Rhythmic video games like Rock Band are enormously popular, but little attention has been paid to the potential impact these games might have on music education. This is a missed opportunity because the music concepts central to the comprehension of traditionally notated music are embodied in rhythmic games’ notation systems, including models of metric hierarchy, subdivision, and note patterns. Furthermore, the alternative notation systems these games use are novice friendly, their lessons applicable to more traditional forms of notation, and they afford learners a way into more formal practices. Over the course of nine months we investigated these possibilities by studying 26 youth who had little to no prior experience with rhythmic video games. By using a sociocultural framework to analyze their learning, we sought to understand the relationship between players’ familiarity with the Rock Band notation system and their competence with traditional music concepts. Findings suggest that the ways music is represented in Rock Band provide players with a “doorway” into more formal music practices by heightening players’ interest and abilities in music. Implications for connecting out-of-school learning to the goals of the classroom are also discussed.
This article was published in the International Journal for Learning and Media, Winter 2011, Vol. 3, No. 1, Pages 41-59.