Any suggestions for color scheme for individual voices? Or should it be user defined color palette?
Also, i’ve been meaning to implement finger drumming setup, what would be the best / most general layout for this? It looks like everybody has different opinion on “best” layout.
No idea on the color scheme, I haven’t noticed a common practice here.
With the layout, there are a few “standards” out there. The most common (but as @Robert_Mathijs will likely point out - not most finger-drumming ergonomic) layout is where the most common sounds are arranged, starting bottom left. There’s no 100% agreement, but I think its roughly this:
Bottom Row: Kick, Snare, Hat Closed, Hat Open (This is very established)
From there, I’m not sure if there are any conventions anymore. In the second row from bottom, I usually then see alternatives to the first row, like a Rimshot or Clap above the Snare, and other cymbals above the Hats (like second Hat Closed, Ride and Crash).
Third row from bottom is then usually toms (TH, TM, TL), percussion, rather flexible.
Forth row is sometimes not even set (12 sounds are plenty), but if they are, it’s usually then percussion, samples.
Here are screenshos of Bitwig Drum Maschines, they follow this convention I’ve also seen elsewhere (I think NI Maschine, Atlas has the same conventions?)
Or this: https://forum.bfddrums.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/78bef1ac29b95dcfbfe8bc1faecb28efd5708e32.png (very typical Machine layout)
For your website, you have several sounds that never change when changing the drum-set. I would optimize toward those also staying on the same pad with 4x4 layout. You have 11 sounds, so you’d only fill the first 3 rows.
So maybe it’s something like this (or Rim/Clap reversed), basically a 4x3 layout:
(empty), (empty), (empty), (empty)
HT/HC, MT/MC, TL/LC, (empty)
Cowbell, Clap/MA, Rimshot/Clave, CY
Kick, Snare, Hat Closed, Hat Open
For a more ergonomic finger drumming layout, you’d start duplicating the same sound to more than one pad, so I’m not sure it would be a good way to visualize it. I think @Robert_Mathijs - when you visualize it there, you explicitly decide which pad should be used for the same sound, e.g. to get alternating hands in.
So if you’d use QFG layout and a Hat Closed is played, you’d either have to highlight both pads, or you’d need to know when each one should be played (which you don’t)
Maybe I’m missing something here (I’m quickly scanning over everything that’s being said) but my way of visualizing dominant hand and non dominant hand is to simply show a circle for dominant and a diamond for non dominant. Then you know with which hand to play which sound.
The problem here is that the website doesn’t have the information which hand should trigger which sound, so while I like the way you represent this, it wouldn’t work for that drum patterns page. It basically only has the MIDI information about a pattern.
@Fannon Thank you very much for your response. Wouldn’t it be better to utilize full 4x4 grid and put congas in the first row and toms in the second?
@drumpatterns Good point, yes! Then you might do this with the other 2 alternative sounds and get a full 4x4 grid
