Mapper Profile: Fruhead

You can take the professor out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the professor. This week’s mapper profile features a frequent face answering mapping questions in Discord or on video, Fruhead!

Q. What inspired you to start mapping?

A. I teach college chemistry labs, and because I always hated working in silence (even when I worked in a professional lab), I always have music playing. I had been playing Beat Saber for a while before I started mapping, so after being exposed to a lot of different music I’d check to see if some of the more catchy songs were mapped. However a number of them either weren’t mapped well, or not even mapped at all. I also wasn’t too thrilled about many of my favorite artists or genres not being available either, namely rock and metal. Eventually there was one song that got stuck in my head, and I started to have ideas forming of how I’d want to play it if it was mapped, or what I wanted the lights to look like. 

And so one day during winter break between semesters, I just sat down and started looking up guides and info about how to make maps, and got to work on mapping that song.”

Q. What are your preferred genres of music to map?

A. Rock, Nightcore, Pop, Vocaloid, Alternative, Metal, Weeb

Q. Are there any other things besides mapping that you’re involved with in the Beat Saber community?

A. I do a lot of mapping support in BSMG, mainly with answering general mapping questions and setup, as well as play-testing. I also recently released an updated lecture-style video Tutorial series to get started with mapping.

Q. Can you talk about what made you want to jump into the tutorial world and what sort of planning and production effort it took to get something like that off the ground?

A. After a number of format and editor changes, the older tutorials began to show their age. While they still have useful information for mappers, it became a common occurrence in the BSMG discord to fix some of the issues that began to crop up. Either using out of date editors, or incorrect setup for the new editors, or convoluted audio setup, etc. After a while, a large majority of our support was dedicated strictly to just correcting errors form the old tutorials, and pointing people instead to the recently revamped wiki pages.

Since it’s gotten to the point where I seem to say always something that ends up becoming a macro for people to use for mapping support, one night I offhandedly joked, “I should do a tutorial series” or ” so who’s waiting to see a fruhead tutorial series”, something along those lines. Turns out a lot of people thought I’d be good for one. And since I have several years of teaching and tutoring experience, I figured I might as well give it a shot.

In terms of creating the series, I first started with outlines for each of the videos, and what topics I’d like to cover. While discussing the series with some of the other mapping support staff, I joked that “I should just make a video of me reading people the wiki”, since a majority of the support was people being unfamiliar with the wiki, or just refusing/not wanting to read it. Even though it was a joke, I did want to make sure that information about the wiki did get out there, so I made sure to reference it whenever possible. Initially I didn’t intend them to be “too” long, but subconsciously I ended up having them follow a standard lecture series in terms of each video length, where each one ended up being the length of a normal lecture period.

The recording process itself was relatively basic. Just have my outline of what I wanted to discuss up, start off discussing relevant wiki pages, and then just get into showing people the mapping process from start to finish. Since I didn’t have access to any true video editing software, I worked with HelenCarnate and Bloodcloak to touch things up as needed. They worked through trimming sections as needed, clipping/re-ordering a few sections around, re-dubbing or adding in new recordings as I needed to make them, and made it look pretty with pop ups and sounds. 

Once it was all done, I wrote up the descriptions and made up thumbnails, got their feedback on it all, then it was off to YouTube and sharing it everywhere we could to try to make it as visible as possible. Right now it’s still not quite as noticeable or visible as the older series in standard searches, but it’s getting there.

Q. Which of your maps are you most proud of or is your favorite?

A. Geez, why don’t you also ask a parent who their favorite child is. This one is a bit too hard to narrow down to just one, so I’ll just give a brief bit about a few of the ones at the top of my list.

Teeth – 5 Seconds of Summer This one was my first attempt at using Chroma light effects. I went into this map with a clearly defined goal of what I wanted the lights to do (namely, trying to mirror some of the effects and color schemes present in the official music video). While the lighting was the easy part, mapping the song itself proved to be a bit of a challenge since the song was pretty repetitive, so I had to be a bit more creative with the pattern use in order to avoid it being too boring. Namely, by changing up the lane drifts when following along with the drifting bass line that was present throughout the entire song.

