People who don't play or fully understand jazz after years of playing usually have pre-conceived notions about it. Like the musicians are entirely playing something completely new Every time or they're just "noodling" all of the time. While on the contrary, for the most part, they are playing stuff they have probably played before. A good musician will be able to have some tricks like being familiar with scales and important tension and release between the changes and utilize them while improvising. But a great jazz musician will analyze things other jazz musicians have played to understand it at a deeper level, sometimes even deeper than the original musician intended. This way, the great musician can understand the tools available to him better and maybe even take the concepts used before and take them one step further. This is true also with melee! We should all watch for fun, but also analyze what our favorite players are doing, understand WHY they're doing it, having that it in our pockets, and be practicing those techniques to not just use them on the spot, but to experiment with different ways of implementing them to your advantage. Also, jazz musicians can't just be entirely focused on what THEY are playing during their solo. They also have to be listening carefully to what the other people are playing! During a sax solo, the piano player, drummer, and bassist are all providing complimentary patterns and responses to what the sax player is singing. The sax could play a lick that sounds like a question and in anticipation of the soloist playing a line that sounds like an answer, the rhythm section could work in unison to do a kick into the sax players incomi by line during a time where the soloist leaves some space. Or a pianist of guitar player, comping for the sax player, could slightly alter the harmonic support on the fly and the soloist will have to hear that and adapt to the altered chords being played and sing something that matches the specific substituted chords being used. Once again this is a lot like melee. You can't just focused on your solo, i.e. your own movement, combos, and approaches. You have to watch carefully for what your opponent is doing i.e. how they move, combo, or approach. This hivemind-like interactivity between more than one human consciousness is the connection jazz and melee and really just so many other art forms. Really an amazing concept and I'd love to see more examples of it if you guys have any!
Awesome video, really great ideas coming through. Your intro was super well structured and drew me in, but when it came to the demos you sort of lingered on the same thing for a while, would probably help to just script out a few things and leave it at that to keep it more concise. Still really helpful nonetheless, thanks man!
papachubz yeah, if you look at my OoT tutorials they were much more scripted etc. I think in this case I hadn’t done a video in a while and just wanted to get it done. Some of my videos take days (OoT tutorial took months) so I just wanted to try to finish something in like 5-6 hours
waitwhat me too! Hopefully I don’t burn out LOL. But I’ve got easily 20-30 ideas and around 3 videos with scripts, footage etc in the works. Expect another upload this Sunday
can't believe i found a succinct and accessible argument as to why music theory is so crucial for any musician to learn in a super smash brothers melee tutorial lol
You skills on explaining things are so sharp. Not preachy or know-it-all like at all. Super clear explanation, everyone starting out and actually all players should watch this. Great video!
Everything you're explaining has already been explained and explored in the game of Chess. A lot of casuals think chess is just memorization or tactics 100% of the time but that simply isn't true. A lot of chess grandmasters are so strong consistently because they do something that's known as "Clumping" which is basically the ability to recognize certain positions and know more or less what's good vs bad in any given position. Melee works the same way. Creativity flows through the context of good options.
Great video and I really understand what you mean. However I think that as in jazz you do not only need the knowledge to improvise but also a feeling for the game and the other person. Maybe I'm not that good yet in order to implement these kind of things, but for me personally most of the fun I have playing is combining weird options with techskill in order to confuse my opponent. Loving the style of the video anyhow - thanks!
"certain moves make people end up close enough to continue a combo, and certain moves don't. so pick the moves that do if you want to combo and think they will DI for a combo, and pick the moves that don't if you want to finish a combo."
2:21 "I need to pick a grab that combos into shine, or a shine that combos into shine, grab, shine, shine, shine, s...." "... because those are all good ways to rack up damage."
