George Washington *Version 2* New & Improved!

I'm enjoying my nice lazy 3-day weekend, chillin', eatin' Chinese food and playing Killer 7.....so I didn't feel like turning into "Crazy tunnel-vision DTX-makin' man" (which turns me into a zombie for about 10 hours), but I didn't want to not release anything at all.......so here it is:

A slightly more competent remake of my very first DTX simfile, about the nation's first badass. Only a little late for Independence Day. The Basic version is almost the same as my original version from last year. The Extreme version is harder, but still not "hard".

Download:

http://www.billkwando.com/sim/Washington_V2.zip

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IJE1BLJF

This one also has a preview, result images, and all the fancy stuff I didn't know how to do before. Funnily enough, I sampled the keysounds from the song when I originally made it, but I added a few new ones that I didn't know how to incorporate before.

Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump

This song is awesome. One of my favorite Beasties songs, and one of the best ones on Paul's Boutique. Lots of neat drumming action in this one. 95% of the keysounds are sampled from the song. It's probably not even worth trying to play this one with the keysounds turned off. It took about a week to do. I didn't rush or set any particular timeline for myself. It was kinda like "it's done when it's done". I was sick for the making of most of it, so that was probably for the best. I hope you guys enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it. Make it funky. Free James Brown!

Download:

http://www.billkwando.com/sim/beasties-shakeyorump.zip

Comments and snacks are appreciated.

Hyde - Masquerade

It's finally done! Another awesome drumming song from Hyde. This one has a lot of cymbals. Though not shown here, there's a dual lane & a right lane-only version. I'm hoping this will be the first one I don't feel the need to tweak. It took the better part of 2 days

Download:

http://www.billkwando.com/sim/MASQUERADE_v1.zip

Comments are welcome!

They Might Be Giants - Why Does the Sun Shine? (Live)

This is They Might Be Giants' cover of a 50's educational song. The live version is super energetic and nothing like their studio version (or the original). It's a highlight of every TMBG show, and I've been to quite a few to see.

A really bright cheery rock song. It's another relatively easy song to play. Great for practice & warmup, or to impress the laydeez. Give it a chance & you'll likely love it.

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nbqtymm0t3z

http://rapidshare.com/files/243701499/TMBG_whydoesthesunshine.zip

More TMBG on the way. They have so many good drum songs it's hard to know where to start.

TETSU69 - A Wonderful World

Here's another fun song.

I watched the video a couple times on YouTube and then it got stuck in my head.....so I made a DTX! This is by Tetsu from L'Arc~en~Ciel, one of his solo songs. It's a nice, relaxed, summer-y song.

Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dxzwizzlwmw
http://rapidshare.com/files/240949936/TETSU69_-A_WONDERFUL_WORLD.zip

This is a great practice song for folks like me that have a hard time with faster alternating snare/hi-hat patterns. It's 100bpm, so it's not too fast, but fast enough to be tricky if you're not used to it. If anybody wants an easier version, i'm pretty sure I can pull off a playable one for this.

I still can't play the hi-hats parts & the bass drum at the same time, so it's not quite as easy as I hoped it would be.

Download it, toss it into your list...play it as a 1st song warmup, right after Oranges! :P It grows on you.

They Might Be Giants - Oranges

Fresh squeezed!

This is a short, silly song. It's sort of a joke commercial recorded for the designers of the TMBG site (at the time), The Chopping Block. It's always made me laugh, and I thought it would be a fun warmup DTX. An added humorous bonus is, if you watch the video with headphones, it sorta feels like the oranges are talking to you (due to the fact that John's voice is panned to the right channel).

E-solutions for E-verybody!

Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/241889176/Oranges.zip
http://www.billkwando.com/sim/Oranges.zip

Comments/impressions are welcome.

Yoshida Brothers - Rising

Ok, this one is finally done. Maybe. I always end up going back and revising.

If you've never heard this song, you really should listen to it once. I don't think it's possible to dislike it.

