Connotation

Connotation refers to the subjective association of a note, pattern, or set of patterns. A set of notes can be interpreted in different ways, depending on personal taste, style, and its relation to the song. Connotation is important because the notes need to fit the song, and connotation helps understand why people associate certain sounds with certain notes. In fact, understanding connotation is the core to charting; it is one of the most important and fundamental concepts for a notecharter to grasp.

While there is commonly accepted connotation, due to the consensus of the majority of players, experienced and skilled chart artists can sometimes create their own connotation of certain techniques or patterns. This also explains why different charting styles are affected culturally; the associations are often implicitly derived from accepted norms.

Cognitive pattern recognition

When we refer to cognitive pattern recognition, we are referring more generally to how humans identify any type of pattern or correlation from their senses, not just specifically the note placements. We begin with this concept because it is the fundamental basis of how we perceive and process our experiences. The most general application of this concept is the idea that we line up notes with the attacks of sounds in the music. Whenever there is a sudden change in the amplitude, pitch, or timbre in the sound, we can place a note there to signify it, and players will automatically associate that sudden change with how it lines up with the note. We can take any attribute of the note patterns, such as the left/right positioning of a note, and associate it with some attribute of the music, such as the pitch of a sound, and then by simply consistently applying the pattern in ways that are as clear as possible, we have constructed our connotation. In this particular stated example, this explains why pitch relevance is such a powerful technique; it creates an additional dimension of meaning and structure that players can identify, which makes each note that they play feel more interesting and satisfying. For instance, they aren't just hitting a note that lines up with a piano sound, they are hitting a note that lines up with a piano sound and aligns with its relative pitch. The player is not only noticing the existence of the piano sound, but also its pitch.

Here are some more examples of this in practice (many of which are explained in more detail later in this article): Some specific patterns can be interpreted in different ways. A maximum size chord (4-chord in 4-key or 6-chord in 6-key) is usually associated with a very heavy attack or downbeat, or just a large block chord. A trill in the center two columns is very often associated with a snare roll/fill or just a literal pitch relevant trill. Grace notes have lots of different interpretations, ranging anywhere from simply following an instrument, emulating an effect, or layering technique.

Cultural associations

Because of the way the game is played, many people naturally compare the keys of the game to a piano, where higher pitches are placed towards the right, lower pitches are placed towards the left. This connection can then be extended to other instruments, including drums. In many charts, the chart artist places the kick on the left side and the snare on the right.

This is a cultural association because it depends on people being familiar with pianos. Without this external knowledge, it could be justified to reverse this relationship by putting higher notes on the left and lower notes on the right instead, and this would still be functional in terms of helping the player draw connections between what they are playing and what they are hearing, but in almost all cases, the level designer would place the higher notes on the right because of this subconscious cultural bias. This is just one example of the many biases that we harbor, often times without realizing it, but it does impact our perspectives on the game.

Physicality

The way the game is physically played also has an impact on the connotation we give it. One particular such example is finger dominance. People tend to be more coordinated with their fingers that are closer to the thumb. As you approach the pinky, the fingers generally tend to be weaker and less coordinated. As a result, the strongest fingers used in play, the index fingers, located in the center, tend to have a certain dominant feel for the player. For example, let's say in a 6-key chart there's a single high pitched sound effect in the song you are charting. By pitch relevance, you would probably place it on column 6, but if it's an important effect that should be highlighted, putting it on column 4 makes it feel more dominant, and is therefore also an acceptable choice.

Visual cues

Connotation isn't limited to just the feel of the patterns themselves. Visual cues play a large factor as well. Some patterns are appealing simply because of their visual appearance, or at least the visual appearance enhances the effect. One example of this is symmetric patterns. Taking advantage of these visual patterns occasionally can help enhance your chart. One way of doing this is using the patterns when a very memorable part of the song occurs. Both the visual aspect of the pattern and the song together will really make an impression on the player.

Another way visual cues affect connotation is color. A pattern in one set of colors will feel different from that same pattern with a different set of colors because the brain subconsciously associates the color with various concepts upon seeing them. While it is true that you cannot control what color scheme your players use, at the very least you can control the coloring scheme of note-based coloring. An example of color connotation is a "rainbow solo." While the large majority of a lot of songs use standard rhythms, the solo usually has a lot of freeform rhythms. When you follow these rhythms accurately, they usually end up very colorful, due to the different rhythm intervals used. This makes the solo stand out visually, bringing out the fresh change of pace feel the solo is trying to achieve.

Since mines are meant to be avoided, they are generally not really felt unless they are in close proximity to other notes. This gives the chart artist a lot of possibilities when placing the mines selectively in areas away from other notes allows for some creative techniques. The mines can be used to highlight something in the song, such as effects like pitch bend, or even simply drawing a picture.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the many different types of connotation that exist. Being aware of connotation and taking advantage of it will allow the chart artist to be clear when following something in a song, as well as understand the multitude of techniques and tricks of notecharting. It is a generalized concept that explains how notes can functionally fit the music at a deeper level.

A common technique that a lot of people take for granted is layering to add extra notes on large downbeat hits, like a cymbal crash being a double or triple. However, notice that at the highlighted time, the strong cymbal crash downbeat only has a single note. It still feels extremely impactful and actually quite refreshing and uplifting rather than heavy. Why is this so effective? The notes preceding it build up a lot of tension that is released by the downbeat on 3, and the huge amount of empty space following the downbeat creates contrast.

In the first highlighted section, the single note stream doesn't seem to follow any explicit sounds in terms of their rhythm. However, it is clear that it is following the falling bell flourish sound. There are two reasons why this is effective: the cascading movement matches the smooth patterns that seem to direct towards the left, utilizing both pitch relevance and texture. In addition, the bells add a glimmering, magical feel, and the rainbow-like colors reflect this feeling very well. Even though the attacks of the flourish are incredibly fast and too soft to explicitly make out, we are still able to match the sound!

The second highlighted section is similar. Although the cyan notes are not explicitly in the music, the placement of these notes allow the player to pay more attention to the bright sounds by color association, specifically the bell sounds that are prominent there.

Credit: Kil