Dance Dance Revolution, first steps on the mat

The first trys on DDR are often difficult, but after a while progress come very fast. Basic advice in this section! Of course you will need songs well suited for the newbies. That is why I propose a small list on direct download: titres_debutants.zip. You install them just as I explain it in the pages Stepmania and Dance With Intensity.

DDR newcomers usually come across three main difficulties : rhythm, moves and arrow reading. A good mean to go forward is to solve them one by one.
If you think it is too hard, look at Max, 5 years old, the son of a reader. His progress are incredible!

Rythm

For your very first steps what you need is a title with very few arrows, so let us begin by It's raining men or YMCA, in light mode of course. The idea is to focus on the rhythm without getting lost with the arrows. An useful trick is the assist tick which is turned on with F7 on Stepmania and F12 on Dance With Intensity. This is a metronome doing little "claps" with every arrow. Take some time to learn where the arrows stand on the mat and try to keep the best timing possible (marvelous or perfect). Do not forget DDR is a musical game, you should not strive to hit the mat when you see the arrow passing right on the mark, but when you hear the rhythm.
When it gets easier, try without the assist tick. Most of the time the rhythm follows the bass. Do not hesitate to beat time with your feet even when there is no arrows in order to keep the rhythm.

Moves

Once you've got the hang of it, you should move on to Bumble Bee. This is in my opinion the best ddr track for beginner, the rhythm is steady, there are just the good amount of arrows, and the music sounds good. My advice now is to keep training on the same track until you pass grade B at least. This way you won't be surprised by the arrow succession. If you cannot stand the music of Bumble Bee, have a try with Call me (from Blondie). Rhythm sould not be a problem, so let's work on the moves. What you have to concentrate on is DON'T PUT YOUR FOOT BACK ON THE MIDDLE OF THE MAT between each steps. This is a HUGE loss of time, and you get no penalty for hitting extra steps. As an example, if you need to hit left then up then down the natural move is putting left foot on left, KEEP IT THERE, right foot on up, KEEP IT THERE, then left foot on down. Keep practicing until you have found the natural moves for each sequence of arrows. You need to be supple with the legs slightly bent, like real dance in fact! These tracks can be AAed virtually just by walking on the mat, if you keep cool and work with your chest, rotate your shoulders. But you will most certainly begin by hopping a lot :D Maybe this video will inspire you. You get it? Last step!

Arrow reading

This one needs some explaining. I mean by arrow reading the translation from "something is moving up on the screen" to "I put my foot there". This really is not obvious at the beginning. Think about reading : now words immediately pop up as ideas and pictures in your head but first year in school there was a lot of decryption work. No big advice here, except you should be ok with rhythm and moves first.
You should aim at looking at the middle of the screen so that you know the 3-4 following steps and you can prepare the best move.
You can also play with the speedmods that can be set up in Stepmania's special options. This speeds up the arrows scrolling, yet the arrows remain strictly the same and the song is not harder: the arrows move faster but they are less on the screen at a given time. Higher speed mods facilitate the reading when playing Stepmania at the higher difficulties. It is not your case yet if you are reading these lines... still maybe a 1,5x setting would suit you better than the default.

At this point you should vary the tracks, I have selected Baby Baby (Corona), Cotton Eye Joe (a DDR classic) and My favourite game (The Cardigans). You should also begin to look at the page Links and download other titles. When you passed these titles, you must try the ultra classic track Butterfly, a little trickier, this is the title I began DDR on !! After that you should be comfortable with most of the light titles. Standard is another story (once again Bumble Bee is ideal)!