GDAmania Blog

DTX: Dir en grey - LOTUS

2011-02-12T09:47:00.003+08:00

Dir en grey's latest single. I really like the way Shinya never follows orthodox rhythms in his drumming. It's part of what makes their music quite unique.

Download (24.3 MB) - Under Japanese > Dir en grey

Keysound explanation for GDA/DTX FIles

2011-02-06T08:28:00.005+08:00

A great video by Billkwando explaining how keysounding works for simfiles.

DTX: 陰陽座 - 組曲「九尾」～殺生石 / 紅葉 / 魔王 / 蛟龍の巫女

2011-02-04T21:28:00.004+08:00

4 New DTX songs by Japanese Metal band Onmyo-za.

Drums extreme/double bass DTX versions only.

組曲「九尾」～殺生石 (Kumikyoku "Kyuubi" Sessho-seki) / 32.7MB

紅葉 (kureha) / 26.0MB

魔王 (Maou) / 34.6MB

蛟龍の巫女 (Mizuchi no Miko) / 31.3MB

They can be found under the GDAMania Files Section under Japanese > Onmyo-za

DTX: Galneryus - Destiny

2011-02-02T17:43:00.006+08:00

Been a while since I made a DTX. This one's the single from their 2010 album "Resurrection". Video included from their live DVD. Very crazy drumming indeed.

Download (50.8 MB) - In Japanese > Galneryus

DTX: Yui - Good-bye Days

2010-04-25T21:55:00.007+08:00

I've revamped haiyabusa's version of the song into a full DTX with the updated video from the movie Taiyo no uta. Probably the easiest DTX I've done in years. I didn't touch the keysounds, as I never use them anyway.

I've also posted the real PDF drum score of Good-bye Days at drumpdf.

Download (18.0 MB) - In Japanese > Yui

DTX: Thomas Lang - Balkan

2010-04-24T13:59:00.005+08:00

Thomas Lang's recording of Balkan, from a very obscure CD by some composer called Conrad Schrenk, and featured on Lang's drum DVD "Creative Control".

I'd previously made a short version of the simfile, but to me the song had lost it's soul without any double bass (or that crazy middle guitar solo section). There's only the original double bass version.

There is a video of the song here.

Download: Balkan DTX (15.9MB) In Instrumental

A.DOGMA - ULTRA EXT VER. [10,000 COMBO]

2010-04-09T21:02:00.004+08:00

Someone must've been on crack whilst making this.

I like the difficulty name: Ultra Extreme. It's an understatement.

Lots of great simfiles

2010-02-20T18:36:00.001+08:00

Having finally had a couple of days off and the time to dig around the Simfile sharing and the Requests forum, it's suddenly occurred to me that there's a LOT of high quality simfiles on the site.

Back in the day there were hardly more than 4-5 good GDA makers out there, but looking at how active the forums are now, it's great to see such a good collection of simfiles!

New site: Drum PDF

2010-02-15T19:31:00.005+08:00

Kung Hei Fat Choi, Happy Year of the Tiger everyone!

Thanks to pedropete's DTX to MIDI program, I've managed to make a couple of real drum scores from DTX files. They can now be found on my new site: http://www.drumpdf.com/

Head over now to check it out!

DTX: 恐怖の右脳改革 [Special Long Version]

2010-01-09T11:40:00.011+08:00

One of the bonus tracks from the recent GuitarFreaks & DrumMania V6 Official Soundtrack.

This is the first time I've used DTX Creator instead of GDA Creator to make a DTX. All in all, I think this song took about 12-15 hours to make over a span of 3 weeks. My poor right (and left) brain is fizzled after making this.

Drums 1BD and 2BD version only. (16.0 MB)

Download Mirror 1 (GDAmania)

Download Mirror 2 (Mediafire)

DTX: Dream Theater - A Nightmare to Remember

2009-07-13T16:29:00.004+08:00

From DT's new album Black Clouds and Silver Linings. This double bass in this song is incredibly difficult. It constantly shifts between 8th beats, 8th beat triplets, 16th and 16th beat triplets. Check out the blast beat near the end of the song!

