Loooking to get into Drummania, couple of questions.

[PICASIO PICASIO]

Originally Posted by putumayoman

1. are the menus in the games mostly english (like iidx?) or enough english so i know what im doing ?

Yes.

2. which game should i start off ( i never played drummania but ive played rock band a couple of times) so a newbie friendly game would be good (espcially one i can find easliy on the net , my import store has masterpiece gold is that any good )?

The easiest songs are the ones you know the best. So buy the game with your favorite songlist.

3 . which controller is best to get for a beginner ? thanks guyz.

A really good electronic drumest. haahhaha, but those are really expensive and would be tragic if you ended up not liking the game at all.

I'd say buy a cheap drumset that has a MIDI out and buy a MIDI to USB converter. Or you could find an arcade that has DrumMania.

I don't own a drumset, I've never owned a drumset, and I only have a shitty KOC and I'm on level 70's now and play drums live when I find the opportunity. So try finding an arcade that has a DrumMania.

If not, either buy a cheap MIDI drumset or a YAMAHA DTX/DTXPress.

[AdamW]

Rock Band's drums are a lot better and more fun to play than the KOC or Topway kit, but nowhere near as good as a real kit, or the arcade DM kit. But yeah, I actually have fun with the RB drums, never did with the KOC. They're not ideal for playing Drummania, though, as there's one pad too few. You have to set something to autoplay, or rig up something crazy for the cymbal or something.

P-rate - I'd say just...don't worry about it. Your P-rate on any given song will just get better as you do, without you doing anything in particular. A year ago, I was getting to the point where I could S some particular songs, but I'd still have a shitty P-rate. These days I get 85-95% perfect on the same songs pretty easily, without focussing on it necessarily. It's just something that you will come as you improve, I'd say. You don't even have to keep playing a song over and over - you can play a song and get 75% perfect, then go and play other songs for a few months, never touch that original song again, then come back to it and suddenly you'll get 85% perfect, just like that. It'll just happen.

[putumayoman]

thanks a bunch guys. so i can buy a real drum set and use it for drummania? how the heck does that work ?

[BemaniAK]

Basically you need a MIDI set, and make sure it has a "MIDI out" slot, because you use a Yamaha UX-16 MIDI-USB converter to plug it into your PS2, since Drummania has the drivers for the UX-16 built in. USB sets probably won't work as they use their own drivers.
I don't think a regular acoustic set will work either, so probably go for a DTXpress, DTXplorer, DTXtreme, you know, one of those....

[putumayoman]

okay cool, thanks guys, how much do these go for and where can i get them?

[BemaniAK]

Some music stores actually sell MIDI sets, but for good ones you could probably go up towards $1000.
You could just get the DJDAO ASC that's a little cheaper than MIDI sets, about $800 (although shipping's gotta be expensive for that massive thing) and it's arcade-style, so you get that novelty, too.

[AdamW]

yeah, by "real" I meant a "real" electronic kit, sorry for the confusion. as bemani says, you can use any real electronic kit with a MIDI output, or you can get the dj dao kit.

The advantage of the dj dao kit is it's cheaper, exactly matches the arcade DM kit, and is easy to setup. The big disadvantage is you can't really use it as a real electronic drum kit. If you get a real electronic kit, you can use to to play DM, and then if you feel like it, you can play it as a regular kit too. So which is best to pick really depends on if you want a drum kit.

[PICASIO PICASIO]

Originally Posted by AdamW

yeah, by "real" I meant a "real" electronic kit, sorry for the confusion. as bemani says, you can use any real electronic kit with a MIDI output, or you can get the dj dao kit.

The advantage of the dj dao kit is it's cheaper, exactly matches the arcade DM kit, and is easy to setup. The big disadvantage is you can't really use it as a real electronic drum kit. If you get a real electronic kit, you can use to to play DM, and then if you feel like it, you can play it as a regular kit too. So which is best to pick really depends on if you want a drum kit.

Actually...
See, the whole "instrument" part of the electronic drumset lies in that little box off to the side.
The drum is just a MIDI controller. Fuck, you can play drummania on a sampler pads. You can play drummania on a YAMAHA Flute Style MIDI Controller...
...
...
Wait...
FLUTEMANIA...
brb.

[AdamW]

picasio: well, yeah, I know, I just didn't want to get too far into the technicalities of it. sure you can play DM with any midi controller, but there's not too many reasons you would actually want to.

[BemaniAK]

You kidding me?
SAXAPHONEMANIA HERE I COME.

[Alex]

If you're looking to get into it on the cheap, pick up a Yamaha UX-16 MIDI>USB converter and look into something like an ION drumkit. ION kits suck, but they're relatively cheap and you can definitely play on one for a little while to decide if you like it.

ION Audio 5 Piece MIDI Electronic Drum Set - IED01 : Target

It's cheap enough that you can probably sell it off if you don't like it or if you decide to upgrade to a better kit.

Ideally it's probably best to try Drummania in the arcade before you get a home setup, but barring that this is a fairly safe way to give it a shot.

[putumayoman]

cool, thanks, i wish i had an arcade period around me.

[Karnov]

They finally fixed the arcade one we got... Its amazing in the Arcade...
It's only 2 tokens too!

[BemaniAK]

No matter how advanced arcade style controllers are, a good arcade machine will always be better.