I worked really hard on the simfile, so I hope everyone likes it. I wanted to try to do the song justice, since it kicks so much ass.

I'll probably go back & tweak the keysounds and double check the fills.

Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zmlznmjofzz
http://rapidshare.com/files/228860540/Rising_ver1.zip

Comments are welcome.

Rush - Circumstances

This is one of my favorite Rush songs. I came to Rush late in life (first heard them in '96, I was around 23), and Hemispheres was my introduction. So awesome. I remember spending all day learning the 19-note riff at the beginning of the chorus (you'll hear it in the preview) on the guitar. Took me forever to be able to play it right. We didn't have the internet back then, we had to learn songs by ear! *waves cane*

This DTX was originally converted from a midi (drum tab, midi, what's the difference, right?) and I edited & added to it. The cymbal rolls were the best I could do, and I couldn't resist doing the windchime (since I had one). As usual, the timing's not perfect, but I think it's close enough that you won't notice when you're playing it.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/197586127/Circumstances_DTX.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/?xiimm30leij

Try it and let me know what you think.......or if you know where I can get poutine in America.

Led Zeppelin - Moby Dick

This is my 2nd DTX. I started it while I was working on my Washington DTX. Obviously it took me much longer to finish, but it's a labor of love. It doesn't get any better than Led Zeppelin.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/195640843/Moby_Dick_DTX.zip
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7S2EPD9I

Download, play it, and let me know what you think. I politely request that you try it the first time with the hit sounds ON. Turn off your fancy brain and enjoy the sounds of awesome.

I also recommend sight reading it. See if you can get an A on your first try. I dare ya. ;)

P'unk~en~Ciel - Feeling Fine (Live) **UPDATED**

This song gets stuck in my head all the time, and I used to find myself wishing I had a simfile so I could play it, because it sounded really fun. I neglected to think about the fact that it also sounded really hard.

Edit (2/4/09):
I've updated this file with the following changes:

1) The hihats are no longer staggered in the choruses (fast parts). It seemed like a good idea at the time.
2) Latter part of verses are changed (I had it playing the same pattern all the way through, which was incorrect)
3) Corrected cymbal placement in the verses.
4) Lowered volume of hit sounds by 15%.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/193630668/Feeling_Fine_V2.zip
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1FSLSSVJ

I made this one a little differently. Ken's not exactly a metronome, so it shifts a lot, tempo-wise. What I did was put 4 bass drums per measure (like a metronome) and nothing else, then I went through and synced the bass drum hits to the song before adding the rest of the beat. It ended up having 30 BPM changes. Madness. Ok, maybe a little Sparta.

I'm not entirely sure it's right, because I'm not entirely sure what Ken's doing in the verses, so suggestions & comments are welcome. So comment, or I'll leave the seat up in your bathroom and get all the ladies mad at you.

Okkusenman!

This one's still technically WIP. Though each time I hear it I think "Oh the bpm issues aren't that bad".

I discovered this song through this incredible video:

It's kinda stuck with me ever since.

Download:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OQFSKZD5

http://rapidshare.com/files/180868972/Okkusenman.zip

Comments are welcome.

Joe Satriani - Memories

No, not the one from Cats.

This is my 3rd DTX. I've liked this song for about 20 years. No, really.

*UPDATED* I fixed the crashes. There were some missing, one that was mistakenly a ride, and some on the same line as the hihats, and one missing snare. There were some unnecessary hihats as well. All this has been corrected. New link below.


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HXJX561F

http://rapidshare.com/files/181466232/Memories_corrected_.zip

This one came out really well. It was converted from a midi, but I carefully went through and tried to add all the original accents and fills (as close as I could, anyway). The midi actually cut off during the quiet "bloop bloop bloop bloooop" part, and I had to construct the rest of the song up to the fadeout. At least that kept me from being lazy & gave me the extra incentive to try to replicate the intricate hi-hat stuff at the end.