I cut out some of the solo section because the drums are really repetitive in that part, but this simfile still clocks 13+ minutes.
Download

Acid Rain on the new kit

2009-02-21T21:05:00.005+08:00

I don't know how Mike Portnoy can play that drum solo (at 2:37) so cleanly and accurately. It always sounds like mush when I try to play it.

Papa's got a brand new bag

2009-02-14T23:26:00.009+08:00

My new kit arrived at long last after Parson's Music "forgot" to deliver it last week. V-Drums for V-Day.

The amount of cardboard they used to pack the kit in is pretty astonishing... guess it's still better than polystyrene.

It's sound quality is a zillion times better than the TD6, and mesh is ahhh.. nice and quiet. I can finally do some blast beats without waking the neighbour's dog.

How does it fare with DTXMania? The best part is having a cymbal to use as an escape button so I can quit a song without reaching for the keyboard? Priceless.

On second thoughts, the kit WAS darn pricey.

Video Tutorial: How to make a DTX simfile

2009-01-31T21:25:00.003+08:00

If you are interested in making your own DTX file but aren't sure how to go about doing it, this video is for you. To see the video more clearly, select HQ (high quality).

To begin you must have the following:
GDA Creator*
DTXMania*
Drum sound files*
An image editing program (e.g. Photoshop)
A sound editing program (e.g. Adobe Audition / Audacity)

*These are available in the GDAmania Files section under accessories.

The future direction of DTXMania

2009-01-31T09:34:00.005+08:00

According to the DTXMania blog, the author is aiming to do the following (translated from Japanese):

* I want to use it for a more real basic practice.
* I want to improve the degree of freedom of the performance more.
* I want to ease the management of the tune more.
* I want to return feedback to the data author more.
* I want to appeal for the player more.
* I want to support IR more.

I think Internet Ranking would be an awesome feature. It would definitely attract a lot of people to the game. This was exactly what happened to DMGF when e-amusement appeared around 9th mix. Let's hope we won't have to wait too long.

Drummania V5 encore/special stages DTX

2009-01-28T15:05:00.005+08:00

Just spent about countless hours editing the DTX files for all the encore stages in V5. None of the original DTXs were made by me. I simply added video, graphics and synced them to the soundtrack version of the songs.

Part 1: Download
流氷の去りて Rin To Shite Saku Aya no Godoku (fixed)
凛として咲く花の如く ryuuhyou no sari te
Dynamis
FORCE Interval Build
VANESSA-転生編-

Part 2: Download
TENGU (fixed)
Blue Forest
A.DOGMA
Rock to Infinity
For the Final

If you notice anything wrong with the files, please leave a comment.

Converting a Youtube or Nicovideo for DTXMania

2009-01-28T01:54:00.011+08:00

As I was editing the V5 encore stage simfiles, I learned something new, so I'll share it with you guys. Here is how to turn an online music video into something suitable for DTXMania. Most of the steps I followed using this article. Here are the steps I took.

1. Convert your video into an FLV and download onto your computer.
I used Toshichan Green Tune to do it. Some sites can convert directly into an AVI, but I don't recommend it as it will cause problems at a later stage. If you get a 404 error, play the video first.

2. Convert your FLV into an AVI.
I used FLV extract for this step (refer to the article above).

3. Load your AVI into VirtualDubMod.
I ran into problems opening the AVI in Virtualdubmod, even though I followed all the settings for installing and configuring ffdshow in the article. So I installed TMPGEnc, converted it into MPEG first and then I could open it.

4. Crop your video in Virtualdubmod.
To crop and resize, you will need 2 filters. Go to Video > Filters > Add filters. Use null transform to cut out unwanted parts (use the cropping button). The second filter is Resize - the DTXMania video width / height is 272x352. Under streams you can also disable the audio stream since you won't need audio.

5. Encode your video to a new AVI.
You need the DivX codec. I used 1-pass 780kbps to compress a 2 min video to about 10MB. Save it into the directory you are making your DTX in.

6. Use GDA Creator or DTX Creator to add the video to your DTX
I won't go into the details here. If you need help with this step, please ask in the GDAmania forums.

Changing hosts

2009-01-26T12:04:00.003+08:00

Kung Hei Fat Choi!
To celebrate the Chinese New Year, we're getting a new host.
Hopefully all those 503 errors will be gone.

