How Rhythm Game Players Read Notes (for non-rhythm game players) [READ DESC]

the phenomenon everyone is referring to here is the same thing — it's pattern recognition and "chunking" — we do this with phone numbers. a lot of sports reflexes, such as the ball example, are small learned patterns - they're not actually pure reaction time, and NFL athletes have some of the slower reaction times athletes if I recall — sprinters and hockey goalies had the fastest, rivaling top CS:GO players. this slow buildup of pattern recognition happens when you read more, as in books/text. your brain recognizes the patterns of larger structures of information over time. you can observe this if you give the SAT to college students before and after college - a lot of students will score higher because they can physically read faster, which is why the GRE/etc uses more difficult material. what I've found is really interesting though is that my ability to read certain charts for certain games has sometimes been contingent on the ability of my hands to do the chart at all — so e.g. I once did hand exercises for popn music for a month, *DIDN'T PLAY THE GAME AT ALL*, then was suddenly able to read harder stuff. so there's probably some neuronal component here too — where your brain is doing a combination of chunking + pattern recognition + some kind of bodily connection to the chart, like how people will press brake at dangerous moments when in a passenger seat of a car even if they are not driving.

honestly, you kinda just play the game and then after a while you're suddenly able to read the notes

It’s kinda like asking someone “how do you make sense of all those pixels” when they look at a png. Like you’re not thinking about each pixel. Your brain is just amazing at aggregating information once it’s been trained

Basically: for those of us have been playing rhythm games for years, pattern recognition gets you pretty far, but it’s the euphoric state where you’re “in the zone” that really gets your flow going. Where nothing else matters, it’s just you and the music, and your body/hands are doing the rest.

for me it's down to muscle memory, u see a general sort of notes and u just know how to hit them on instinct. maybe that's just my long hours of playtime but for difficult maps which i normally play (mid 4digit player) then it sorta becomes instict and u feel the patterns as ur fingers react edit: how the fuck did this blow up, i mean what this is just for me lol. i just see notes and hit them XD

I am not that good at rhythm games, but the things I figured out on my own are. -Don’t look at the part you hit the notes, look above (or wherever they come from) it -pattern recognition -And you know, rhythm, when you know the song and you hear the 123 you hit the 123 pattern

I love when you get so into the zone and you're so focussed on the song it almost feels as if your hands are moving on their own, like you just see the notes and your hands instantly react on their own.

Phigros and Arcaea player here. The "read one area only" rule definitely still works as in 4k mania-style games, however in games such as Phigros and Dynamix where there are sometimes multiple directions of note travel to be aware of, I found that it is still beneficial to read the notes at an area that is somewhere above the judgement line. Sometimes, the notes travelling at different angles intersect, and it is good to read around that area, but not directly there because good luck seeing anything. At other times the notes travel in completely different directions and I've had to kind of average the distance between the two and read in between.

Pov: you've played a rythym game for years but still watch this video.

something else i notice beginners fumble with is where they focus their attention. most start focusing where you have to hit the notes, and this works when songs are slow or simple. but when you have to move quicker, its a death sentence. you have to factor in the reality that your hands move slower than your brain and compensate for it. rhythm games train you into being a step ahead of yourself so you can keep up, focusing on notes at a spot that gives your hands enough time to react

another thing is, that with time you don't really "think" what you gonna do when the notes appear, as with time playing you get muscular memory and so by just having something different than a black playfield on the screen your fingers press the keys. Thats how dense patterns are done, instinct and muscular memory

Reading those notes is one thing, but training your muscle memory to execute those patterns is a whole different story

To me, it is more like reacting to what you see. Just like how you just dodge a ball that is coming right at your face. You don't think about it. After you play a lot of 4k, your eyes start to recognise some parterns, and your fingers just react to it. I would say it is as simple as that, and it is actually. But to actually do it is another topic on its own

Additional explanation (for the non-rhythm enjoyers of course) to the might possibly asked question "*Where the heck did rhythm gamers get those inhuman amount of Stamina?*" Well, to make it short since I ain't like to speak in riddles: *Commonly, players instinctively choose to train their stamina by playing a lot (yet it's a journey obligated to go through by which it takes months to years of playing all the while slowly enhancing your stamina along, you can't really get it on a single day 'cept for disappointment) Another but less well-known method is to train it manually. Train your fingers through finger push-up for instance.

For any musicians out there who didn’t understand any of the analogies. It’s similar to reading music, the first few times you’re reading each individual note, but once you learn the flow of how music should sound and look. You see the overall pattern of a melody and then can infer what the rest of the notes on “how it should sound” as well as fill in the bass because you understand the pattern.

I've always referred to this as a flow state since it requires me to "not try so hard" its the same thing with playing instruments. There's a steep learning curve but eventually you're recognizing the patterns and using the muscle memory to the point its like your hands are playing without you. But the more I focus on the individual notes or chords the more likely I am to break my flow and have to forcefully continue playimg with actual heavy brain computation which is always where I end up making mistakes in both instruments and rhythm games. Our brains are much more powerful than our consciousness but we need our consciousness to do most things except when you get in a flow state and its beautiful

personally I just stare at the space where I'm supposed too hit the notes and let my reflexes take the wheel. head empty, click, click.

It feels magical to have the ability to read notes as you kinda just grow with it the more you play. I've probably gotten myself halfway on the gworth part as I can already read notes well. It's just that my stamina doesn't catch up with it. I've now just resorted to charting (mapping) as it's easier to of course, playtest your own map (even at high difficulties). I still play, but not as much as before.

Short answer: you press the note when it hits the judgement line

As someone who is unhealthily addicted to Phigros, I’ve come to get used to overcoming and adapting to all sorts of things, like playing upside down, on the middle, sideways or playing with notes coming in all directions… That kind of helped me get used to many other rhythm games because they felt easier to get used to. I’ve been playing Chunithm that came out recently in my country, and I’m having a blast just playing master charts after getting used to the expert charts :0… and I started playing 3 days ago. Yeah okay that does’t have anything to do with the video, but if I wanna say something about “sight reading”… Your brain just does the work for you after time. “Getting used to it” is a lot better than expected.