Welcome to the Club (Nightcore) – Manian I was really surprised with how quickly this map took off in terms of popularity. I tried to capture the feel of a club/rave type dance throughout the song. This can really be seen with the use of single saber circles, as well as “fist pumping” and “hands in the air” hits in some sections.

Butcher’s Mouth – Emery This band is hands down one of my most favorite bands of all time. The band last year created a fan-service discord to have interactions with their fan community, and one day while talking with other fans, I asked what song they’d want to see be in a rhythm game. And one of the band members chimed in and suggested this song, so of course if anyone had a say in what gets mapped, it’d be them. While in terms of the Beat Saber community the map hasn’t gotten much attention (and there’s some patterns during the verses I would’ve done differently looking back on it), I still have the screenshots when I showed some videos of it to the fan discord, and once again some band members chimed in with how cool they thought it was.”

Q. If you could go back in time and talk to yourself as a new mapper, what is the #1 piece of advice you would give?

A. For the love of god, MAKE SURE THE SONG IS PROPERLY ALIGNED AND TIMED BEFORE YOU GET STARTED!!!!

On my first map, I spent so much time trying to fix the timing of it. Wrong offset, wrong BPM, just so many off time blocks. However this was before we had AV and the like to sort out timing, so it was a bit harder to do. Thankfully times have changed now.”

Q. If there was an Amazon.com-style “Recommended Mappers” section, who would you show up under as “If you like [so and so], you’d also like [your name]”?

A. Since I tend to aim more towards a dancey style, I’d imagine I’d be under the likes of majorpickle, techbutterfly, Bloodcloak, or Kolezan

Q. Do you have a signature pattern that you use in all/most of your maps?

A. Yes, but I tend to have “signature pattern ADD”. For a while it was groove walls, or it was figure 8’s, or it was rising jumps. For a bit at the start of my mapping, I also did a “crouch wall, but set up to be done as a bow at the end”. However, I think I was the only one who was doing it as a bow. Most playthroughs I’ve seen, they just did a crouch.

Q. What, in your opinion, is the single most challenging thing for a new mapper to master in order to be successful?

A. After playing a number of first time maps as a tester, there’s not one definitive issue, but a series of issues. It’s either over-emphasis and they’re adding doubles in everywhere, or awkward 90 degree transitions, or the usual parity/flow issues.

I think most of the issues tend to be biased due to a new mappers play style, especially if they themselves are also a relatively new player. I touched a bit on this in the “Parity and Flow” tutorial video, but I believe the problem is mainly due to them either referencing really old maps, or being unaware of proper scoring mechanics of the game itself. Hits and patterns that work fine for block tapping arm play do not translate well to more standardized flow techniques.

This is why that specific video was recorded after the initial tutorial series release. A number of new mappers still struggled with understanding parity and flow, especially in regards to “forehand vs backhand” hits, and how it relates with “arm vs wrist” play. For a while it became a running joke in the BSMG mapping discussion channel, where everyday there was a “fruhead’s Lecture on Parity and Flow.”

Q. What style of maps do you most enjoy playing when you play for fun?

A. I generally aim for the more dancey/bouncey maps to play. I don’t mind a little techy style maps though, as long as they’re not “too” fast.

Q. If you’ve mapped for rank or are on the ranking team, what would you say to encourage other mappers to consider ranking?

A. Honestly, I haven’t much cared for ranked maps (both in terms of mapping ranked, or playing ranked). It’s not really my target audience I’m considering when I map, or maps I specifically look to play. I just map and play to have fun, regardless of some arbitrary global leader-board.

Q. Do you believe that the mapping ‘meta’ is currently in a healthy state? If not, what do you feel would help to bring the ‘meta’ to a good place?

