The day finally arrived and I got the Maschine Mikro Mk3 for my birthday.
Thought I’d start a learning diary to keep track of my thoughts and observations as I begin my journey into finger drumming. I’ve been learning guitar and bass for a while now in the little bit of spare time I have, but always liked rhythm and drums so giving this a go.
Might try to make some electronic music at some point, but keen to just get started with some grooves and maybe a few easy-ish songs. Eventually I’d like to be able to create some drum parts to go with guitar and bass so I basically have my own instrumental song.
I setup the QFG layout in EZDrummer 3 and had a go at the 8th note groove (yes I skipped a bit as the day was nearly over and wanted to play something). Pretty happy with my effort playing at approx 60bpm. My observations are:
Challenging, but saw quick improvements in not hitting the kick or snare on the ‘a’ beat. Still doing this a little bit. I know the neural connections will come and this will get easier the more I practice.
Sometimes miss a beat, probably more often the kick than the snare.
Snare hit sometimes sound quite inconsistent. Not sure if it’s me or the pad controller yet
Due to the level of concentration, couldn’t really listen to metronome so not always keeping time. Probably like when learning new things on guitar, I need to stop for a bar or two (with metronome still going) and try to get back on time.
Seem to start slow, then think I was rushing.
Also just had some fun mucking around with no particular approach just making some different beats.
Not sure how often I’ll post and I have a few bars recorded in EZDrummer 3 from today that I can refer to and might be able to post at some point.
Big thanks to Rob for the free beginners course and setup guide, looking forward to progressing through it. Will post any questions in the dedicated section of this forum.
Anyway, better get to bed as early rise again tomorrow, but very happy to make a start and excited to see where this journey takes me
Great idea Duncan! I would very much like to help you out and/or point you in the right direction whenever you need some personal feedback, so do not hesitate to keep sharing (or in case you don’t want the rest of the community to know send an email).
You got started, now keep it up and feel the gains coming in over the next months!
Thanks @Robert_Mathijs, much appreciated and happy to share here. I didn’t get very long with day 2, but still made some progress. A chunk of my time went learning how to use software, but about time I did that anyway.
Figured out a better way to check my timing:
Tap out a constant beat on the hi-hat to get a comfortable tempo.
Use EZDummer tap tempo to set the temp - realised I was tapping 8th notes as 1/4 notes so initially set tempo as 100bpm, but was actual 50bpm (dam sub-divisions).
Start recording with a 1 bar count it, then start with just the hi-hat for a bar before brining in the rest of the beat.
Watch and concentrate on my hand hitting the Mikro. If I didn’t watch very closely, I quickly got out of whack which is similar to my experience learning guitar. In time, I expect this to get better just like it did with guitar.
Took a couple of tries before I figured out what I was doing with EZDrummer (haven’t used it much) and once or twice I totally lost the beat, but after a couple of tries, this is me playing “3 beat variations, variation 1” from the Let’s Play section of the beginner course - hopefully the link works, I just signed up to a free Jump Share account as the platform seems to be an easy way to share mp3 files.
I like the idea of having a drumming diary. Think that this helps staying motivated. And when I listened to your first rhythm it very much reminded me of my very first steps - just about two months ago I think. I improved a little and so I am sure that will notice big differences every day you go on.
Day 3 was very tired and practicing in the evening but still got some practice in, mostly with Basic 16th notes.
Very chopping, but posting anyway as have to have the good and bad:
Day 4 (Sat) got multiple sessions in during the morning. Worked on:
16th note basic beat
3 Beat Variations #2 and #3
Had a go with Drum Fills (all 3)
Variations:
My key takeaway from days 3 and 4 is that I’m finding it much more challenging to stay on the beat as soon as the left (non-dominant) hand is needed. Pretty much end up rushing every time.
Overall, feeling pretty good as think I’m sounding musical enough for this early stage
My specific questions are:
Is this fairly normal to lose timing once the non-dominant hand comes into play and is there anything specific you can be aware of to help or will it just come with more practice?
Is there an ideal finger to use for each pad? I don’t think it’s been discussed in the lessons as yet (maybe it is later, I’m still in Let’s Play). It took me a moment to notice that Rob uses his ring finger on the cymbal when playing the final “1” in the variation with the kick and hi-hat.
I’m not a real teacher, just someone with 2-3 years learning in:
Yes, I think so. This will definitely just get better with practice. But I think you need some external feedback like playing with a metronome, a drum/click track. You could also record yourself via MIDI and then see how accurate you really play.
Each of your finger has certain strengths and weaknesses. After a while, you’ll realize this and know what I mean. You will then also train to strengthen your weak points so that it shouldn’t matter so much anymore which finger you use (except pinky maybe…?). With the QFG layout, it’s pretty clear though that your thumb will play the kick, your index the snares and your middle finger the Hats. Imho: Just try around, in the worst case you just train your fingers and are more flexible when to use which finger.