neutral is super hard to analyze as a flowchart due to the enormous amount of options and mixups. the flowchart approach works very well for punish game and edgeguards, but imo netural is generally driven by reads and reactions. there are no "optimal" options. for sheik specifically, you're probably getting shield grabbed. to beat this, you can bait the sheiks shield by doing empty short hop > grab or run up > wavedash back
Whistlecube while there are a ton of options in neutral against any character, the point of this video extends to neutral as well. What I mean is that neutral often comes down to a player choosing an option, and the other player choosing an option that either wins or loses in the scenario. Knowing what beats what helps a fuck ton. For example, Sheik’s who f-tilt can be beaten out by run up wavedash down to bait it out. If you know the way to beat an option in neutral, you can read it and beat it. The problem is a lot of players don’t even know how to beat certain options. Low level players get dash dance grabbed and have no idea what overshooting an aerial is etc.. so learning is important
Whistlecube I realize you’re saying that you can’t flowchart it, which is sort of true, but the fact that you provided info on how to beat getting shield grabbed proves that knowledge plays an enourmous role in neutral. Just knowing CC percents make a big difference
Honestly this isn't how I got my combo game tbh although I think your method of developing is much better than mine. What I would do is for hours on end just watch melee combo videos and since I had nobody to play with I would sit around for hours until I could replicate every combo, and learn the nuances of each until I was able to interchange any extensions, enders, etc. At will, so I had all these combos but would be confused because they wouldn't work on people because I wouldn't mix them up at all because I was always going for the long extended combos that require hard DI in when my opponent always DI'd out. I asked around at my local and someone explained the concept of DI mixups and why those combos work. And pretty much ever since I've had a super strong combo game but my neutral needs work😅😅 what's the point of being able to kill you everytime I touch you if I can't touch you😂😂
This is the reason i can play like 10 different characters to reasonable level. Because once you get to a certain point.... you've seen it all before. (unfortunately this makes combos way less hype)
hakeembisiolu consistency in neutral and edguarding and reading the way people want to mix up DI vs your combos are very hype even once the realization hits that combos are finite at times. Higher level Melee is very hype becasue of neutral and mix-ups
Great videos. I disagree that melee comboes are creative. Unlike music, there are objective measurable differences between what you want to do. Comboes can be judged based on what damage/stocks and stage positioning they produce in a numerical way. The only thing that makes the answers not stagnent is how much risk (either with how much you'll get punished if wrong or with how few extra options you cover) you are willing to take with a read. So the bare minimum you get is the "optimal" combo that gets the most damage assuming the opponent reads everything you will do. This is the least risk optimal flow chart. However, there then may be other options where if you read that they won't make a certain decision or will make others, you may be able to get even more damage. And if you hard read exactly one choice you may be able to get far more damage. This may seem like the comboes become infinite, but they don't. If you chose one combo when another could have dealt more damage or resulted in better positioning for the same risk than it was objectively incorrect. The only difference between mango and old m2k is that mango kept the slider raised to higher risk reads for possibly greater reward, while old m2k kept the slider to low risk pretty much all the time. Mango isn't being more creative, he's being riskier. The other differences can occurre when people value damage vs positioning, or potential punish risk vs option coverage risk differently. Like how HBox will often not go for the guarunteed up-throw rest on a 0% fox for guarunteed 40 damage to instead opt for the uair into 50/50 rest from the stock. He values positioning into the 50/50 more than the extra damage. But I'd argue that that's just value engineering. Not creativity persay.
MichaelRadar Possibly. But I feel like if you're constantly trying to improvise comboes, you're going to be getting it objectively wrong allot more of the time. It's better to simply know the do follow ups so that you can decide risk reward from there. Improvising can work, just like how you can approach materials science like a potion's class. You're just going to be wrong more often.
___ I3ambi the thing is, you’re acting like there are guaranteed follow ups when there aren’t. There are a LOT of situations where it’s completely dependent on your opponents DI, so you have to improvise and decide which option you think they’re not prepared for. On the flip side, there are a lot of situations where the defender can go for stuff like SDI, assuming their opponent is gonna do something, but it could be the wrong call and screw them over.
___ I3ambi I’m not saying you should constantly improvise combos, but melee just isn’t a game where there are “correct” options for any given situation. There’s almost always a RPS/tactical wheel where you have to keep mixing it up to stay unpredictable. This applies to the neutral game as well, which it seems like you’re ignoring at the moment? Every great fighting game has this deep level of mixups
MichaelRadar There aren't objectively correct answers, but there are objectively wrong ones. If you could have gotten a larger punish on the exact same read for the same or lower risk than you simply chose the wrong option. That other punish would have been better in every way. The reason this is different from music is that music doesn't have objectives. You have to follow some basic rules, but beyond that it's just up to what you enjoy. For melee comboing however, there are only as many correct choices as there are options for the opponent and potential reads you could make. For a simple example lets say the opponent only has the options to di out or di in. Your "correct" options is to do the combo that gets the most damage while reacting to both options, do the combo that gets the most damage reading di in, or the combo that deals the most damage on di out. Many melee examples can get more complicated with some options covering multiple but not all choices, other benefits other than damage such as stage position gained to take into account, possible punishes on missed read... But the choices still stay small since any option that would make the same read/risk but gains you less is objectively wrong. The only things you ever take into account when comboing is how you value risk/reward, different types of reward, different types of risk, and then using those to react to the opponent where necessary. This is allot for sure, but none of it is creative. It's all either reactions or value engineering. So I don't see the creativity in melee's combo system, unless you consider the underlying rock paper scissors itself creative. And to that I'd simply say I disagree. Rps is tactical to me, not creative. I'm ignoring neutral game since your video wasn't claiming/assuming neutral game was creative. It was talking about punish game. But if you bring that up I don't think neutral game is creative either. It's also tactical.
