How To Fingerdrum on the keyboard- The METHOD #fingerdrumming #tutorial

make this like a second nature okay i'm here boop you know i don't have to look see that i just i don't need to look when i'm playing drums [Music] hello everyone welcome back dom here and on this video i'm going to show you how to finger drum on the keyboard and how to do it right because anyone can do it right after this [Music] so i had this request by quite a few of you guys how you can finger drum on the keyboard and i actually want to share my story with you today because this is one of the things that completely changed the way i started producing music let's get this thing straight out of the way the secret to do finger drumming and to do it easily and to do it right is to learn the gm drum map i'm going to have some links down below and here it is feel free to pause the video and check it out but you can find all this information very easily online now i want to share with you how i got inspired to start finger drumming ever since i was a really young kid i was always going to my local music store after my piano lessons and i was really gazing at these synths and you know all the beautiful instruments that were there but i will never forget this one day a blind person walks into the store and he talks to the guy that was working in the store and he says can you give me some drums on this keyboard so he went like this and he started doing this i can't remember how old i was i was really really young but i watched him playing without being able to see what he was playing and i was completely blown away like this sounded like a real drummer to me since then i was like okay this is amazing i have to learn to do this and that's how i started learning how to finger drum on the keyboard so i wanted to share this story with you because i will forever be grateful to that blind person that walked into the store and started playing that day because that completely changed the way that i produce and the way that i play the drums and that's a skill that is really really important but now i'm going to show you how you can do this as well because it's not really that hard you don't really need to be a keyboard player to do this so like i said the key is to learn the gm mapping and you know this thing extends to all the keys basically it's one of these protocols that manufacturers got together like you know yamaha korg roland whatever they agreed that in order to be able to run midi files on different keyboards they needed to agree on a specific mapping when it came to drums so what was this agreement c1 let's say that this is c1 i've transposed this so that it's easier for me to play it for you to see but basically [Music] c1 is your kick drum and that's universal i've never seen a library or an instrument not having the kick drum on c1 the next is the snares okay and the snares live here in d1 and e1 so these are the first things that you should learn and i would say when you're starting out try and practice try and do maybe slowly first [Music] or [Music] and this most of the times it's maybe like a rim shot it depends on the library but it's always like a harder hit so if you're going to do like rows i would go for this note for d1 now i want to say one thing straight away it's very important that you have a good keyboard if you're going to do finger drumming i wouldn't choose a hammer graded like weighted keys like i have here because that actually makes it super hard to finger drum but if you're a pianist you can get away with that if you know how to do your repetitions and all these things that's fine but if you're not a keyboard player do yourself a favor and get a sync action keyboard but please use a good synth action keyboard because dynamics for drums are really important so we have kick drum we have snares let's move on to the other element we have the side stick which is most of the times on c sharp one and then we have a clap on d sharp one which in this case i don't have it because this is an acoustic drum kit but some drum kits have it in this case i'm using the kit from groove agent by the way we have these things here and as i said you don't need to know all the elements there is some percussion here there are some kind of shakers here congas and all these things it's good to know them i know pretty much all of them but i've been doing this for years when you're starting out i would say just start with the basics you know start with kick drum snare side stick and then let's move to the symbols and the symbols live here okay we have close hi-hat that depends on the library of course but most of the times here you have two versions of a closed hi-hat okay f sharp and g-sharp and then on a sharp or b flat you have the open hi-hat this is one of the tricks that you need to learn if you want to play acoustic drums especially on most libraries you can play this open hi-hat and it will ring for as long as you let it you know because it's a one-shot hit it will just ring until it fades out but what you can do and that's actually very important you can do the same thing like a drummer does so you can close the open hi-hat by just playing a close hi-hat so you can do things like this okay so these they cannot play at the same time they're exclusive and most drum libraries have this feature next we have the crashes so they leave on c sharp and a just right here and we also have the rides that leave on d sharp f and b and of course we have the toms and the tom's spread depending on the library from f to d so the white keys [Music] and we also have a china here okay and i would say these are the most common things that you will need you know you also have a splash here but these are the main elements so i would totally start with those let me know in the comments down below if you're interested in me extending the entire gm mapping protocol but these are what you will need like 99 of the time everything else you know you can program it or you can play it at a later stage when you're producing and i don't think that the people that designed the gm mapping they did it by accident this is very cleverly designed it's designed so that you can play a drum kit with your hands on the keyboard in real time there are many ways to do it and there's no right or wrong i'll tell you which one i found that works really really well and this is placing your hands like this so what do i have here i have my kick drum here with my middle finger then i have my snares with my index and thumb and then i have the hi-hats here [Music] here on these three fingers and then my crotch here and the toms are like right here so i can go slide here and play the toms let's play a very simple rhythm now so let's start with just kick and snare [Music] i just need one hand for this and now hi hats [Music] now once you get the hang of it you will find that you will feel more comfortable creating variations in the rhythm going a little bit faster don't go for speed that's the number one rule don't go for speed when you're starting out just start [Music] try ballot first [Music] or try six eight and when you feel comfortable try adding an open hi-hat so again the position is like this you start like this and on the yamaha keyboards because i've been using yamaha for rages the kick drums extended to a and you had more elements here you had like a roll here which is really cool and you can do some very interesting things but the newer libraries don't tend to have this so i tend to go like this so again you start like this and then you're ready to go now do you want to do like a crash [Music] okay and then you can start speeding up when you get comfortable but only when you