Pitch relevance (Also known as PR) is the practice of placing notes in relation to the pitch of a sound. A very simple example of this would be something akin to ascending pitch in music. If the sound you're charting is Ascending, you would naturally feel like putting the notes in a 1234 formation, shown below:
This practice is an integral part of charting, that every charter uses in some way shape or form. It's a universal technique that will make your chart feel better instantly, something that would classify as one of the fundamentals of charting. Pitch Relevance can cause patterning that feels slightly wrong to turn into something that feels satisfying to play. I'll show an example below of a none-PR'd section of a chart, alongside the same chart, but with PR applied
Without Pitch Relevance
With Pitch Relevance
As you can see, just applying PR made a world of difference in how the chart felt to watch, and if you tapped along too, you'd have noticed that it also felt much nicer to play, despite the layering, structure and style being the exact same, just the change of PR from incorrect to correct made it feel much more polished and correct.
There is no one correct way to chart PR that everyone uses, but there are a few approaches that are a lot more common and accepted. For this page I will only discuss my own approach, as I can't speak for other charters, only myself.
The way I personally use pitch relevance, is that I chart relative to the sound that came before. So while the sound overall may be ascending in tone, I will only focus on the sound that came before the one I'm currently charting. This lets me keep the PR feeling accurate without forcing me to look at the big picture for every single section. The downside with my approach is that notes as a whole can sometimes feel slightly off-pitch, but with solid layering, that can be mitigated.
Getting the hang of being able to recognise the pitch changes can be tricky at first, but its a skill that comes with practice, and once you have it, it stays with you permanantly. A good place to start is to pick a song that has super clear, loud pitch changes and try to follow those very gradually, constantly playing it back and checking bit by bit if the notes match the pitch of the sounds. Don't worry if you don't get it immediately, keep trying and it'll come to you eventually!