Yup, this is why the TOP 5 players aka "Gods" are not even that skilled. They just have more game knowledge LOL. Any other scenario they get trashed, aka ESAM bodying Armada in the crew battle
um, no they are the most skilled and the most knowledgeable. When Armada loses to a lesser player its because he got outplayed, not because hes a worse player. Esam and Armada can play 20 sets in a row and armada wouldnt drop a single one.
they already played at summit 2 and armada got bodied in Fox vs Samus. His lack of knowledge in the matchup shouldve been overridden by his superior skill considering he was playing a Melee NOVICE.
Ask anyone, you';re the only person who thinks armada doesnt have skill he just has knowledge... Esam won a single game on a samus-advantaged stage. armada didnt adapt in time, but that doesnt mean he doesnt have skill.
Enemy Siren Esam is not a melee novice. Period. Solid fundamental smash skills carry over across all games, and he’s played melee a ton more than the majority of players. One game in a crew battle isn’t super impactful either.
People who don't play or fully understand jazz after years of playing usually have pre-conceived notions about it. Like the musicians are entirely playing something completely new Every time or they're just "noodling" all of the time. While on the contrary, for the most part, they are playing stuff they have probably played before. A good musician will be able to have some tricks like being familiar with scales and important tension and release between the changes and utilize them while improvising. But a great jazz musician will analyze things other jazz musicians have played to understand it at a deeper level, sometimes even deeper than the original musician intended. This way, the great musician can understand the tools available to him better and maybe even take the concepts used before and take them one step further.
This is true also with melee! We should all watch for fun, but also analyze what our favorite players are doing, understand WHY they're doing it, having that it in our pockets, and be practicing those techniques to not just use them on the spot, but to experiment with different ways of implementing them to your advantage.
Also, jazz musicians can't just be entirely focused on what THEY are playing during their solo. They also have to be listening carefully to what the other people are playing! During a sax solo, the piano player, drummer, and bassist are all providing complimentary patterns and responses to what the sax player is singing. The sax could play a lick that sounds like a question and in anticipation of the soloist playing a line that sounds like an answer, the rhythm section could work in unison to do a kick into the sax players incomi by line during a time where the soloist leaves some space. Or a pianist of guitar player, comping for the sax player, could slightly alter the harmonic support on the fly and the soloist will have to hear that and adapt to the altered chords being played and sing something that matches the specific substituted chords being used.
Once again this is a lot like melee. You can't just focused on your solo, i.e. your own movement, combos, and approaches. You have to watch carefully for what your opponent is doing i.e. how they move, combo, or approach. This hivemind-like interactivity between more than one human consciousness is the connection jazz and melee and really just so many other art forms. Really an amazing concept and I'd love to see more examples of it if you guys have any!
Awesome video, really great ideas coming through. Your intro was super well structured and drew me in, but when it came to the demos you sort of lingered on the same thing for a while, would probably help to just script out a few things and leave it at that to keep it more concise. Still really helpful nonetheless, thanks man!
papachubz yeah, if you look at my OoT tutorials they were much more scripted etc. I think in this case I hadn’t done a video in a while and just wanted to get it done. Some of my videos take days (OoT tutorial took months) so I just wanted to try to finish something in like 5-6 hours
This tutorial is GODLIKE. Thanks for the knowledge
Just found this channel and I'm thoroughly enjoying the content so far. Excited to see what's to come!
waitwhat me too! Hopefully I don’t burn out LOL. But I’ve got easily 20-30 ideas and around 3 videos with scripts, footage etc in the works. Expect another upload this Sunday
This is the type of channel we need in the melee community.
Finally the content I’ve always been looking for. Thanks so much!
Glad you like it! New video out tomorrow :D
can't believe i found a succinct and accessible argument as to why music theory is so crucial for any musician to learn in a super smash brothers melee tutorial lol
"just learn tab bro"
Barf
real
a cool way to think of opponents is see them as their own Key for any music majors out there
You skills on explaining things are so sharp. Not preachy or know-it-all like at all. Super clear explanation, everyone starting out and actually all players should watch this. Great video!
