Pedagogical Applications of the Video Game Dance Dance Revolution

Pedagogy of DDR 1

“Pedagogical Applications of the Video Game Dance Dance Revolution to the Undergraduate Aural Skills Classroom”

Brent Auerbach, Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting – Los Angeles November 3, 2006

Introduction:

I will begin with a confession: in all my many years as an aural skills instructor, I have never dedicated sufficient class time or energy to accurate rhythmic performance. Of course, I teach and regularly employ rhythm syllables in conjunction with sight- singing. Without exception, my students are required to conduct during sung improvisation or when singing back their transcriptions. Yet for all this, rhythm in my classes – and I suspect I am not alone in this regard – is taken somewhat for granted. Pitch accuracy is weighted more heavily on my tests than is rhythmic accuracy. I routinely will spend an entire hour introducing new pitch topics, but rarely will I spend as much time practicing a rhythmic skill. If such occurs, the drill serves as an inconsistent stopgap measure: to prevent errors in a pitch exercise, I might have my class scan and briefly practice a limited set of recurring or tricky rhythms. My reasons for giving short shrift to rhythm are many. For one, it is difficult to give students focused feedback about rhythmic accuracy unless it given during playback of recorded performances. More significantly, there are only so many strategies one can call upon to enliven pure rhythm reading. Rogers (1994) suggests student competitions and “rhythm extractions” from melodies in the literature, while Hall (2003) recommends having groups of students share rhythmic performances via the alternation of measures. These techniques work well, but after months of employ, it is my experience that students still will eventually tire of practicing rhythm wholly in the absence of pitch. And such is understandable: though the perfect execution of a theoretical exercise on tapping or “ta” Pedagogy of DDR 2 can offer a flash of satisfaction, the endeavor rarely qualifies as a moving musical experience. With conventional approaches to rhythm drilling leaving something to be desired, I have decided to incorporate into my aural skills curricula a new form of Computer Aided Instruction, a video game developed by Konami called Dance Dance Revolution (abbreviated DDR). To play DDR, a participant stands on a controller pad with arrow buttons as shown in Fig. 1 while facing a monitor that gives timed instructions as to which buttons the feet should press (up-down-left-right, or some combination thereof). These instructions are non-verbal, existing as a set of upward-scrolling arrows that smoothly approach and pass through a pulsing “step zone” at the top of the screen (Fig. 2). The spacing and coloring of the arrows and the rate at which they intersect the step zone signal the moment to depress a button. All attacks are perfectly coordinated with the pulses and rhythms of Electronic Dance Music tunes.1 My assistant, Shannon, will demonstrate the basics of game play. In her performance of the song “Spin the Disc,” you will note that the game automatically assigns for each attack points and an accuracy grade that ranges from “Perfect,” through “Great, Good, Bad, and Boo.” The game cheers strong performances and heckles those that are sub-par! [Demonstration 1 – about 1 minute] One’s first viewing of the game generally produces at two reactions. As human beings, we respond initially with intrigue and likely a degree of amusement. DDR is designed to create a public spectacle, which results partly from the music and psychedelic visuals, but mostly from its unique interface – the entire body (or perhaps two, moving in unison). Capitalizing on the natural wow-factor of the game, network television programs such as King of the Hill, Will and Grace, and Malcolm in the Middle have included it as a major plot point in episodes. But more importantly, as musicians, we are immediately struck by the sheer musicality of the game design. DDR models the experience of translating a visual score into a performance onto a most simplified keyboard instrument. The “instrument” is the