get comfortable you should make this like a second nature okay i'm here boop you know i don't have to look see that i just i don't need to look when i'm playing drums you know you should get to that stage even by playing slowly you know very slowly [Music] and then now check this out see what i did there i moved my hand from here to there why that's what i love about the gm protocol see when you play here you're actually acting like a real drummer you have your kick drum your snare and then your hi-hat right but when you want to move to the rides and the crashes and all these things and you want to play there guess what you can't really play the hi-hat i mean some drummers are very very good and they can do crazy stuff but most of the times you're not going to have a hi-hat pattern and you know like a ride pattern at the same time so you won't have this that never happens and it's messy and it's wrong and that gives it away that it's fake drums if you do a production that has something like this you know see the gm mapping prevents you from making these mistakes so now let's say i want to move from my hi-hats to my rides the other position is this one so what am i doing here now i'm controlling the crashes okay see i'm playing this kind of pattern and these symbols and whatever other symbols i can have here in between sometimes here you have the cowboy by the way basically all you need to do when you're playing live is you need to switch from here to there and that needs a little bit of practice but start slowly and you can start doing [Music] this [Music] again like i said it might look like a lot but you really really really don't need to be a piano player to do this because you don't have to worry about notes you just have to worry about remembering where everything is [Music] now toms i find them to be a very personal thing sometimes i just go like this [Music] so i play them with my right hand but sometimes when i want to do like really fast thumb rolls i use both my hands [Music] so i just escape from right here from the kick drum and i go okay i go to the tom area and and actually that's a good stage to show you how you can learn [Music] how to do these really fast repetitions and speaking of learning i want to talk to you about this video's sponsor and this is 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snare like here and then you can start the easy way the easy way is to do it using two different keys and here i have this snare and here i have this in there so i can start doing this [Music] and maybe you can start introducing dynamics as well now sometimes i like to do it with one hand but this is a little bit of a pianist technique [Music] you know it might be difficult if you're not a pianist so you can start doing this same with the toms [Music] do a run like this and i'm doing it fast but you will do it at your own pace you will do it like [Music] this okay then start doing it really quietly if you have a nice library this will help a lot then you can start introducing accents to your playing so let's try this with this run of toms again [Music] at first you know just feel the or just do the accent on the other hand and the same thing with snares [Music] you know start doing things like alternate between snares and toms and again do it slowly [Music] now one of the things that can give away fake drums is the lack of dynamics and that's the thing that when you do finger drumming it's going to sound so much better if you do it right because program drums you have to go for every single note and change the dynamics and you know come up with something that's interesting but it's always i feel it's always a little bit less good than if you actually play your drums this is one of the things that you know you'll feel blessed if you know how to do finger drumming because let me show you if you program these drums they will sound like this you know they will sound a little bit like everything is 127 then you have to go and change the velocities you know how this thing goes but if you start programming your drums by playing them let's say i want to start with a verse [Music] you know i can go a little bit quieter the snare the kick [Music] and then if i move to the chorus you know you can do crescendos you can do nibinuendos you can do like really nice punchy breaks and stuff or you can do accents you can do you know you can accent exactly how you feel because you feel the rhythm you feel the beat and you can do stuff like this that actually add interest to your arrangements they make your arrangement sound dynamic and then when you add compression to all this it sounds like a much more i won't say a real drummer but you know like it sounds closer to real drums finger drumming will always give you some variation when it comes to dynamics especially if you use a velocity sensitive keyboard which it goes without saying you need that but the other thing that you need to take care of is also the ghost notes okay this is a little bit more advanced but i'm going to start with a very simple example so i can show you how you can do this okay i'm going to start with a very simple pattern again [Music] and i'm going to start introducing some ghost notes [Music] see [Music] and i can do swing as well on the ghost note and you see all these rhythmic variations that i have there as well this is really hard to program on a drum editor or a key editor it's of course possible totally possible but it will take you a long long time rather than just going and it's more fun [Music] like i said don't expect to play like this when you start when i started i was terrible terrible but it doesn't take a long time to get used to this okay so what i'm doing here this is one of the things that again it's a little bit more of a pianist technique i'm using the same key see for repetition for the kick drum so i'm going like this so what am i doing i'm using these two fingers and and the moment i lift my finger the other one hits the same key again [Music] now like i said hammer graded weighted keyboards make this really hard this is something that pianists do on real pianos if you have a synth action keyboard it's actually much easier check it out you still need to practice but then you can do double kicks very very easily that's why i said if you're starting out prefer a synth action keybed because this make it harder it's not impossible though so there you go guys this is the technique that i've been using for the past i don't want to exaggerate but maybe 25 years when it comes to playing drums on the keyboard and i find that when programming drums this is an invaluable technique because it allows you to do more natural parts it's more fun to play the drums rather than just use the mouse all the time and it's really enjoyable so i hope you enjoy it as well i hope you try it out and start finger drumming and if you enjoyed this video let me know in the comments down below what you want me to do next hit the like button please yes hit the like button subscribe to the channel because this is very important it really helps me make videos like this and the most important thing share this video with anyone you know that might find it useful or entertaining until next time groove on what

Channel: Dom Sigalas

Views: 77,109

Keywords: finger drumming, finger drumming tutorial, finger drummer, finger drumming technique, finger drumming exercises, finger drumming techniques, finger drumming lesson, finger drumming for beginners, finger drumming keyboard, best finger drumming tutorial, groove agent, cubase, cubase finger drumming

Id: TxD30s4jvcw

Length: 24min 32sec (1472 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021