Charting styles refers to the various types of charting each person has. In this page specifically I will be going over chart types, such as "Accurate", "Scoring", "Dump" and others, so that you can better understand what style you're most interested in persuing.
Charting Styles are useful for helping you figure out what you want to do with a song, but they're also super useful for knowing who you're catering to, if not for yourself, as players like to only play charts that are within their comfort zone. For example, if someone plays a lot of jumpstream, there's a chance they won't want to play jack charts, and as such if you're charting for people who play scoring charts a lot, you'd want to avoid certain types of patterning.
Also known as 'technical charting', is a style of charting where you focus on making the chart as accurate to the music as possible. This style of charting is what people would traditionally think of when they think of making files to songs. It produces very unorthodox patterns and often uses very rigid structuring where it strictly follows Pitch Relevance, but there are exceptions. A good Example of an accurate chart would be "Vegetable Soup" in "Untitled Stepmania Pack", part of which is shown below:
A scoring chart refers to any chart made with the purpose of scoring in mind, usually focused on pushing rates or improving your skill. These charts are what makes up the vast majority of overall charts in the game, and are by far the most played types of charts. They come in many different shapes and sizes, such as Jumpstream charts, Handstream charts, or even just Stream charts (Which sometimes can overlap with dumping below). These charts get designed specifically to be friendly and uprateable. This style is categorised by its use of jumptrills, roll walls, friendly patterns, and long stamina draining segments, and often have nothing in them that would cause a player to slip up beyond their own pure stamina or ability to keep up with what's on screen. A good example of a scoring chart would be Etterna's most played chart, "Cyber Induction" from "Nuclear Blast JS Awesome Bomb Filez 4", part of which is shown below:
Dumps are the Etterna community's name for "overcharting", if you come from other rhythm games. They're essencially charting that focuses on expressing the song in a more abstract way, and are born from the need to have harder charts for players to play. Dumps often times express sounds through patterns instead of single notes, and have abstract charting theorum such as 'Literal theory', where the chart will do exactly what the lyrics say. For example, if a song says "Down", then the charter would place a down-arrow jack or anchor, or 'Colour theory', where charters use the snap colours in Etterna to represent something in the music, such as making all the notes cyan/blue for the sound of water. Dumps can fall into a couple of catagories, such as "Freeform" dumping, where charts are more abstract and have less structure involved, "Structured" dumping, where the charts have more structure to them and represent the music more accurately while remaining dumped or (This is a lesser used term since they're often lumped in with scoring files) "Speed" dumps, where the chart is focused entirely on being push material similar to scoring charts. A good example of a dump would be "ACIDGLINT" from "Valedumps 4", part of which is shown below:
Gimmick charts are much rarer than the styles discussed above, however they are unique enough that they often get classified as their own thing, even if the patterning itself is just like other styles. Gimmick charts can involve anything that makes the chart have a unique skill required, or something that the entire chart revolves around. For example, minedodge. If the entire chart revolves around dodging mines, the chart becomes a minedodge chart, which is a style of gimmick chart. There are many different styles, but the ones that are prominent as of 2024, are Minedodge charts, xmod charts (Where the BPM messes with the chart) lua charts (where someone has used lua to program gimmicks), fake charts (Where someone places fakes as the chart's identity, gaining traction now), mineart charts (Where someone uses mines to make art on the chart, and the actual notes aren't the focus). There are other styles, but those 3 are the types of gimmick charts that are scattered throughout the game the most frequently. The rest are very obscure. A good example of a gimmick chart would be "#GOTO" from "Shattered Paradise", part of which is shown below: