EPTRecently, I've been thinking alot about possible applications of music learning theory to Starcraft 2. Start off slow and practice with a metronome...
Note: The Zerg Soundtrack in the second half of the post is something I want to test out to see if it works. The first section regarding the metronome actually does work and will make you a better gamer overall, even outside of SC.
For the non-musical people... This is from the most official source in the entire world, wikipedia. I lost my MLA handbook so I didn't cite it... sue me.
"A metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks (beats, clicks) — settable in beats per minute. These ticks represent a fixed, regular aural pulse; some metronomes also include synchronized visual motion (e.g. pendulum-swing). The metronome dates from the early 19th century, where it was patented by Johann Maelzel in 1815 as a tool for musicians, under the title "Instrument/Machine for the Improvement of all Musical Performance, called Metronome"
The basic purpose of the metronome is to improve your internal timing... your body's sense for how long things take. It does so by dividing everything up neatly for you with perfect intervals that, when heard enough, sort of become ingrained in you. With an instrument you will play along with the metronome in practice sort of as training wheels. When you remove the training wheels the effects of good rhythm and timing are still there. The tool is also used to break down complicated rhythms, but since SC2 changes so much, I dont think the device can be used for anything other than just reminding you to do something every so often and increasing accuracy.
Start Off Slow to Develop Accuracy and Speed
This is more geared to players who find themselves missing hotkeys when they select the worker they want to build with, mess up their splits at the start of the game, high APM people who are terribly inaccurate, or those who are trying to master a new hotkey setup.
Poorly trained muscle memory is the culprit here and the solution is practicing with a metronome. To do this I recommend playing against AI to eliminate the decision making needed in a game against a human oppoent.
Follow these steps:
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1.) Open this website in a browser window: http://www.metronomeonline.com/
2.) Set the device to 40-60 BPM for a start and leave it running in the background. This will seem annoying at first, but you will almost not notice it after a while.
3.) Select an opener that takes no more than 5 or 6 minutes to complete (this will make it much less overwhelming at first).
4.) When you load the map, execute that build order, with the catch being, you have to do exactly ONE action on each click of the metronome. No more or no less. You don't have to count the unit you selected as an action (though i recommend you do), but if you grab a probe for instance and hit "b" for build, wait until the next click to put the building down. How you separate the actions out is not relevand as long as it is consistent.
5.) Once the build order is complete, leave the game. If you made any mistakes, any missclicks, including missplaced a building, repeats steps 1-4.
6.) If you did not make any mistakes, increase the amount set to the metronome by 5 or 10 and repeat steps 4-5.
2.) Set the device to 40-60 BPM for a start and leave it running in the background. This will seem annoying at first, but you will almost not notice it after a while.
3.) Select an opener that takes no more than 5 or 6 minutes to complete (this will make it much less overwhelming at first).
4.) When you load the map, execute that build order, with the catch being, you have to do exactly ONE action on each click of the metronome. No more or no less. You don't have to count the unit you selected as an action (though i recommend you do), but if you grab a probe for instance and hit "b" for build, wait until the next click to put the building down. How you separate the actions out is not relevand as long as it is consistent.
5.) Once the build order is complete, leave the game. If you made any mistakes, any missclicks, including missplaced a building, repeats steps 1-4.
6.) If you did not make any mistakes, increase the amount set to the metronome by 5 or 10 and repeat steps 4-5.
It SHOULD feel painfully slow at first, but as such you should not make ANY mistakes. No missclicks of any kind. Eventually you will get to a speed where you will be making mistakes here and there, but when you get there, dont even think about increasing it. The only time you should increase speed is when it is not at the expense of accuracy because, like any musician can tell you, accuracy is the key to speed. Additionally, no one wants to hear someone play shitty music fast for the sake of playing fast.
It will feel tedious. Look at it like a mini-game if you can, but really its an investment. If you care about really playing well, you have to find some way to improve the muscle memory that leads to speed and accuracy.
Changing Gears and an Experiment
I'm a protoss player, but I think this experiment applies mostly to zergs. Honestly, watching my replays and seeing how poorly zergs are with their spits ~2700+ masters got me thinking about it, so this is my contribution to a race that gives me alot of trouble!
My theory, which may already belong to someone else in some other field, is that you can use audial reminders to build up an internal sense of timing for ANY interval of time.
I made a sound file... It is just me playing an open D chord through some recording software with a little bit of gain attached to make it pop harder than one of Josh Grobin's girls. I ran a replay on "Faster" and timed a queen larva inject. When the queen injected I played the D chord quickly, then played it once again roughly 1-1.5 seconds after the larva popped. The extra time there is to account for your brains natural delay from hearing the sound and the time it takes to spit. If I had not left that buffer it would fall out of synch unless you were ALREADY A ROBOT.
My goal assumes you are not yet a robot, but that you are interested in becoming one. If you play with this Zerg Soundtrack for some time, it is my hope that your brain will learn the exact duration of a spit so that when you take the training wheels off, you will be spitting better than ever and almost never delay your spits. I off-raced several games as zerg against some friends (I never ever play zerg) and with this method I was able to hit my spits perfectly in time for most of the games ~12-15 minute games. I started to find myself checking the hatcheries about 1 second before the spit comes up perfectly each time and not a moment sooner than I needed to. I also did a couple games where i never looked at the base at all... where I just spit with the minimap. When i went to go back and check the replay it was nearly perfect.