1 The insistent, metronomic beat of this type of music, which Butler (2003, 86) terms “four-on-the-floor,” is just the first of many characteristics that suggest the game’s relevance to rhythmic drilling. Pedagogy of DDR 3 dance pad, which consists of only four notes and is played with the feet.2 The score is oriented vertically and scrolls, allowing only a limited portion of the whole to be viewed at any time. The obvious advantage of this arrangement is that the game necessarily fosters good sight-reading habits. Players cannot possibly keep their eyes narrowly focused on the step zone and successfully perform the complex dance patterns. Rather, they must continually scan the lower portions of the screen, processing or “chunking” groups of arrows into what are – in almost every case – recurring patterns of “pitch” and rhythm. Let us examine these patterns a bit further. Clues to the parsing of rhythmic shapes in the game come in two forms: the spacing of the arrows and the coloring of the arrows (again, see Fig. 2). As a rule: attacks occurring on the beat are signaled by red arrows and those on the offbeat are given by blue arrows. Yellow arrows signify hits on the second and fourth sixteenths of a beat, and green arrows are reserved for triplets. A last type of arrow, which is green and elongated, indicates that a step is to be held for a certain duration. Let us have a group performance now: Shannon will perform “Overblast” while we all conduct and recite the attacks. Our solfege will logically consist of the syllables “up,” “down,” “left,” “right,” and “jump” if any two-note attacks appear. While we play, note how a coherent dance routine is created: a set number of rhythms recur, in which arrow groups either return exactly or are varied by operations such as mirror inversion over an axis. [Demonstration: 1 full minute] The normal gameplay of DDR allows players to choose routines from three general graded levels, which in this version of the game are denoted by the terms “Light,” “Standard,” and “Heavy.” (More detailed information is provided about a song’s difficulty once one moves beyond this screen). For gamers, this breakdown is highly functional. For aural skills instructors, however, it is more useful to think of routines drilling either “Beat-based” or “Rhythm-based” skills (see Fig. 3). Beat-based songs are more basic, wherein attacks coincide exclusively or almost so with the beat, meaning that the player will see only red arrows. The benefits of practicing routines in this format are

2 The issue of transforming the game controller into a music playing device such that “winning” (as in gaming) becomes “nuanced feedback” (as in music) is investigated in detail by Blaine (2005, 27-8). Such overlap is the central innovation underlying the current Toy Symphony Project at M.I.T. Pedagogy of DDR 4 many. First, it is a major leap to translate cognitive understanding of the arrow patterns into effortless performance: it takes a bit of time – typically 1-3 practice sessions – before players can comfortably navigate the DDR pad without losing their balance or needing to look down. Yet even seasoned players can benefit from continued work on “beat-based” songs. In a song with fewer attacks, the challenge is generally not to move prematurely. One must groove quietly in the middle, feeling the pulse, before it is time to reach out and tap an arrow with the foot. Learning to play this waiting game is an essential lesson, perhaps the essential lesson of mature musicianship: all performers must learn to subjugate their nerves and excitement to proper execution in time. In contrast are the more advanced routines that I classify as “Rhythm-based.” For songs in this category, arrows explicitly direct a performance of syncopated rhythmic shapes, as for the song “Deep in You” performed at Standard level. In watching the performance, note again the patterns are highly repetitive, offering players multiple opportunities to internalize them. Thus we observe a remarkable teaching tool for drilling syncopated rhythms – drilling which can now occur outside of the classroom, leaving instructors to cover more material. [Demonstration 3 –The syncopated rhythm is counted as “1 2 3 and uh ee and”]

Curriculum Implementation:

If an aural skills instructor is interested in including DDR as an element of class, there are a number of approaches to consider. The lowest level of commitment involves showing the class the game, discussing its merits, and perhaps offering extra credit for DDR pursuits undertaken outside the classroom. A field trip to a DDR machine is often feasible for those teaching at large schools with sizable student centers. More realistically – and this is something I tried last Spring with great success – is to offer a group DDR session in a public space such as a small auditorium (see Fig. 4). Because the output of the PlayStation2 is simple AV cables, it is easy to bring dance pads and a console and to plug directly into a projection system as I am doing here today. Participants dance on stage facing the screen, while the waiting players sit in the Pedagogy of DDR 5 audience, shouting encouragement and clapping the beat. Extra credit can be offered for participating in these sessions or for victories in head-to-head matches. Significantly more benefit will be reaped for classes that include a full-scale curriculum of DDR, complete with assignments and exams. But then, if we require all our students to practice the game on a weekly basis, it is necessary to provide an on- campus resource for their study: A DDR lab. This year, the University of Massachusetts’s Subcommittee on Academic Technology, has graciously provided support for the establishment of a DDR lab on campus. The minimal cost of the lab, $4000, has proven sufficient to cover the purchase of 4 Televisions, 4 PlayStation2 Consoles, sound accessories, multiple copies of the games, 10 dance pads, AV carts, and the salaries for student lab managers to keep the lab running for 9.5 hours per week. Such a lab easily accommodates 40 students booked in 35-minute intervals. The lab set-up at UMass is illustrated in Fig. 5. The key issue, as one might guess, is arranging things such that 8 people can play DDR simultaneously: it is a loud game. The solution is to send each television’s sound signal through a transmitter, which will transmit the output to a variable radio frequency. (The concept matches that of the iPod car adapters.) Players wear wireless headphones and tune to the frequency of their television’s transmitter, and can play DDR at any volume they wish without the inconvenience or danger of wires. A lab in place, the next decision that falls to the instructor is styling the curriculum. One can choose from a broad spectrum that runs from one extreme at – supervised study in the classroom – to exclusively self-guided study at the right, where students are given a fixed number of weeks to achieve certain grades on certain songs. Students with tight schedules and access to a home version of DDR obviously prefer the latter arrangement. I, however, advocate a balance of guided and self-study. Fig. 6 of the handout reproduces portions of the curriculum given to my Aural Skills students at the beginning of the Fall 2006 semester. Like a syllabus, it lays out their responsibilities and instructions for accessing the lab. On the first page, students are further informed that half of their DDR grade (this being 5% of their total class grade) is based on their weekly attendance in the lab. To receive this credit, students submit a Pedagogy of DDR 6 detailed log of their studies, including the date of each session, all the songs attempted, and the score for each song (the grade as well as the specific number of perfect attacks, great attacks, and boos.) They receive full credit of ten such sessions are logged, one per week. The list of songs that students are to attempt each week is included on the second page of the figure. They may play them in any order, as long as they play them all at least once and exhibit improvement through focus on at least one of them. At the end of the semester, the other half of the DDR grade will be determined by their performance on a live skills test. Here, the songs chosen for the final closely match the student’s level of ability as indicated by the grades logged in their weekly practice sessions. The curriculum laid out in Fig. 6 is intended as a first-semester introduction to DDR. Most of the songs for the opening weeks are beat-based so as to acquaint students with the dance pad interface. Yet as students return to the program in subsequent semesters, they will be ready to be challenged by more advanced songs. Instead of performing the beats, they can begin tackling the complex syncopations of songs. Once a class has become comfortable with advanced songs, an instructor can use DDR to foster skills rarely broached in the classic aural skills curriculum, such as the dictation of syncopation and the dictation of popular music melodies. The process by which students can be taken from observation, through performance, and ultimately transcription is outlined in Fig. 7. As one might guess, the regimen involves a fair amount of slow practice and drilling, as well as taking full advantage of the game’s resources. Let us say that an objective one might set for a class is successful transcription of a rhythm such as a dotted quarter-dotted-quarter quarter, counted “1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2.” To get there, an instructor must work backwards. She or he picks a song with a repeating rhythmic fragment that will be tested in the students’ written work. Students should listen to the song and observe the arrow configurations at least one or two times before leaping into any attempts. This will help acclimate them to the demands of the task and prevent a bewildered bail-out in their performance. Also, it is never too soon to start working out how the prominent rhythmic structures of the piece are laid out. Pedagogy of DDR 7