But I’m sure that Rob has better insights on this than me
Yes this is very normal. Your non-dominant hand is usually harder to control so you will more quickly play out of time / sloppy. This will improve over time for sure. It is one of the reason that I start out teaching things that are a little dominant hand-heavy. It allows you to churn some ‘decent’ sounding beats out from the start. But trust me, that other hand will improve over time. In this course and especially courses after this one.
I don’t have specific fingerings no. It’s usually thumbs on the kick drums, and middle and index fingers on the hi hats and snares (if you don’t need a snare you can hit the hi hats with index fingers as well, which happens not infrequently).
But… I honestly find that for some beats or fills the fingering is different. I play the snares with my thumbs sometimes for example. I also sometimes use “claws” and play with just index fingers, and sometimes I use flat fingers and put my index finger on top of my middle finger for some extra stability.
I do address these things in future lessons by the way. Right now, I would probably go with what feels the most comfortable and if it’s hard to decide, i’d stick with thumbs on kicks, index on snares, middle fingers on hi hats, ring finger for sidestick, cymbal a, ride.
Without trying to overload you with information, I would also like to give you a little peak into the future.
Later on in the curriculum I actually advise students to forget about the hi hat and focus on the “slow” one, two, three, four count and then bringing in the hi hat while staying grounded and counting the slow counts out loud. This will improve the smoothness of your beats even more!
Don’t do that right now, just know that it’s coming What you’re doing now is exactly how I started out as well and it’s a great way to improve at first!
It’s been a productive first week, got through some software and setup issues and setup a template in Reaper so I can just open, practice and when ready, record my progress. Will probably record video at some point, but that tends to consume time and would rather spend what I have practicing actual drums as well as continuing guitar and bass.
I’ve got a desk where I can leave all my stuff connected most of the time and glad that I bought an audio interface with a USB port on the back so I’ll still have a port available for my USB light for when I record video.
I think I’ll change my approach to guitar as well to record more often as I’ve often wondered if I’m actually improving as I have little to compare it to which impacts motivation.
As well as playing, I’ve taken the time to watch through all the videos in the beginner series and feeling positive, but realistic after the final section “Stuff you want to know”. Starting tomorrow I’m planning on getting started with the Grooving & Improving course.
Mixing up the beat, such as when you throw in a drum fill is definitely challenging, but can already hear slight improvements. It will be interesting when I’m trying to do something like a consistent 3 bars with a drum fill to round out the 4th bar as I’m mainly used to using the drums as my marker when playing guitar to help keep track of what bar I’m in.
Whilst this is technically day 8, day 1 was really just setting up so I’m listing these as my progress as at the end of my first week and the focus is on drum fills:
This is absolutely one of the best things you can possibly do to improve and to also notice your improvements over time. And… also notice when you’re completely stuck so you can ask for help
Well it’s been a productive second week and feeling pretty good about the start of my journey. I got stuck into the Section 1 of Grooving & Improving. At the start of the week, I was definitely struggling with consistency of the beat but followed through on Rob’s advice and didn’t overdo any one session to the point where I might get frustrated. I was enjoying it quite a bit a couple of nights ago and started to get a little discomfort in my thumb. I remembered Rob’s advice and have done silly things in the past with playing guitar or out running that left me injured, so made sure I finished up nearly straight away. Thankfully no residual discomfort and have played last night and tonight.
Really enjoyed playing along to the different variations of the backing tracks and slowly building up my rhythm. I even tried something new this week and whilst I was out for a run I gave “air finger drumming a go”. I had some classics playing from AC/DC, Judas Priest and others and tried to tap along to the kick and snare as if I was on the QFG pad layout. It really made me listen closely to the music.
By the end of my second week, I’m happy with the progress so I decided that I’d have a go at recording video as well tonight to celebrate being able to jam along to the challenge track “Whole Band + Melody without any clicks”. The video quality isn’t great, but it’s just my laptop camera and room lighting isn’t great so had a go at using my new USB light which helped a bit. Aligning audio and video was a challenge as the video file had no sound, but think I got it pretty close.
Hope you like it and keen to get any feedback on technique at this early stage.
I’ve been rather busy, but subscribed to get to the next part of Grooving & Improving and have made some ok progress with Section 2. It wasn’t an easy road, the fill really threw me on this one and found the backing track tougher to play along with than Section 1.
After some encouragement from Rob, I pushed through and played the fill a lot more in isoloation as well as practicing with all the through the different videos backing tracks the different lessons. After a couple of days of no playing, I went through the backing tracks again and finally decided I was ready to record. It’s the full length backing track so might get a bit boring, but wanted to document that I could get the groove over an extended period of time. I threw in some of the variations and dropped in the fill when I could. A few slip-ups during, but I was able to get back in time which I was very happy about.
Yup, this is it! You already have this good core feel for a groove going. Now it’s a matter of playing some other songs and then in the courses that follow Grooving & Improving there will be some annoying but important exercises that will help you to make the switch from a beat into a fill even more seamless!