I wanted to offer this to anyone that wants to try it out to see if it helps build up your internal clock for spitting. It may or may not be ethical to use this on the ladder.
Here is what you do:
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1.) Download this sound file: http://rapidshare.com/files/448660408/Zerg_Soundtrack.mp3
2.) Open it in media player and stop it at zero seconds.
3.) Queue up or join a custom game or play a game against the AI as zerg. When you are ready to do your first spit. You spit, immediately alt-tab, and play the file. The buffer I put into the sound file accounts for this, but you want it to happen fairly quickly... no more than a second or so. Its really not a problem and I have only had one issue loading it up and it was because i had a ton of stuff open in the background. If you make it so the media player is what pops up when you alt-tab, it will be fine.
4) If you did it correctly you will be sync'd up from this sound loop (yes you want to have this on repeat). Every time you hear the D chord, check your hatcheries. You should either see the larva flying out when you look at the hatch or it should be near complete. There's nothing wrong with checking early.
5) Whatever you are doing at that moment doesnt matter. Your priority has to be queens and spitting every time you hear the sound. If theres a huge battle, look at away and spit, there is NOTHING more important than injecting larva as far as this project is concerned. Spit quickly, if you are having trouble spitting on multiple hatcheries in a a second i think you should look into your method. I'm a non-zerg player, but im able to spit on several hatcheries per real time second (Ask in the thread if you want my method, but there are many good ways to do it).
2.) Open it in media player and stop it at zero seconds.
3.) Queue up or join a custom game or play a game against the AI as zerg. When you are ready to do your first spit. You spit, immediately alt-tab, and play the file. The buffer I put into the sound file accounts for this, but you want it to happen fairly quickly... no more than a second or so. Its really not a problem and I have only had one issue loading it up and it was because i had a ton of stuff open in the background. If you make it so the media player is what pops up when you alt-tab, it will be fine.
4) If you did it correctly you will be sync'd up from this sound loop (yes you want to have this on repeat). Every time you hear the D chord, check your hatcheries. You should either see the larva flying out when you look at the hatch or it should be near complete. There's nothing wrong with checking early.
5) Whatever you are doing at that moment doesnt matter. Your priority has to be queens and spitting every time you hear the sound. If theres a huge battle, look at away and spit, there is NOTHING more important than injecting larva as far as this project is concerned. Spit quickly, if you are having trouble spitting on multiple hatcheries in a a second i think you should look into your method. I'm a non-zerg player, but im able to spit on several hatcheries per real time second (Ask in the thread if you want my method, but there are many good ways to do it).
Here are some things to note:
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- When you add your other hatches and queens, its better to wait for the cycle to come back around and get them all in sync. This could mean waiting several seconds to spit. That is the lesser of two evils. If you want, you can try to spit the later hatches on a different timer and just focus on the main hatchery for the sound file. In one of my test games I tried this and I was surprised to find that my internal timing was so much weaker on the second hatchery that eventually it ended up syncing up with my main hatchery.
- If your queens die or you are low on energy due to a creep tumor or something like that, you can always stop the sound file and resync it again, or just turn it off and play out the game without it.
- For the above reason, I think maybe just using it during macro practice against AI's would be another use for it. I was using it in real games and finding that my main hatches queen was never really above 26 or 27 energy for a 12 minute or so span (until I lost it during an attack). Syncing up the secondary hatches could lead to slightly more energy on your other queens, but again, its the internal timing we want to work on so its better to delay a spit for synchronization purposes.
-I am sure some of you will find situations pop up where you dont much use out of this audial reminder. A couple of the games I tried I botched something so bad that I had to turn it off and just play the game out without it. If thats the case just load it up next game. This is a tool for improving your timing, not intended to just play the game for you so realize I did the best I could to come up with an idea for ingraining that inject larva interval into your brain.
- It would be ideal if some super awesome map maker made a map with a sound file telling you to inject that you could use to just practice perfect macro with.
- If your queens die or you are low on energy due to a creep tumor or something like that, you can always stop the sound file and resync it again, or just turn it off and play out the game without it.
- For the above reason, I think maybe just using it during macro practice against AI's would be another use for it. I was using it in real games and finding that my main hatches queen was never really above 26 or 27 energy for a 12 minute or so span (until I lost it during an attack). Syncing up the secondary hatches could lead to slightly more energy on your other queens, but again, its the internal timing we want to work on so its better to delay a spit for synchronization purposes.
-I am sure some of you will find situations pop up where you dont much use out of this audial reminder. A couple of the games I tried I botched something so bad that I had to turn it off and just play the game out without it. If thats the case just load it up next game. This is a tool for improving your timing, not intended to just play the game for you so realize I did the best I could to come up with an idea for ingraining that inject larva interval into your brain.
- It would be ideal if some super awesome map maker made a map with a sound file telling you to inject that you could use to just practice perfect macro with.
Try it out, see if it works for you. I know its been very helpful for me since making it while off-racing zerg. I can spit like a pro and I'm not a rapper and I don't play zerg.
If there's demand for it I can make additional tracks to fit your mood. I'm already working on an "Its raining men" for artosis to practice with
