Hey guys. I’m working my way through the course for beginners and I’m really loving it! This, coming from a person that saw drums as “a necessary evil” for my music. Robert, you have really made your courses fun and super informative. I can see myself getting better after just a few days and I just wanted to say “Thank you”. Drums were always my weak spot when it came to music production…now I see that changing. I particularly like your approach and your personal humble way that you teach. You are just being you. There’s no BS…your trying to be hip or cool…you’re just doing your thing and that’s such a refreshing change from the typical Youtube video.
I have a long way to go but like I said I’m having fun so far and figured it will take about a year to really feel like I can bang out some good drum tracks that can be recorded in real time without a bunch of editing…but that’s great because that certainly wasn’t going to happen playing drums the way I was before discovering QFG.
I was just looking around the website a bit more just to see what else what going on with other pad controllers and found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AucBbNeqBkU
At the time 2:35 you were talking about adding shallow snare pads under the primary snare pads and you said “these are good for doing ghost notes”. When you cut back to your demo at the 2:35 mark, you played some snare ghost notes but it was like a snare roll not just a single hit ghost note. I mean that sounded amazing! Totally legit for sure. I don’t see the pad indictating this “roll” of a ghost note. How the heck did you do this?! Did you program a repeat feature to those pads? I just didn’t see your fingers roll that shallow snare pad…so how was that done?
Finally, I have also started to do rolls by actually using two fingers, which seems to work better on the Yamaha FGDP and sometimes feels more comfortable to me now on a regular pad controller as well. Doing rolls by rolling two fingers is not something I teach in the lessons and courses yet because it’s kind of new for me too. If I get a chance I will update certain things to include that movement as well.
Just so you know that I also approve of this other way of doing rolls
Ahhh. Impressive Rob, impressive. I honestly couldn’t really see that being done when watching it. I’ll have to check out the advanced course once I feel that I’ve progressed enough with the beginner lessons. I’m that easily impressed by much because I work hard to acquire the skills I have. This goes for everything from music to woodworking to radio communications and everything in between…but you have some shit going on there bud! You really are good! After watching you play my face is getting sore from smiling and raising my eyebrows! lol
Yeah that Yamaha FGDP is impressive. I honestly didn’t think it would compare to some of the other pad controllers but watching your video on and some others I was impressed on it’s design and how effective it is for finger drumming. I mean I know it was specifically designed for this but it looks sooo different than all other pad controllers. I remember you mentioning that the pads are decent but not the most sensitive, so I’m surprised you can do those tom roll ghost notes on it. In the video you made that I had mentioned above that was the first time I’ve ever seen that method of playing and it’s really convincing. If I was to hear that without watching the video I honestly wouldn’t have guessed it was possible. Good stuff!
I think you mean when you say “two fingers” for the roll that you’re doing it with two fingers on the same hand…or one finger on each hand?
I think you have something going on here Robert. Nobody is putting in the professional effort that you are in trying to teach others this skill. Have you considering charging for your beginner classes? There is a lot of value there.
I admit that I’ve also started using two fingers to do a roll, because I find it more controllable than the double-tap. Though that is probably because I need to practice the double-tap more!
In my experience so far, using two fingers works for something really fast where the exact subdivision of the note is not important. Just a “prrr” kind of thing.
But sometimes with these rolls you want to explicitly play triplets, or 16ths. And then for me the regular double tap feels more like I’m in control of that.
Hmmm I would really like to see how that’s done. If you show in the more advanced lessons I’ll get there eventually. Right now I’m just making sure I don’t move on with the beginner lessons before I’m ready. Thanks you guys.
C
