Some music theory and enemy patterns

Premise: I'm not good at explaining stuff, especially music theory (despite currently studying jazz at a music conservatory)

Music is a subject that's easier to understand in practice than in theory, but nonetheless I thought it was worth a shot to make a simple guide (my first steam guide btw), since I haven't seen any guides on the subject.

I used Sibelius to write a few rhythmic patterns, focusing on triplets (armadillos) in particular, since they're usually misunderstood.

IMPORTANT
Notes on the beat are not numbered to better represent what the editor shows; beats are divided like this:
"0" 1/2
"0" 1/3 2/3
"0" 1/4 2/4 3/4
and so on, where the "0" is the beat number in the chart.

I might add/change stuff based on feedback, enjoy!

I used a quarter note (or crotchet) to represent one beat, we don't care about time signatures here.
Shielded skeletons divide the beat in two, thus they're represented by eighth notes (or quavers)
Double shielded skeletons have the same subdivision, but need an extra hit, so they span two beats.

Pay attention to the shadows under the enemies: for example, you will find many situations where the second hit of a skeleton syncs with the first hit of another.
Note: this can apply to any enemy that requires multiple hits, but shielded skeletons are the most common example

Sixteenth notes (or semiquavers) divide the beat into 4: they can be created by offsetting monsters by 1/4 of a beat.
This can be usually seen with pairs of shielded skeletons: the star shadows help you identify which monster is on the 1/4 and 3/4 of the beat.

There they are, the armadillos! Run away as fast as you can!
Just kidding, they're actually really fun, who doesn't love a good swing or shuffle?

They divide the beat into 3, thus corresponding to a triplet.
They have three main positions: on beat, offset by 1/3 and offset by 2/3. (They can have other offsets, but we'll see that in the next section)
The first thing you need to be careful of is how offset they are from the beat, since both 1/3 offset and 2/3 offset have a star shadow underneath, thus harder to distinguish, you'll have an eye for it eventually.

Armadillos can be offset by a sixth of a beat to create faster triplets with sixteenth notes, similarly to shielded skeletons.
Sextuplets are very fast, so you can either use two hands or, if you don't care about accuracy, you can kinda cheese the patterns by hitting the two armadillos at the same time.

Look out for patterns that feature armadillos alternating in different lanes, especially the red ones, since they're very commonly used as an alternative way to make triplets over the yellow variant, as it puts less pressure on the hands.


Another less commonly used pattern is the triplet made of quarter notes, which spans over two beats.
It's usually made with red armadillos, either placed one after the other or, similarly to the previous shielded skeleton example, with the second hit synced to the first hit of the following one

Have you ever seen a red armadillo randomly thrown in a song that has a straight, even 8ths rhythm (no swing, no shuffle, no triplets) and thought: "that doesn't look/feel right"?

And you'd be correct: the tresillo is a 3-3-2 pattern that you might find incorrectly charted using a red armadillo, either due to charter's inexperience or because they didn't use 12 beat subdivision in the editor, causing all the armadillos in the chart to behave differently (I recommend checking out bun's editor guide for more info on this).
Using a red armadillo in this pattern makes it slightly imprecise rhythmically (a 1/12 discrepancy is not that much but it can still throw someone off) and also makes it look kinda weird, so be careful with that.

Alright, that went over pretty quickly.

I hope this short guide was helpful, and if you have any suggestions or you want me to add an explanation for any particular pattern feel free to ask and I'll see what I can do in my spare time.

Cheers!