Let's talk dynamics

Finger Drumming Lessons / Courses / Practice
1

I’m nearly finished with the main lessons in the Quest for Groove material, and one thing I’ve noticed is that there aren’t really full lessons devoted to dynamics on the pads (though Rob does consistently remind us to pay attention to dynamics).

What I’ve found is that there seem to be two countervailing forces when it comes to getting good dynamics out of finger drumming.

The first is pad sensitivity. I think everyone acknowledges that while there is some dynamic range on a pad, it’s more limited than on an acoustic drum.

The second issue, though, seems more pernicious to me: finger behavior on the same hand is highly correlated. It’s hard to get different fingers on one hand behaving dynamically independently. So varying the overall dynamics of a groove seems doable/learnable, but modifying independent pieces of the kit seems much, much harder (I’m a year and half in, to calibrate my level).

Take a standard rock beat: kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, hi-hat on the eighth notes. If you want to accent one particular hi-hat note, there’s a decent chance you’ll also unintentionally accent the kick or snare that happens at the same moment, depending on how you’re fingering the pattern.

Obviously this is something one can train—and probably should train. But it still seems intrinsically pretty difficult.

So what are the alternatives?

The obvious one is use the other hand. Now the left hand isn’t just responsible for syncopated notes on the e and a of the sixteenth-note grid (alternating hand technique); it can also deliver an accent when needed. This seems especially viable on FGDP-style layouts, where much of the pad arrangement is mirrored.

I could also imagine other approaches, such as assigning particular fingers more consistently to particular kit pieces, though I haven’t really explored any of that yet.

So I’m curious how experienced finger drummers think about dynamics.

Is it:

Trainable, but fundamentally somewhat limited?

Totally trainable—get back to work, David. :slight_smile:

Finger drumming is simply a different instrument, with different expressive strengths and limitations, and you learn to work with what it gives you?

And for those of you who think dynamic independence is highly trainable: **what exercises or techniques have actually worked for you?**

Thanks,
David

2

I guess the way I’ve been thinking about it is perhaps don’t attempt finger independence, which I think there is even experimental evidence is very, very hard. Rather, think solving the problem “outside the box.” Here’s what I’ve been thinking about, and before I really push down this road (still ideas in my head) I wonder if more advanced players think this is nonsense.

So… the fingers are different actuators to begin with. Let’s run with that. My pinky, for example, naturally produces softer hits than my index or middle finger. Maybe that’s not something to eliminate; maybe it’s something to use (though of course usig a pink would introduce other problems of layout, but putting that aside; perhaps there are reasonable tradeoffs).

More broadly, I wonder whether hand posture could become part of dynamic technique. Instead of thinking, “make this finger hit at 90 and that one at 40 (out of 127),” perhaps you learn a few simple, comfortable hand configurations—small changes in tilt, finger curvature, wrist position, etc.—that naturally bias one finger louder and another softer. In other words, don’t try to navigate dynamics directly in “force space”; learn a small repertoire of easy postures that reliably put you in different regions of dynamic space. I.e. make the problem easier.

That suggests a broader approach to dynamics: use naturally stronger and weaker fingers intelligently, use posture to create useful dynamic biases, switch hands when that gives you cleaner independence, and then train true finger-to-finger dynamic independence if needed. Rather than fighting the biomechanics of the hand at every turn, maybe advanced finger-drumming technique is partly about learning how to exploit them.

I’d be curious whether experienced players already think this way, consciously or otherwise.
-D

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The first thing you should do (and it might be enough) is limit the kick drum’s dynamics in the controller, or by adjusting the samples!

In my opinion, there’s no universal hand technique that works for every beat/rhythmic pattern (with or without dynamics). If it’s too difficult, try playing with a traditional hand setup. By “traditional,” I mean the left hand plays the kick and snare, while the right hand plays the hi-hat.

I’d also say that:

  1. Not every controller is good for playing with dynamics. (Try switching back from the XJAM to the FGDP)

  2. The controller needs to be configured specifically for dynamic playing: try different velocity curves, and maybe even reduce (!) the pad sensitivity.

  3. It’s also important to choose drum sounds that reproduce dynamics well. For example, the built-in FGDP sounds are significantly worse at this compared to Addictive Drums.

  4. Not every groove sounds good and cut through music when played dynamically.

  5. Playing kick drum dynamically is a whole other challenge. Forget about it. I’d stick to double kicks: play the first note of the double softer (or vice versa — make the second note quieter).

…

Overall, this is a very broad topic… Send us the specific beat you’re working on, and we can think about how it could be played:)

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I think getting the dynamics you need for a particular beat, and then I mean which kit pieces are soft or loud at which hit, can usually be solved by making the correct switch to:

  • Independent hands (so hitting at the same time with both hands, splitting dynamics)
  • Using a rudiment pattern, which can lead to the “other” hand having to perform the loud hit which might be in a better position to easily hit the correct pads
  • And then if it is an entire song with some sort of crazy thing you need, you could do stuff like assigning a deliberately always soft hit to one of the sidestick pads for example, but I hardly ever do that anymore.
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Thanks, Robert. Independent hands seemed like the direct way to handle a lot of this. But it wasn’t covered in the classes (unlike the rudiments which are covered extensively, esp. in next-level beats), so I wanted to be sure you weren’t against it for some reason I hadn’t figured out for myself. :slight_smile:

-David

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Thanks blubgame,

Much to think about here.