Ok this 5 years videos just help me so much lmao thanks
Everything you're explaining has already been explained and explored in the game of Chess. A lot of casuals think chess is just memorization or tactics 100% of the time but that simply isn't true. A lot of chess grandmasters are so strong consistently because they do something that's known as "Clumping" which is basically the ability to recognize certain positions and know more or less what's good vs bad in any given position. Melee works the same way. Creativity flows through the context of good options.
"When you fail think of something that will succeed." And that's how I won my first local. Though that was years ago
Your channel is producing my favorite melee content right now thanks so much for the guide!
One of the best videos on learning melee I've seen.
Great video and I really understand what you mean. However I think that as in jazz you do not only need the knowledge to improvise but also a feeling for the game and the other person.
Maybe I'm not that good yet in order to implement these kind of things, but for me personally most of the fun I have playing is combining weird options with techskill in order to confuse my opponent.
Loving the style of the video anyhow - thanks!
"certain moves make people end up close enough to continue a combo, and certain moves don't. so pick the moves that do if you want to combo and think they will DI for a combo, and pick the moves that don't if you want to finish a combo."
“And if you have a guaranteed way to kill them, you can always go for that.”
Love your videos as an aspiring falco main, you are the freakin man.
what you've explained is something ive thought about, but never really thought to practice until now. thanks for the tutorial :P
2:21 "I need to pick a grab that combos into shine, or a shine that combos into shine, grab, shine, shine, shine, s...." "... because those are all good ways to rack up damage."
well done
good content. helpful for new players
Fantastic video
Very good video
Your content is great!
dope stuff
damn you're good. Sub hype
Amazing
thx ma guy
Sick
can you help me with Fox flowcharts against Sheik in neutral? I get grabbed killed 9 out of 10 times
neutral is super hard to analyze as a flowchart due to the enormous amount of options and mixups. the flowchart approach works very well for punish game and edgeguards, but imo netural is generally driven by reads and reactions. there are no "optimal" options. for sheik specifically, you're probably getting shield grabbed. to beat this, you can bait the sheiks shield by doing empty short hop > grab or run up > wavedash back
See me in top 8. Thanks mate. I'll go practice and come back with another question later
Whistlecube while there are a ton of options in neutral against any character, the point of this video extends to neutral as well.
What I mean is that neutral often comes down to a player choosing an option, and the other player choosing an option that either wins or loses in the scenario. Knowing what beats what helps a fuck ton.
For example, Sheik’s who f-tilt can be beaten out by run up wavedash down to bait it out. If you know the way to beat an option in neutral, you can read it and beat it. The problem is a lot of players don’t even know how to beat certain options. Low level players get dash dance grabbed and have no idea what overshooting an aerial is etc.. so learning is important
Whistlecube I realize you’re saying that you can’t flowchart it, which is sort of true, but the fact that you provided info on how to beat getting shield grabbed proves that knowledge plays an enourmous role in neutral. Just knowing CC percents make a big difference
ya like Jazz?
Honestly this isn't how I got my combo game tbh although I think your method of developing is much better than mine. What I would do is for hours on end just watch melee combo videos and since I had nobody to play with I would sit around for hours until I could replicate every combo, and learn the nuances of each until I was able to interchange any extensions, enders, etc. At will, so I had all these combos but would be confused because they wouldn't work on people because I wouldn't mix them up at all because I was always going for the long extended combos that require hard DI in when my opponent always DI'd out. I asked around at my local and someone explained the concept of DI mixups and why those combos work. And pretty much ever since I've had a super strong combo game but my neutral needs work😅😅 what's the point of being able to kill you everytime I touch you if I can't touch you😂😂
This is the reason i can play like 10 different characters to reasonable level. Because once you get to a certain point.... you've seen it all before. (unfortunately this makes combos way less hype)
hakeembisiolu consistency in neutral and edguarding and reading the way people want to mix up DI vs your combos are very hype even once the realization hits that combos are finite at times.
Higher level Melee is very hype becasue of neutral and mix-ups
Great videos.
I disagree that melee comboes are creative. Unlike music, there are objective measurable differences between what you want to do. Comboes can be judged based on what damage/stocks and stage positioning they produce in a numerical way. The only thing that makes the answers not stagnent is how much risk (either with how much you'll get punished if wrong or with how few extra options you cover) you are willing to take with a read. So the bare minimum you get is the "optimal" combo that gets the most damage assuming the opponent reads everything you will do. This is the least risk optimal flow chart. However, there then may be other options where if you read that they won't make a certain decision or will make others, you may be able to get even more damage. And if you hard read exactly one choice you may be able to get far more damage.
