Gnomie Kieran writes:

Hey Chris, I have been watching your show for a while, and I recently saw your video that had to do with rhythm (or your lack of it according to yourself). I decided to send you an email on another thing you could use to improve your sense of rhythm. It is a free ‘game’ I found called StepMania; it is based upon the DDR or Dance Machine games you may have seen or used in the arcade. You download and install the program, and then you can then choose to download either individual songs or entire packs of songs from the StepMania Web site.

Alternatively, if you want to play some songs that where written by actual musicians, go here and…

• type in the name of a song or band
• download the file
• unzip the file
• go into program files then into the StepMania program
• go to songs and drag in the unzipped music file
• then start StepMania
• the song should then be playable inside StepMania
• if it does’t work, just download a file from the StepMania Web site itself, then drag your downloaded music into that file (do not ask me why this might work — it just does!)

This program is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Stunningly, it even works on Vista!)

Go here to download the program.

Go here to get song packs.

Here’s a link to an instructional video I made.

If you want to see Stepmania in action, here’s a link to another video I made.