Music games, part 1.

One of my chosen genres was music games and now I'd like to introduce it in a bit more detail.

Early stages:

Music games are available on a wide variety of consoles, computers, or even just on tapes. Teaching by music has been present for a long time in education. If you think back to your childhood you can probably recall "London Bridge is falling down", "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and many other children's songs that you used to listen to during English class. As for my personal experience, this method was used mostly in kindergarten, with us acting out the scene. But even though the amount of time spent on these activities has lessened in primary schools, the presence of singing along to tapes stayed for a couple of years.

A sing-along game of nursery rhymes for youngsters.

Karaoke, sing along:

Music will guide us through adolescence too. As we grow up, we are bound to foster a liking to some English speaking bands and singers. And sometimes upon our curiosity to understand what's been sung, we look up the lyrics of the song and try to sing along - just as we used to as a child.

Now that we have seen that music in fact has always been an internal part of language learning, it's obvious that music games provide a great help too.

Singstar, Lips, Ultrastar:

Same idea, different platforms. 

Singstar was the first on the market and it was originally made for the Playstation 2 but now with the advancing age of technology, it's also available on Playstation 3.

Ultrastar is a free counterpart of it on the PC, for those who don't have money or interest to invest in a home console

And finally, Lips on the Xbox360, which has a slightly different system but was based on the very same idea as its predecessors.

Game-play:

The goal of the game is to basically sing along with the singer and try to match your rhythm, pitch, and pronunciation the best you can. To help you with that, there is a guideline which shows the expected pitch and the lyrics on screen. As you sing along, much like at a karaoke club, the lyrics move forward and the line gets coloured to show how well you managed to mimic the voice of the singer.

Lips: The golden line shows how much bonus points you got so far for every perfect syllable, while the microphone on top shows your current score.

Singstar: You can see your current score on the top, while the green line adds up your bonuses for every perfect syllable. Counter in the left corner shows how far you are in the song.

Evaluation:

At the end of the song, you will get graded based on your performance. The newer generation home consoles, namely the Xbox360 and the Playstation 3, also have unique award systems which make gaming all the more interesting: achievements and trophies, respectively.

Scoring in Lips: points, medals, achievements, and a happy, dancing avatar. :)

Social aspects:

These types of games are not just great fun but also help the learner's speech and pronunciation. But the biggest motivation factor is not actually the grade or the achievement you get after the song, but the competition with friends. These days any console can connect to the internet, just like a computer, and you can view your friends' grades and points they achieved for each song. So even if you're not playing in the same room in a duet battle, you can still beat each other and show off via the internet and the power of social media

Part 2 is coming up next week so stay tuned! :)