Second day of finger drumming. Really enjoying it so far! Thanks for the great courses on QFG!
I’m a little disappointed with the pads on my Maschine Mikro Mk3. I played with the sensitivity slider, but I’m still finding that the pads don’t trigger sometimes even though I’ve adapted to hitting them pretty hard. I’m a piano player and I’m finding my fingers and hands getting tired pretty quickly from just 10-15 min of drumming. (I practice piano for 1-2 hours sometimes with no issues.) Are the pads on the Maschine Mk3 (the big one) more sensitive? I’m hoping to find something I can hit softer and still get the pads to trigger. Maybe this is just a technique issue and it’ll get better with time, but if there’s a better controller out there I’m willing to spend the money to save my hands. Thanks!
Maschine Mk3: Maschine: Drum machine & sampler for beatmakers
Maschine Mikro Mk3 (what I’m currently using): Maschine Mikro: Compact drum machine & sampler for beatmakers
There are also some Mikro’s out there with “bad” pads. It does not happen often for as far as I know, but I have now seen multiple students deal with a bad unit and having to swap it out.
I think there’s sometimes a bad batch coming out of the factory, but it does not seem to be consistently bad. I bought 4 mikro’s years apart and I’ve never had a bad one.
So… the solution might be swapping it out first before switching to the big one. Those pads are only slightly better so if your mikro has bad pads it’s probably that specific unit.
Thanks! I just got to the velocity curves lesson and I think that helped too. I’ll keep testing it out and if one of the pads seems particularly off I’ll exchange it for a new one. It sounds like the Mikro should work fine and upgrading to the bigger Mk3 just for the pads isn’t actually worth it anymore.
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Yeah, just keep in mind with the sensitivity settings that sometimes you can go too far. In that case the pads will start to respond less well. A bit counterintuitive but I’ve seen it a couple of times with newer units.
Update: I went and tried out a Maschine Mk3 today and the pads felt identical to the Mikro (to my untrained fingers). It took about the same amount of force to activate the pads on both and if I did it any lighter the pads did not react at all. That means that this is probably an issue with my technique instead of an issue with the actual devices. I’m so used to piano keys sounding with even the lightest touch I guess I just expected pads to be the same.
The good news is that now that I’ve had a few days to get used to finger drumming it feels a lot more natural and I’m able to get the pads to sound without pressing as hard as I was on the first day. It might also be that I just wasn’t as accurate before and I’m slowly getting better at actually hitting the pads (instead of accidentally hitting the edge or something).
Thanks for your help and the great courses! Good to know that this wasn’t something I have to spend tons more money to solve!
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Also keep in mind that hitting a pad and then leaving your finger on it makes it not trigger if you hit it wih the other hand. That sometimes is an issue for beginners as well.
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It definately was for me. Interestingly, the Yamaha FGDP is much more tolerant with this, I think they even mention it as a special feature.