A solid physical performance is the next goal. If students internalize the rhythms by performing them with their whole body, they should have a good sense of where the attacks come in as few as 3-5 run-throughs of a song. Note that this will be especially true in cases of spiral learning: the more familiar they are with the song from playing it at an easier level, the better! Translating the physical steps into a series of verbal “ta”s and/or counting syllables should be attempted next. From there, the task is to conceptualize the rhythm, to see how it falls against the 4-beat measure. Some students who have mastered the pattern will be able to find the correct counting syllables quickly with little aid. For others, the game’s Training Mode may provide a tutorial for the arrangement of rhythmic attacks. When the training mode is selected, one is granted the ability to practice a limited stretch of the music (as little as 1 or two measures), to modify the tempo, and to see the barlines. Let us focus the training mode onto a difficult rhythm from the song “The Cube.” Here is the song at its normal speed. We’ll focus on the syncopated rhythms starting at m. 20. [Demonstrate Training Mode: First at normal speed, then with settings at Speed 3, Assist 2, measures 16-35] This module thus parses the music into a meter: we can now see clearly which of the beats should be called “1,” which the “and of 2,” etc. Such is especially relevant to students if they have been trained to use “proto-notation” in class dictation assignments. At UMass, for instance, when students transcribe, they are taught to sketch out the relative durations of attacks as horizontal lines falling within a grid of primary and secondary pulses, as shown in Fig. 8. (The process, mentioned in a 1990 article by Gary Karpinski, is more thoroughly described in the early chapters of his Manual for Sight Singing Norton, 2006). So if they are accustomed to routinely employing this notation in a horizontal sense, it takes only moments for them to switch gears and view the DDR interface as a fully-realized protonotation in vertical orientation. Returning to our flowchart above, we see that the procedure is to start with physical internalization, then to move towards conducting with counting syllables, and finally notating, likely with the aid of a proto-notation system. Of course, a last step is possible, which is to graft pitch information (that is: solfege syllables) to the rhythmic Pedagogy of DDR 8 transcriptions, allowing students to dictate popular music tunes. Such is an extremely worthy endeavor, as thousands of very fine tonal melodies have been written in the last sixty years or so. The problem is that most vocalists naturally syncopate their melodies, in effect activating what is often a much simpler deep-level rhythmic structure. This phenomenon is investigated in Temperley, 1999. But students now have a means to get their hands on these complex surface rhythms. As they practice DDR, the rhythms are taught visually, sonically, and tactically all at the same time. It is hard to imagine how a musical teaching aid could possess more built-in redundancy to engage all learning styles. Of course, the question naturally arises: what if the pre-set songs on DDR do not drill the particular rhythms an instructor wants to drill? For such cases, advanced users can take advantage of DDR’s Edit Mode, by which players can build and save their own dance routines. For instance, I might want students to learn the rhythms that appear in the vocal line of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.” The instructor’s first step towards teaching it is to create a rhythmic transcription as the one shown in Fig. 9. One can quickly see which are the prominent, recurring rhythms. Those labeled A and B are the ones I will drill by creating my own dance routine in the game’s Edit Mode. [3-minute Demonstration of Edit Mode – the dance routine arrows are input manually with the hand controller into a blank vertical scrolling area.] Let us construct a performance that drills rhythms A and B. Once built, students can copy and load the routine onto any PlayStation 2 and practice it in various contexts, such as with a metronome only (no soundtrack) and with a correct handclapped version of the rhythm.

Conclusion – Recap of Applications/Benefits:

Over the course of my talk, we have touched on many of the musical benefits afforded through practice of DDR. First, the game comes ready-made as a CAI device for the teaching of rhythmic performance and sight-reading. As such, it offers the advantages of objective grading via a point tally and letter grades as well as the opportunity for structured practice outside class. The feedback, as we’ve noted, is Pedagogy of DDR 9 nuanced and occurs in real time. The instructional interface is redundant: serving visual learners, tactile learners, and aural learners. But even better than most CAI programs: since DDR is couched as a game, players are continually motivated to improve. Typically, players are tantalized by low scores because the game is challenging and fun. If students do get discouraged by one song, the non-linear organization design allows them to move on and practice any other. Another significant advantage of the DDR system is its three pre-set levels of difficulty, which provide for spiral learning. As may observe in the first-semester curriculum I’ve provided, my students typically face the same song more than once: in early weeks, they are exposed to the complicated rhythms but only have to execute beat- based patterns. Later, they must learn the rhythms. . . but those rhythms will be very familiar! Another critical advantage of DDR is that it facilitates what I have termed a “culture of fluency" in the aural skills curriculum. In most cases, the slightest bobble during performance of a sight-singing exercise will cause students to stop at least briefly or at least slow down. No such option is available in DDR, a lesson which can quickly translate to the classroom. Moreover, students who have been trained to succeed in DDR by expanding their field of vision beyond the step zone, will be more receptive to instructions that they attempt to do this in the horizontal plane when reading music. Considering other factors, we may note that DDR is a game equally accessible to almost everyone. Video games have long been known to possess a male bias in their audiences; yet Smith (2004)’s cultural study of the game’s fan base has determined that approximately 50% of the players of this game are female. The game furthermore does not discriminate against those whose physical conditions might prevent them from executing dance patterns with the feet. Substituting for a dance pad, the game can be played with a hand controller or with any other improvised input device with little loss of cognitive benefits. The further applications of the game are nearly limitless. Those learning to read jazz charts for the first time will find the rhythms learned from DDR relevant to their performances. Cognition researchers can use the platform of DDR to investigate the mechanics not only of sight-reading, but also the phenomenon of transfer of learning. Pedagogy of DDR 10

