical structure: the tidy visuals suggested by the grid and inherited from ouendan, and especially the reliance on symmetries to make sense of the overwhelming density of objects. player skill and musical perception had not yet advanced far enough for mappers to forsake the sentence for the letter; they still had to contend with music as a series of phrases, and they had to learn to group sounds together into discrete packets of objects. over the years we've liberated mapping from these ancient strictures and this has brought us incredible innovations and opportunity, but as a result we've also liberated the innate understanding of musical structures that was previously the free birthright of older eras, and we've never since rediscovered it.
if back then any average joe could shit out a reasonably musical map, then imagine what a genius with an intuitive understanding of the possibilities of the medium could do. taste is still taste, but it becomes harder and harder to believe that there are people who look at something like basara and think, what gives? how does someone remain totally deaf to such inventiveness, such verve, such confidence?
you can dislike what you hear, but at least be able to hear it first. once you hear it, you'll never forget it.
one can only guess what ancient, personal dimension he was tapping into to produce this kind of rhythmic alchemy. the map itself sings alongside the song: sliderends exploding on white ticks straight into bizarre 1/2 stops, faithfully following the drums only to at a moment's notice abandon it for some vocal or instrumental nicety, ingenious patterns blossoming and wilting away in the span of a second, generous spacing ranging haphazardly across the entire playfield, whimsical syncopation—he leaves no stone unturned, exploiting every single second of blue amber's varied drumline to weave together this intricate tapestry of rhythmic innovation. totally unpredictable and with neither rhyme nor reason, but when all's said and done everything makes frighteningly perfect sense. a true wizard of the editor
a bygone age where, when a novice mapper was faced with a blank canvas and had no clue what to do, they found their way by mapping not with their eyes but with their ears, their hands, and their heart. but all that aside, 100pa- uploaded this map a month after he made his account.
there's nothing really special about this one, if only because fanzhen's mapping career is absolutely littered with these casual masterpieces. this just happens to be a personal favorite of mine. starting from 2:00 the map unleashes about 40 great patterns in a row until the excellent finisher at 3:34, where fanzhen proportions out a dizzyingly virtuosic 20-second long progression sequence that takes you all the way to the final spinner.
a plainly remarkable map from 2011. lizbeth takes a supremely effective method of copypaste patterning to one of the most lush songs i've ever heard. the juxtaposition is illuminating; equanimity in mapping doesn't diminish a song's emotionality, but actually heightens it. a hidden gem for sure