Something I’ve noticed as I work through the early lessons is that I need to pay attention to the dynamics of each finger just like when playing piano.
For example, on patterns where we are hitting the kick with the thumb and the closed hat with the middle finger of each hand, I noticed that I was clobbering the hi-hat but the kick wasn’t that audible. So I had to adjust my strikes to lean more on the thumb and less on the hat. This is exactly like when you have to accent the melody with the pinky of your right hand on a piano, while hitting the other keys more softly with the fingers of that same hand.
I mean, I guess you could just turn the kick volume up and the hi-hat volume down in the drum software, but that seems lazy and could lead to problems down the road. What do you guys think about this? How do you deal with these dynamics in your playing?
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In the end, the more control you have the better, so trying to get those dynamics right from your playing instead of adjusting volumes is the best “standard mindset” one should have.
However, with finger drumming we’re sort of stuck with a very limited dynamic range compared to real instruments. A solid tap is a “very loud hit” and a soft tap is a “soft” hit and if we have a great pad controller and a lot of control over our hands we can get maybe 3 steps in between but thats it.
So with that in mind, messing round with velocity curves is not something you should always avoid. For example, in a genre like Bossa Nova, you dont hit the kit that loud. Basically never. So what you can do is adjust the velocity curve to completely ignore the loudest range of sounds so that your loudest hit will actually be “medium” . This way you dont have to navigate the mega difficult line of playing “medium loud” and never crossing that treshold (which would result in a Lars Ullrich style metallica hit on the snare).
The differences are so small that depending on the song and genre, you probably want to do yourself a favor once in a while and adjust your kit to make things a little easier.
For the basics though: make sure to use your thumb joint and not just your wrist joint to hit that kickdrum firmly. When your thumb moves by itself you can create a sot hit on the hihat with a big hit on the kick.
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Thanks Robert. You are right. I am overestimating our available dynamic range compared to something like my Yamaha e-drums kit. Well, even on the e-kit I’ve found myself having to adjust the snare velocity curve so that a medium-force hit doesn’t trigger the loudest snare sample.
I suppose there’s going to be a line I need to walk between improving my own dynamics to the best that they can be on a beatpad while adjusting velocity curves or volumes to get the most out of the performance.
One thing I’ve been experimenting with on Superior Drummer is adding breakpoints for the velocity curves of individual drums. I can add nodes to keep my velocity curve linear up to a certain threshold, then flatten the slope so that I really have to crush the pad to trigger the loudest samples:
Well, I guess it will just take some experimentation and practice. I will try what you suggested about using my thumb joint more on the kick as well.
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Yeah! Those types of curves are exactly what you need. You’ll develop a feel for how to set them for the sound you want. I do this all the time to get the exact result I want. Just playing gets it to 90% and the last 10% is these types of tweaks.
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make sure to use your thumb joint and not just your wrist joint to hit that kickdrum firmly
A little bit off-topic, but in the first hour practicing finger drumming (doing the basic course), hitting the kick strangely reminded me slapping on the bass. Didn’t touch the bass for quite some time, but I could swear it helped a lot.
On the topic: I think what should trigger from even a light touch, or what should be capped depends on the style, but as also a beginner what I found hard is to be consistent.
“Locking” your finger -so mainly drumming from the wrist joint- helps with consistency, and spot-on notes, while being somewhat limiting as at this locked position I wasn’t able to figure out a way to use other fingers than the index (or middle, doesn’t matter). On the other hand, drumming mainly using the finger joints gives more freedom, but tends to be rather inconsistent regarding volume.
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Yeah thats exactly right. And you can develop those subtle wrist motions to get more and more control. Best example of this is David Fingers Haynes. He just has the chops and its all wrist. 
That said, obviously a few years form now some kid will start posting insane drummming videos using all of his fingers and he will prove me wrong but hey… thats progress
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That’s interesting. I’m primarily a bass player and when I slap, it’s pretty much all wrist.
In the end, it’s just practice I guess. Developing the “touch” will come with time and a better understanding of my beatpad’s response.
I’ve already made a lot of progress in understanding the limitations of my pads by warming up with the exercises in that video Robert posted a while back:
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Yes, I actually meant that! The experience of how to loosen my wrist helps with delivering firm kicks. Even if I use my thumb joint as well, my wrist moves all the time.
Good to hear that you’re making progress! I will try the rudiments video . Check out the channel Rob mentioned (David Fingers Haynes), it’s crazy good!
I’ve been experimenting with using more thumb joint when I “slap” my wrist down. Now I’m having the opposite problem of weak hi-hat hits 
Well, I’ve got the two extremes down, now it’s just a matter of internalizing the balance of force required to achieve the right dynamics.
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