The mystique of Dragonforce

2009-01-06T17:44:00.008+08:00

This is an old video, but it still seems to garner the most attention of all my vids, and a lot of comments.

I used to like Dragonforce - their combination of cheesy lyrics and catchy melodies had me hooked. I can't stand them now as all their songs sound the same. Reading some of the video comments sure gives me a kick though.

People like to say things about me...
"You have no fucking life... Sitting on your ass all day trying to get that sing perfect"
"lol you hit the drums so fast"
"wow you have too much time on your hands....i seriously now officially hate you"
"lolz looks like hes humping the air"

...about the song's drumming
"wow this song is suppa easy on real drums. its jus triples basicly through the whole song. and yes i can play the drums (death meatl, such as nile, hate eternal, behemoth, im 14)"

...even the length of the song
"2 and a half min version of TtFaF? wtf "
"Why is the song so short? Trough the fire and flames is exactly 5 minutes long you know..." / "Duh, he knocked up the speed to x2. "/ "no retard the REAL ttfatf is over 7 min. thats the cut version"

...and some are just plain weird
"i came." / "i came even harder." / "i cummed bricks"
"Hijo de perraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa q cabroooooo puto crack"

DTX: Dir en grey - Vinushka

2009-01-03T11:18:00.006+08:00

From Dir en grey's 2008 album Uroboros. The song starts of rather mellow with some very creative grooves and fills, then IT ALL GOES TO HELL at the 4:20 mark. Play the DTX and you'll see what I mean.

This is only the first 6 minutes of the 9 minute song. Drums extreme and double bass version included.
Download

The Forum is online!

2009-01-01T10:38:00.003+08:00

You can visit it at http://www.gdamania.net/forum

Bring out the old, bring in the new!

2008-12-31T19:44:00.007+08:00

Hope everyone has had a rewarding and exciting year!

After a lot of frustration with web hosting, overloaded servers etc, I’ve finally decided to join the blogosphere and move everything here.

Give me a while to get this place in shipshape. It will work this time.

Official simfiles

2008-12-28T21:38:00.003+08:00

Currently there are two types of official DTX simfiles (designed to be used with DTXMania).

GF and DM versions: ripped from the PS2 game and organized by the mix. Only includes the released songs up till V4.

DM only versions: Currently they include all the songs from 1st mix - V5. These are more complete but not all the songs have all the difficulties charts - some only have the extreme version.

Frequently Asked Questions

2008-12-26T22:26:00.002+08:00

Please read the documentation in the DTXMania English resource center first.

I will try and update this FAQ periodically. If you have a question which isn't answered, please feel free to post a comment:

Where do I unzip the GDA or DTX simfiles?
Create a folder called "DTXFiles".

How do I change the song difficulty?
Press the Hi hat twice.

How do I change the scroll speed?
Press the bass pedal twice. Whilst playing, you can use the up and down arrows to change the scroll speed also.

The charts are off-sync in the game:
In DTXMania versions 064 and above, press the delete key whilst playing a song to show the DTX details, then press Shift+Up or Shift+Down to adjust the chart sync. The game will remember your adjustment for the song the next time you play it.

How do I make subfolders to organize my DTX files?
Name your folder DTXFiles.Yourfoldername and DTXMania will recognize it as a sub-folder. Alternatively, use box.def.

Quick Start guide to setting up DTXMania

2008-12-25T22:11:00.002+08:00

Connect your PC to your electronic drumset
1) You will need a MIDI to USB converter such as the Yamaha UX16.
2) Install the latest drivers for the converter (especially if you are running Windows Vista)
3) Plug the MIDI-In cable in your converter to the MIDI-Out hole in your drum module. Hook up the other end to the USB slot of your computer.

Connect your PC to a Guitarfreaks or Guitar Hero controller
1) You will need a converter depending on the type of controller. e.g. A PS2 GH controller will need a PS2 to USB converter.
2) Hook up your guitar to the converter, and check to see if it works under Control Panel > Game controllers.

Install DTXMania
1) Download DTXMania from the official site. Version 067b is the latest recommended stable version.
2) Download some simfiles and unzip them inside your DTXMania directory.
3) Load up DTXMania and see if your drums work.

Set your Drum and Guitar Key config in DTXMania
1) Most likely you will need to remap your drum and guitar keys first.