by CJ Quines • on
Minimum force
chunithm-posting!
I’ve been playing a lot of Chunithm these last two weeks. Chunithm is a rhythm arcade game. Here’s a gameplay video from someone more skilled than me:
If you listen closely, you might hear the sound of hands slamming against the slider, like around the 1:50 mark. When I play Chunithm, I slam the slider a bit louder than this.
One of my roommates, Victor is a much better player than I am. Charts in Chunithm have a level between 1 and 15+. These days I play charts around level 7+, while Victor mostly plays charts around level 14. He slams the slider even louder than I do.
Another rhythm game I’ve played, Rhythm Heaven (DS), has a Café, where you can talk to the Barista between minigames. Of all the bits the Barista regales the player with, ranging from music genres to coffee to exercise, the one that’s stuck with me the most is:
You know, every now and then, I think about taking up a musical instrument. Most of the time, it doesn’t get much farther than that: thinking about it. I hear drums aren’t too tough on you. Someone once told me the best drummers can do amazing things without using too much force at all.
I like the idea of doing things with the minimum amount of force, with the least wasted motion. Unlike a button, a slider doesn’t give inherent tactile feedback when you press it, so slamming gives you more feedback from the normal force. In the long run, though, conserving stamina becomes more important. Higher-level tracks have a higher note density, have more air notes, and require more finger independence. So proper form involves lifting your hands only as high as you need to, or using your fingers more than your wrists and arms.
This reminds me of the essay Half-assing it with everything you’ve got, which also uses the phrase wasted motion. I’m pointing to something different, though. Soares refers to domains where putting more effort leads to better results, and the thrust of his essay is to avoid wasted motion by choosing the right targets. My thrust is to avoid wasted motion by using more efficient approaches. Find mechanical advantages and exploit them.