A. Similarly to the ranking question, I’ve never really cared much about “meta” mapping, both in following with what the meta is or trying to map to fit the meta. I think for a while it was nothing but sliders, or nothing but speedy/complex sustained streams. I personally feel trying to map to a specific arbitrary meta is harmful to mapping. You’re just too focused on trying to force a map fit a specific meta, or only mapping songs that could be in that meta. I just like to map a song, and let it unfold however it unfolds to capture the feel of the song.

Q. Is there a mapping practice that most mappers frown upon, that you happen to think can be used really well in the right hands?

A. The One True God: The Triangle :elmrise: . I know a lot of people complain about them, but they can be super fun when used appropriately. Namely, when the map or section is slow enough that the player can work through the (sometimes) awkward rotations, and re-set comfortably. The same can be said about double directionals and other resets as well. So many people call them out religiously, but honestly, as long as you have time to do the reset, and it makes sense in context, they’re totally fine to use.

insert LHS (Left-Hand Streams) hate joke I see Freeek get a lot of hate for these as well. I feel bad saying this, but honestly, it’s just something players need to get better at.

Q. Are there any practices from “Ye Olde Days” of mapping that you’d like to see make a reappearance?

A. I feel dirty saying this, but sometimes I do miss spirals. However, I have seen some slider set ups that can work well to capture the same feel of it, just without the scoring issues that spirals had.

Q. What does your mapping process look like?

A. First I’m always keeping an eye out for songs that I think would be fun to play. Once I start to have a general idea for what I want it to be (either pattern ideas for a section start to jump out, or something I want to see done with the lights), then I’ll get started with actually mapping it.

The first thing I work on is the lights. While I don’t go aggressive/insane with my lighting and have a more reserved style, I still aim to have the lights capture the energy and feel of a song. I’ll plan out what effects I want to be mapped to certain instruments, and start placing them in. If there’s a specific tone shift or musical progression, I’ll aim to try to capture that feeling with the lights (bouncing from one effect to another, ring spins, etc). As a final check, I’ll preview them in game to make sure it’s doing what I originally envisioned, and adjust stuff as I need to.

Once I have the lights done, they in essence work as my timing notes for when I place the actual map blocks (another benefit to mapping certain events to certain sounds, since now I know the different timings for different sounds). From this point, this is where I actually end up struggling with ideas more. With lights, I can be a bit more creative with what I want to do, but with the blocks, I feel more limited. However, I still follow the same logic. As I’m listening to the song, I’m keeping an eye out for something to capture the essence of the song. What identifies this song when you hear it, what part of it makes you feel the song (is it a catchy back beat? is it the vocals? is there some sort of note progression or harmony that jumps out?). 

Once I have that identified, I aim to have the blocks capture that same feeling. I want to have the patterns have that same energy as your playing it. If there’s a specific back and forth harmony, I’ll have the player jump back and forth from one lane to another (either with walls or with streams on one side and then the other). If the energy is picking up, I’ll start to use jumps to capture that feeling of growth. I want the players motions to perfectly emulate and mirror what the song is doing.

Then finally, it’s just a matter of getting the map tested and adjusting things as I need to. The worst part is once the map is officially released, and then the inherent dread sets in of “did I fix everything I needed to fix? Will the map be well received? Did I make it too boring? Will players play it the way I intended them to?” Though I think that’s just impostor syndrome kicking in.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like the Beat Saber community to know about you, your mapping style, or your thoughts on the game itself?

A. My discord profile picture and my Beat Saber avatar are both from my FFXIV character. No, it is not a space marine from Warhammer (I still don’t understand how people thought that at first). Also, I volunteer at a charity haunted house every year in the fall. Because of that mixed with an overall busy semester, I tend to be less active in the channels during that time frame.


Thanks for reading! Have a question for Fru? Hit them up in the comments!

Is there a mapper you’d like to see profiled? Message HelenCarnate or Pyrowarfare here or on Discord and we’ll find out if they’re interested!

This article has been lightly edited for content, grammar, and clarity.

Comments (2)
  1. Smarti0101 says:

    Fruhead mapped one of my favorite songs….. Eisenfunk – Pong. I played many of his songs, and they are mapped fantastic.

    I should take a look at his new Songs 🙂

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