Newbie here and to finger drumming.
Getting a fgdp 50 in a few days. I wondered how the lessons available with Rob are compatible with this device?
Easily transeferable?
Looking forward to starting my journey; and question if i am better off getting a maschine mikro mk3 instead? I can easily return the fgdp…
Thanks
Most of the concepts as well as the core layout are basically transferable, but the FGDP is different. It has an extra column, so it’s more like a 5x4 and the toms are just completely different.
It is possible to play QFG lessons and beats if you:
I am not sure how hard it is an absolute beginner to tailor the content that way to suit your device. To me it was an easy pivot, but I have so much years of playing under my belt and not a lot of students who tried the lessons on FGDP only. Or at least, I have not heard from them.
Not sure, but maybe the diagrams where you show which pad to play are a bit like those piano notes which give you the “fingering”. It’s helpful to learn that to begin with, but with finger drumming it’s actually much easier to learn which finger / pad to use (e.g. alternating method makes this trivially simple).
So I would say it’s better to learn to play from the notation where you only see the sound (kick, snare…) and learn to play from that. If you can do that, the layout doesn’t matter - and FGDP-50 vs 4x4 layout also isn’t an issue. Except that some assumed layouts (by the writer) will make it easier or more difficult to play it with our own layout (like @Robert_Mathijs mentioned the playing of HiHats while playing Toms). I like his suggestion to just not play them. Imho: Less is often more anyway, i kinda like “sparse” played drums and need to learn fight the tendency to “do more, just because I could”!