This may seem like the comboes become infinite, but they don't. If you chose one combo when another could have dealt more damage or resulted in better positioning for the same risk than it was objectively incorrect. The only difference between mango and old m2k is that mango kept the slider raised to higher risk reads for possibly greater reward, while old m2k kept the slider to low risk pretty much all the time. Mango isn't being more creative, he's being riskier.
The other differences can occurre when people value damage vs positioning, or potential punish risk vs option coverage risk differently. Like how HBox will often not go for the guarunteed up-throw rest on a 0% fox for guarunteed 40 damage to instead opt for the uair into 50/50 rest from the stock. He values positioning into the 50/50 more than the extra damage. But I'd argue that that's just value engineering. Not creativity persay.
___ I3ambi kinda feels like you’re under valuing how important DI mixups are and how that adds a constant improvisation to melee decision making
MichaelRadar Possibly. But I feel like if you're constantly trying to improvise comboes, you're going to be getting it objectively wrong allot more of the time. It's better to simply know the do follow ups so that you can decide risk reward from there.
Improvising can work, just like how you can approach materials science like a potion's class. You're just going to be wrong more often.
___ I3ambi the thing is, you’re acting like there are guaranteed follow ups when there aren’t. There are a LOT of situations where it’s completely dependent on your opponents DI, so you have to improvise and decide which option you think they’re not prepared for. On the flip side, there are a lot of situations where the defender can go for stuff like SDI, assuming their opponent is gonna do something, but it could be the wrong call and screw them over.
___ I3ambi I’m not saying you should constantly improvise combos, but melee just isn’t a game where there are “correct” options for any given situation. There’s almost always a RPS/tactical wheel where you have to keep mixing it up to stay unpredictable. This applies to the neutral game as well, which it seems like you’re ignoring at the moment? Every great fighting game has this deep level of mixups
MichaelRadar There aren't objectively correct answers, but there are objectively wrong ones. If you could have gotten a larger punish on the exact same read for the same or lower risk than you simply chose the wrong option. That other punish would have been better in every way.
The reason this is different from music is that music doesn't have objectives. You have to follow some basic rules, but beyond that it's just up to what you enjoy. For melee comboing however, there are only as many correct choices as there are options for the opponent and potential reads you could make.
For a simple example lets say the opponent only has the options to di out or di in. Your "correct" options is to do the combo that gets the most damage while reacting to both options, do the combo that gets the most damage reading di in, or the combo that deals the most damage on di out. Many melee examples can get more complicated with some options covering multiple but not all choices, other benefits other than damage such as stage position gained to take into account, possible punishes on missed read... But the choices still stay small since any option that would make the same read/risk but gains you less is objectively wrong. The only things you ever take into account when comboing is how you value risk/reward, different types of reward, different types of risk, and then using those to react to the opponent where necessary. This is allot for sure, but none of it is creative. It's all either reactions or value engineering.
So I don't see the creativity in melee's combo system, unless you consider the underlying rock paper scissors itself creative. And to that I'd simply say I disagree. Rps is tactical to me, not creative.
I'm ignoring neutral game since your video wasn't claiming/assuming neutral game was creative. It was talking about punish game. But if you bring that up I don't think neutral game is creative either. It's also tactical.
Yup, this is why the TOP 5 players aka "Gods" are not even that skilled. They just have more game knowledge LOL. Any other scenario they get trashed, aka ESAM bodying Armada in the crew battle
um, no they are the most skilled and the most knowledgeable. When Armada loses to a lesser player its because he got outplayed, not because hes a worse player. Esam and Armada can play 20 sets in a row and armada wouldnt drop a single one.
they already played at summit 2 and armada got bodied in Fox vs Samus. His lack of knowledge in the matchup shouldve been overridden by his superior skill considering he was playing a Melee NOVICE.
it was a single game and in a crew battle, not a set in bracket. Esam would get raped lmao
Ask anyone, you';re the only person who thinks armada doesnt have skill he just has knowledge... Esam won a single game on a samus-advantaged stage. armada didnt adapt in time, but that doesnt mean he doesnt have skill.
Enemy Siren Esam is not a melee novice. Period. Solid fundamental smash skills carry over across all games, and he’s played melee a ton more than the majority of players. One game in a crew battle isn’t super impactful either.