Practicing the Bass Pedal

[MarkV3]

Okay here is my problem, I'm an auto-bass wh0re (like many players in my area) and I want to move on because lots of the extreme songs are easy with auto-bass. I can do almost all basic songs and SOME advanced but I'm wondering of any good recommendations for songs that don't have awkward timing for the bass so I can get a better feel for it. Has anyone else here gone from auto-bass to bass? How did you go about it? I've gone from 5 key Pop'n to 9-key and it was a pretty painful transition but I survived it, so now I wanna do the same for Drummania.

[BobbyS]

Should have never started that habit! I'm sure there are many people here that will help you, but I'm taking your situation as a reminder to never do that. :P

[AdamW]

it would kinda help to know what kind of level you're at with manual bass, numerically and in terms of what you can and can't do (do you have trouble with alternate bass, or fast stuff, or what?)

Bearing that in mind, I played manual bass from beginner to about level 25, then went on autobass until I was about level 50-60, then converted back to manual bass. The songs I played a lot were:

Innocent World
Island in the Sun (great beginner's alternate bass song)
Robinson
Libra (excellent song for practicing a lot of common bass techniques and patterns at a speed that doesn't overwhelm you)
Diamonds (slightly more advanced alt. bass than Island)
Dragon Blade adv (great morale booster - it's quite easy bass and nice to say you can pass a 52)
Sing-a-Well

As you get better, go for stuff like Dream Again..., Monster Tree (great for endurance). Get to a V3 machine (Metrotown, or Parker Place or R.P.M. in Richmond) and hit up the V3 songs - there's a lot of good level 40 - 50 bass songs there...Zenryoku Shounen, Karma, Akikaze, Delight, Circles, all fun stuff.

Where / when do you usually play? Maybe I saw ya before :P

[TTR_loves_Mittens]

A good thing is to learn the rhythm of the songs that you want to learn to do. One complexity/rhythm tester is Brazilian Anthem. If you try to pass it, it will help you learn how to seperate certain patterns from one hand to another, and the bass-foot too. Most of time, the Bass drum pattern is modeled after the bass-guitar pattern, so it's also worth giving a listen to.

[MarkV3]

Always playing at CHQ Metrotown and the very odd time e-spot Richmond.

[AdamW]

hmm, that's weird, maybe i did see you but just don't remember :P

regularly I play just about every afternoon at chq, but lately I've been mostly stuck at home.

[M4XX loves Under the Sky]

I played without AB until about level 20, then AB'd to level 70.
To get out of AB, I personally stuck a newspaper under my foot and air-drummed to Chikara (Live Band Style) for half an hour. That got me to 40s, no problem. Over time, I can now do 70s without AB, and 90s with it.

[Chrono Helix]

Slowly airdrum constant double bass. Slowly airdrum constant alternate bass (which, after a while, you'll notice is really constant bass). Practice switching from double bass to alternate bass and back. Speed up. Other good songs to practice not mentioned:
Black Sheep ADV (you can try EXT if you're ready for triple bass)
Honjitsu wa Seiten Nari EXT
For The Future EXT

Try to practice to the point where you can do double bass on reaction. I practiced this by doing a lot of Plastic Imitations and Liar.

[ThatsGobbles]

The songs that got me used to double-bass on command were Libra [A and E] and Utopia [E].

[oni-ice]

悲しみは雪のように

Innocent World

そばかす ADV

[Megamanny]

Best advice I can give you is set songs you know you have trouble wiht to Auto Bass. But you still play it as if though it was manually.

I'm not good at DM much and whenever I play Mad Blast I have to do it like that.

[hellspare]

I can only comfortably pass manual bass up to the 40s. It's a pain when the bass doesn't match up with the other patterns. I'm assuming that's what you have a problem with as well. I think the best way to improve is to listen to the song before jumping into it, especially if you're like me and can't sight read bass all that well.

[AlphaConqerer]

I really think it's useful to play the Bass guitar parts for songs (as mentioned earlier) if the song has an "off-beat"ish pattern. In these cases many times the bass drum follows the bass, and in general it's just good to see how the bass works in the song.

You'll begin to realize how the bass was always there but you never really noticed it. Once you do and can work how it relates to the other instruments in the ensemble, it should start to become second nature. But yeah, I think practicing bass guitar parts really helps for many songs.

[Xythar]

You're not going to get good at awkward timing if all you play is easy bass songs, however.

Something I still have trouble with is songs with offbeat bass (never used autobass, but haven't been playing that much in general). If you want to practice offbeat bass and similar you should pick a song where it's actually used, but one that's not too fast. I think HELLO YOU advanced is good practice for that, as an example.

[AdamW]

xyth: that's why I recommended island in the sun and diamonds. for v3 you can also add looking for love in you (which is ridiculously overrated, it should be a level 40 song at the most).