Common step patterns
editAs a player advances in the game, some common patterns occur in many different songs. Advanced players watch for these patterns. Recognizing them makes interpreting the song easier. This section describes these common patterns. It will only be useful to people who have played the game.
Turns
edit- Back-turns (left-down-right)
Hit the left arrow with your left foot, then the down arrow with your right foot. You should now be partially turned to the right. Hit the right arrow with your left foot. Often, this pattern will continue down-left-down-right. It can also start on the right pad as right-down-left. That is simply the mirror of this.
- Front-turns (left-up-right)
Hit the left arrow with your left foot, then the up arrow with your right. You should now be partially turned to the left. Hit the right arrow with your left foot. Often, this pattern will continue up-left-up-right. It can also start on the right pad as right-up-left. That is simply the mirror of this.
- Back-front transitions (right-down-left-up-right)
These are usually on the end of a back-turn, when you are going "backwards". The first part, right-down-left, is the back-turn. Then, instead of the down arrow to continue on the back-side, hit the up arrow with your right foot to go into a front-turn.
The reverse step pattern, right-up-left-down-right, transitions from a front to a back-turn.
- Full ("Butterfly") turns (left-down-right-up-left) -- Also known as a "spin"
A more advanced pattern involves a complete turn around. This is often used in "freestyle" DDR to show off. These are sometimes called Butterfly turns, because they occur often in the standard and heavy levels of Smile.dk's BUTTERFLY. Because you cannot maintain eye-contact with the screen through the turn, it might help to memorize what happens after the turn to give yourself time to find your place in the song again.
Start as with a normal back-turn, left-down-right, as described above. Then, instead of hitting the down arrow to continue a back-turn, hit the up arrow with your right foot. This will turn you around backwards. To complete the turn, hit the left arrow with your left foot.
A different way of doing these steps in situations where you might not want to turn around (for example, when doing "Perfect Attack" on a fast song such as Healing Vision (Angelic mix)) is to treat this like an "inverted turn" — use your right foot on the left arrow (ie. your body is more or less turned to the left), then the left foot on the down arrow, the right foot again on the right arrow, and the left foot on the up arrow. The only difficulty after this is finding out what to do with the left step; depending on the steps afterwards the simplest idea might be using the left foot again (however, many people find using the same foot twice awkward - this is referred to as Double Stepping), or you could use the right foot (but this makes you turn again). This style of play, where turns and other high-movement techniques are avoided on fast songs, is sometimes referred to as "Angelic-style", because it is a common strategy for completing Healing Vision (Angelic mix).
Other
edit- Skips/Gallops
On some songs, COW GIRL, MATSURI JAPAN, and TSUGARU on Heavy being good examples, each direction has two 16th notes in succession, starting with 1/16th before the 1/4th or 1/8th note. The idea is "skip", or jump from one to the next.
- Jackhammers/Machine Gun Steps
Some songs contain arrows in the same direction close to each other. Depending on the tempo on the song, they are usually 1/16th or 1/8th note apart from each other. The term "jackhammer" refers to the rapid and repeated hitting of the same arrow. Good examples are the songs PARANOiA, ABYSS, DEAD END (near the end) and CAN'T STOP FALLIN' IN LOVE (SPEED MIX) (at the end of the chorus), all on Heavy.