  1. XJAM is very sensitive (I use two, one for each hand), and I think very good for dynamics because the minimal sensitivity before false negative is quite high.
  2. Curious how reducing pad sensitivity makes sense. What one wants is range, right? With the smallest touch before false negatives (misses) kick in. Am I missing something?
  3. I use AD2 through Ableton.
  4. Acknowledged.
  5. Why is it harder? The thumbs? The fact that it’s always being struck when other kit pieces are being struck (e.g. hihat)? Probably both. I’m actually thinking of dedicating a pad to a quieter kick. I do this for the snare because snare ghost notes are so important across a lot of different music, and it works like a charm. I’ve got no problem throwing technology at hard finger mechanics, whenever possible.

I’m not working on any particular beat that’s challenging, rather, I’m beginning to think of dynamics more broadly, how best to get most out of a limited palette. That kind of thing.
-D

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By reducing the AD Gain parameter on the FGDP from the factory setting of 46 to around 36–40, I can play more consistent ghost notes at low velocity. However, louder hits become harder to play, to the point where the velocity can be limited to around 115, for example.

This trick probably doesn’t work for all controllers, and the available parameters are different on each one. On the Xjam, I tried increasing the Pad Threshold from -10 to +10 (here, increasing the value actually reduces the sensitivity), but I didn’t notice any improvement.

So it seems the only option left for Xjam is to adjust the velocity curves. Pad Headroom is also an important parameter; I think it should probably be kept somewhere in the -10 to -5 range.

Because my right hand (middle finger) is busy maintaining the hi-hat dynamics. You know, that standard groove: the first hit is strong, the second one is weak. So there’s not much room left for controlling the kick dynamics — I’m just trying to hit it hard enough in the first place :slight_smile:

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Indeed, I also have challenges modulating my thumb hits. Since I have two Xjam pads, I have bass mapped to a couple of different pads where the dynamic modulation (especially e- and ah-) is easier because I use my ring finger.

I also tried messing around with the Xjam velocity parameters, and here I’ve had success! I always thought the Xjam pads were super sensitive (the default hardware parameters) in the sense of picking up ghost notes easily and well, but I always thought hitting the top of the range required a bit too hard of a hit. Here are my parameters now that improve/fix (across all pads):

Pad Threshold: -10 (from 0)
Pad Headroom: 3 (from 0, unintuitively, a higher value reduces the strength of the hit required to reach max)
Velocity Curve: Linear, which is named Dynamic Curve 4 (from Dynamic Curve 1)

Now I really notice my ghost notes can be quite ghosty at a mere touch of the pad, while I can now hit the max volume without banging the pad unduly. I’m going to keep the linear velocity curve until I decide I can’t control the pads properly, but so far so good. :slight_smile:
-D

PS One can set the Pad Threshold to the minimum value of -10 because another configurable parameter silences double taps that occur before X milliseconds (set by default to 1ms, which seems to work perfectly for me).

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My problem with XJAM is pretty loud ghost notes. Here is my record of hihat while I play same beat several times in a row. I played it with 3 different settings of HEADROOM parameter: -10, 0, 10. You can see in the graphs that higher HEADROOM leads to wider dynamic range, but also raises the minimum velocity of softer hits. That was played with LINEAR curve.

Here the same beat played on FGDP-30 with my best settings:

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Look at lowest velocity notes! Also soft hits averaged curve (yellow) is below XJAM results!

I will try tweaking XJAM further (I definitely go with a different curve than LINEAR) to get better results, but for now I prefer FGDP’s dynamic response.

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Interesting! Did you try putting the threshold down to -10 also?

I want to try to reproduce this because I would swear my ghost notes became quieter at the settings I mentioned in my previous post. Is it easy to reproduce the graphs? If so, can you spare a few sentences on how to set it up? (my rig is xjam pads->ableton live 12 standard → AD2.

Full disclosure: Because I use two XJam pads, I actually have pads mapped explicitly to quieter snare hits for ghost notes because snare is so important. But I don’t think it’d change any of this analysis, because we’re normalizing to our own pads/settings.

Thanks,
D

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The pad threshold has been set to -10 from day one)

The graphs are from Korg Gadget 3 app on iPad. Ableton is professional software and definitely capable for this type of velocity graph but I can’t help with this. I dont use Ableton.

Don’t bother much about these settings/controllers if you’re already satisfied with your current setup. But if you encounter difficulties in performing a certain beat you can try tweaking the settings further or trying a different controller)

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