One would intuit that performers taught to execute a novel rhythm with their whole bodies would learn it faster, remember it longer, and play it more accurately than those given just a visual input, since far more neural pathways are engaged in the learning process. An assumption of intertask transfer is, in fact, the underlying rationale for undertaking this study. This Spring, the potential applications of intertask transfer (as describe by Magill 1998) to music pedagogy – a notably-underresearched topic – will be investigated in a series of experiments conducted in the UMass DDR lab. We also hope to investigate if improvement in sight-reading DDR tunes has any benefits beyond high scores within the game. Again, it may be that a slight positive transfer could occur between sight-reading DDR and sight-reading musical scores. Last, I would like to mention two secondary benefits of student work with DDR. For one: it is advisable, in all cases, to make sure undergraduates get some physical activity. While it is unlikely that a moderate practice schedule of 35 minutes per week is enough to impact their aerobic health, the electronic-dance-music and moderate exercise is excellent for reducing student stress levels. For another: it is quite likely that our undergraduate students may find their experiences with DDR will prove useful in their own teaching. A great number of music majors in this country major in Music Ed, and aspire to teach at the elementary through high-school level (in many programs, it is one- third to one-half of all students enrolled). This game is ideally suited for introducing aspects of rhythm and pitch performance to children while avoiding the complexities of actual notation. Our fledgling music teachers may have ample opportunity to explore this tool: in upcoming years, more county districts may follow the lead of West Virginia, which has purchased enough DDR machines for every single one of its 765 public schools. The goal of this presentation has been to introduce the audience to Dance Dance Revolution and to enumerate some of the many ways it may be profitably included in an aural skills curriculum. A sight-reading tutor, a rhythm driller, a device adaptable for cognition study, this game can be adapted to almost any domain of studying practical music skills. Because it is so well-designed to model musical performance, undergraduates take to it quite naturally and quickly sense its relevance to their applied music studies. And no matter to what degree an instructor does decide to incorporate Pedagogy of DDR 11

DDR into the curriculum, some benefit will be derived. At the very least, there will be at least a passing engagement with truly contemporary music (not only Classic rock, as theorists tend to favor) and students’ blood will flow at least a little faster than it otherwise would during aural skills class.

Select Bibliography:

Blaine, T. (2005). The Convergence of Alternate Controllers and Musical Interfaces in Interactive Entertainment. International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Vancouver, BC.

Boyle, J. D. (1970). “The effect of prescribed rhythmical movements on the ability to read music at sight.” Journal of research in music education 18(4): 307-18.

Butler, M. (2003). Unlocking the groove: Rhythm, meter, and musical design in electronic dance music. Ph.D., Indiana University: 427.

Hall, A. (2003). Studying Rhythm. Old Tappan, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Halsband, U., F. Binkofski, et al. (1994). “The role of the perception of rhythmic grouping in musical performance: Evidence from motor-skill development in piano playing.” Music Perception 11(3): 265-88.

Harrington, E. M. (1991). “Rock Music as a Resource in Harmonic, Melodic and Metric Dictation.” College Music Symposium 31: 27-33.

Karpinski, G. S. (1990). “A model for music perception and its implications in melodic dictation.” Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 4: 191-229.

Karpinski, G. S. (2006). Manual for Sight Singing and Ear Training. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.

Magill, R. A. (1998). Motor Learning: Concepts and Applications, 5th ed. Boston, McGraw-Hill.

Mikumo, M. (1994). “Motor encoding strategy for pitches of melodies.” Music Perception 12(2): 175-97.

No Doubt. “Don’t Speak.” Tragic Kingdom: Interscope Records, 1995.

Oxendine, J. B. (1984). Psychology of Motor Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice- Hall. Pedagogy of DDR 12

Rogers, Michael. (1984). Teaching Approaches in Music Theory: An Overview of Pedagogical Philosophies. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press.

Smith, J. (2004). “I can see tomorrow in your dance: A study of Dance Dance Revolution and Music Video Games.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 16(1): 58.

Temperley, D. (1999). “Syncopation in rock: A perceptual perspective.” Popular Music 18(1): 19-40.

Equipment Displayed:

PlayStation 2 (Sony Corporation)

DDR Dance Pads – soft design

DDRMax for Playstation 2 (Konami of America)