It's hard to play, but it's something to aspire to (for me anyway). I've included by high scores. Feel free to tell me in the comments how you smoked my score. I won't hold it against you.

It's a great song with an interesting beat. If you don't like it, you have a black, bitter heart made of chicken liver.

George Washington (my 1st simfile)

Suggestion: Don't watch this video if you don't already know the song. Download the simfile and be surprised instead. :p

This was my introduction to making DTXs. I placed the inital beat by hand, then copied and pasted as the loop got longer and longer. The sync kept getting messed up so I had to do a lot of adjusting.

I originally wanted to add a 2nd difficulty ("New & Improved, Now with hi hats!"), but the file is so messed up there's no way to work with it. I plan to revisit it some time, but for now, it will just serve as a future reminder of how bad I sucked when I first started.

That said, download the song, it's awesome (believe me yet?):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8B3WUWGE

http://rapidshare.com/files/180868975/Washington.zip

I recommend sight reading it. See if you can pass it on your first try. Tell your friends.

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time! (Ok, not really)

This is my first post. As a bit of introduction, I'm Billkwando. I recently started making DTX simfiles for DTXMania about 2 weeks ago (I think maybe 12/10/08), and wanted to post up some of my creations. This post is long, but hopefully it contains a lot of useful information.

A big "Thanks!" goes out to Warpig from the vdrums.com forums, as he taught me how to make DTXs through hieroglyphics and song (ok, actually with pictures and instructions).

As I'm still learning, suggestions and shortcuts are welcome. There are things I'm still getting the hang of, so my first few DTXs may not be perfect. I'm aware of this, so chances are minor mistakes or mistimings were simply beyond my control to fix. Hopefully there won't be many.

Anyways, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Oh, and this is a shameless ripoff of Maoke Jackson's blog (and Haiyabusa). :p I figured my time was better spent making DTXs than trying to figure out a way to make a blog on a different site that looks different from his. At least we know blogspot already works. Expect Youtube videos soon. I'm mad original, yo.

Check him out, he makes a lot of nice DTXs. His blog is in Chinese, so you may want to use the translated version. He was also a huge help to me when I posted on the Bemanistyle forum, when I couldn't get my video to work. His video-making tutorial, translated from Chinese, was incredibly useful and got my videos up and running (cos virtualdub hates me).

Also, check out Haiyabusa. His stuff is awesome. His blog is in Chinese, so you may also want to use the translated version. I'm not gonna lie to you. This site is hard as hell to navigate, partly because it's so loaded down with graphics and autoplaying music that it take 5 or 10 seconds to load, giving the impression that there's no text on the page. There are 1 or 2 DTXs per blog page, and then you have to hit the next button. I've provided (what I believe to be) the full list of DTX links here, so you don't have to page through.

2 of my favorite DTXs are Haiyabusa's. L'arc~en~Ciel - Drink It Down (from the Devil May Cry 4 sountrack) and Real Voice by Ayaka. The 2nd, I stumbled upon, intrigued by the title. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean, but it's surprisingly apt, considering that Ayaka doesn't sound like the typical J-pop we hear in the USA. Meaning, yes it's J-pop/rock, but she doesn't sound like an anime character or a little girl (see Whiteberry if you don't know what I mean). It's a catchy song, with good drums, and she is.....let's just say she has an encouraging demeanor.

My other favorite DTX is Zone - H・A・N・A・B・I ～君がいた夏～ by Meow. It's on GDAmania.net's (still functioning) files page. If it appears to be down, try it again in a couple minutes. It'll work. I also got GDA Creator Professional and smf2dtx there, both of which I use regularly.

I hope to make a tutorial (preferably a video tutorial) on how to get started making DTXs. I'm just trying to get a decent idea of what I'm doing first so that I can provide simple and concise instructions, plus any shortcuts or tips I can come up with to make the process easier.

Lastly, if you're interested in using Rock Band instruments for DTXMania, and/or want to reskin your lanes to match the Rock Band colors, please see my "Using Rock Band Instruments on DTXMania" page.