Finger Drumming Pdf
Marquez Feliciano
Whoaaa, what a blast!! Like being used to be practicing on a standard piano and switching to an open concert grand! I never thought that some tape can have so much impact! you can get used to anything, but if some tape can make fills, crescendos and relaxed drumming with your finger tips so much easier?
I need so many drums (which I also replace frequently) to keep the drums entertaining in a techno/house sense. Basically I just analyzed the way how I was programming beats on my gear and translated this to a drum pad. I/we also have other sources for melodies (a System-1 for live played basses etc with the right hand, and my music colleague with 1-3 electribes), but I have to admit that I really like this MPC approach where you have all you need on the pads. Maybe I design some kits with such a layout, or add a second pad layout on bank B like this.
This is some kind of training with a similar layout as shown in the beginning of the thread. With the alternating hands it feels more natural to play than with the standard layout (at least to me) and is supposed to give quick results that sound musical.
Hi @jangeisler, if you are thinking using the course material on the Quest for Groove website I have a feeling that you are going to need to invest earlier than you probably want to. All the pad layouts that I have seen are based on a 4 x 4 pad controller or larger. Also, I would doubt that the Akai Mini will be responsive enough for finger druming. The best person really to answer this is the producer of the courses @Robert_Mathijs, he will be able to confirm or advise how that might work for you. The MPK218 is probably the cheapest on the market at around $75, if like me you are restricted on budget, this might be a way forward.
actually I meant GeoSynth, that's the app I once used in a great session with a bass player and a sax player. And I was the one who defined the tempo. And indeed, there's a version for iPhone, although - as it seems - as a separate purchase.
But again, I guess one can do finger drumming with many apps, including pitch bend. I was just remembering this session many years ago where GeoSynth was used, and that it sounded absolutely great. At that time it was rather unusual to play the main rhythmic part with a tablet, rigidly attached to a window frame with a K&M iPad holder, hammering on the glass surface like crazy, and producing such an interesting rhythm.
There are a lot of great apps above. But, if you're talking about classic 16-pad finger drumming (a la Mad Zach), none of them will do. For example, I use my MidiFighter or QuNeo to drum with a 4x4 grid on Groove Rider.
If you don't have this for triggering chords, you should. It's fun to finger drum chords. But, you can also create 1-note "chords" on each pad to correspond to a drum note to trigger a kit in another drum app, sample app or soundfont player. Also, it has a full screen mode, but the pads become rectangular.
This midi controller app - with a configurable X x Y drumpad layout is simply fantastic. The velocity sensing algorithm works very well, at least for my playing style. And you can fine tune the velocity curve etc. to your liking. I am using it mainly on the iPad with BM3 (pads mapped to focus actions), but I would imagine it works just as well on the iphone to send midi to other apps.
Drum teachers often emphasize the importance of starting simple and slow so that you can develop your sense of time. Even playing the simplest pattern in time at a moderate tempo is difficult at first, and apparently the key to playing complex and fast things well is to build up to them gradually. Playing with a metronome is an excellent way to work on time. Justin Aswell gives some good general advice about finger drumming (rule number 1: relax!), and shows what professional finger drumming looks like.
As a finger drumming instructor with over 14 years of experience as an acoustic drummer, I have been in both worlds and have a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Because of this, I feel well-equipped to answer the question: which one is better?
Finger drumming, on the other hand, is incredibly portable! A pad controller takes up only a little space on your desk, and if you have a laptop, you can easily fit your whole finger drumming setup into a small backpack and take it with you anywhere. Never before has drumming been anywhere near this portable.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, acoustic drumming is LOUD. Even if you're able to afford an expensive drum set and have space to put it, if you live in a place where you can't make a ton of loud noise, you basically can't be a drummer. Anyone who lives with their family, or in an apartment building, or just a quiet suburb, is completely locked out of the world of drumming.
This is the biggest problem that finger drumming solves. You can play drums with just headphones! All anyone will be able to hear is you tapping lightly on your pads, which is barely louder than a quiet conversation.
For all of these reasons, I believe finger drumming will impact the future of drumming in a massive way. It won't replace acoustic drumming entirely, but it will make it so much more accessible to millions of people all over the world who never could play drums before.
last time I went travelling a long time ago I took a Boss dr670 with me.
The sounds were cheesey stadium rock but the pads were really sensitive and it was great for finger drumming. Nice, I still enjoyed it.
In the design you have many small keys at your fingetips in a harmonic table layout, giving you a large range of notes with a small footprint, saving deskpace and being ideal for throwing in a backpack to take it on the road.
The guy who designed these units showcased them with quite cheesey synth voices and I believe the reason he did not get investment was simply that the investors did not understand at that time (around 2005) what a midi controller is, or that the voices could be changed to any voice the software or synth that the midi controller was connected to would allow for.
I think the guy is still looking for investors, check out the demos below to see how expressive it is with those two joysticks and visit the wikipedia page if you are interested in the details.
I think some large manufacturer like roland, akai, roli or casio should take notice of this design. Its a shame it never made it to production.
The last video gives a fuller explanation of the design and the advantages of the layout of the keys. I put the link to the wikipedia first:
A Thummer is a proposed commercial musical instrument characterized by The Thummer was to be a type of jammer keyboard. Research suggests that the jammer's combination of thumb-controls and internal motion sensors could give more expressive potential than other polyphonic musical instruments such as the piano, guitar, and accordion. Isomorphic keyboards similar to those used in a jammer have been shown to accelerate the rate at which students grasp otherwise-abstract concepts in music theory.
no, pads are not velocity-sensitive, but you can use MPD for example as controller for velocity-controlled sound
effects are #1, sequencer is rather poor, i mean poor comparing to mpc sequencer (renoise is from heaven in this case) for example. Depends on your needs
So, ever since I first saw David Hynes on youtube, I've been REALLY interested in finger drumming (getting better at it, to be more specific). I have percussion experience (percussionist of the year each year, all through high school, but that was 7 years ago). I own a Korg Padkontrol and absolutely love it, but I don't think I'm getting that much better. I don't know, maybe I am.
I am still trying to figure the config that works best, but that is because I am still trying to figure the best fingers to use for what drum piece. For now, I am still stuck doing a few pieces at once. For example, I might start off doing only the kik and snare with some tom fills, then come back and do the hihat/ride and cymbal hits.
For practicing, pick a few albums you love, know really well, and are not too complex if you want; starting with something complex can be cool, just play simple beats over it, adding more and more as you get better/more comfy.
I have two kiks and two snares mapped on my pads, just so I can play as if I had two kik pedals and using right and left hands for the snare. To me, it was easier double mapping the snare. I also varied response for the one snare pad very slightly.
Try different mappings, get basic beats going (to a metronome is best), and jam with albums you know really well. Once you find your pad map and finger "assignments" you should be half way there I think
I agree lock down your mapping. Confine your presets to 16 pads/cells etc. AND, practice creating patterns where you have to use 2 fingers from the same hand at the same time or different fingers from the same hand successively. An example would be if you were doing a 16th note snare drum roll, beginning on beat 4 (4/4 time sig), and you need to spank the bass drum and crash cymbal on beat 1 (the downbeat) of the next measure. You have two options, either use 1 hand (the free hand) to play the bass drum & cymbal w/2 fingers or you could allow the hand that was playing the final 16th note of the roll to use a "new" finger on the bass drum and the "free" hand to play the cymbal. I have found that when I try stuff like this my finger drumming gets more fluid.
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