Finger drumming: flams?

garden

So I’ve decided to get into finger drumming.

I’ve been a casual knee/desk slapper all my life, but I’ve used sequence-programmed rhythm in my music almost exclusively. I’ve got myself a pad set (Nektar, fwiw), and am tapping away.

One of my particular interests, and a major motivation for this development, is funk. I really want to understand funk, and be able to produce at least an acceptable simulacrum.

Of course, I hear funk-derived breakbeats all the time. And one that really captured my attention recently is the sound of the Brooklyn Nine Nine opening theme… which sounds to me like a pretty close variation on the Hot Pants lick?

Anyway… something that seems like it’s going to be difficult to reproduce is the snare flam that precedes some of the stacked snare/tambourine hits. And yes, I know I should probably ask this in a community more focused on this kind of thing, but, well… this is where I am, and this is where you are, the group of creators who use iPads to do so much cool stuff.

So. How would you do it? How do you do it?

I can’t imagine fluttering my fingers correctly in real time during a single performance. I suppose it’s the kind of flourish that can be layered in on a subsequent take. And of course you could just record it as a snippet and trigger it. But I also wonder if one might set it up as a snippet of automation. Perhaps a little one-shot sequence in some app (Atom?) that you trigger on one pad, and merge to the midi input of your drum instrument. I can even imagine a Mozaic widget, with some modification controls.

You get the idea. Thoughts?

Thanks as always.

michael_m

Well a flam is just two snare hits with alternating hands with the first one played quieter. You could either use two different fingers on one pad or put the same sample on two consecutive pads to make it easier to play them at different volumes.

Daveypoo

I would offer that it depends on what kits/sample sets/apps/etc. that you are using and how it is that you program your drum beats. I tend to use acoustic drum samples and am building a digital recreation of a live drumkit, and if I need a flam I'll typically pick a kit I've set up that has a sample of an actual drummer playing a flam. I have separate pads dedicated to the snare, so I can have a standard snare on the first, a flam on the second, a rimshot on the 3rd, and a stick click on a fourth if I need it for the tune. You could also construct your own flam sample - record the hit the way you want and export it as an audio file so you always have exactly the flam you're looking for.

Alternately, if you're using a MIDI piano roll or something similar, you can always draw it in afterwards - I do this sometimes if the kit I have doesn't have a flam sample.

Thirdly, you could set up two snare pads next to each other both with the same snare sample on them and flam with two fingers during performance. I suppose you could teach yourself to use only a single pad, but having a second may make it simpler and cleaner. Future Man (Roy Wooten), who famously played with Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, used this approach on his Drumitar - he'd have the same sample assigned to separate pads next to eachother and use his index and middle fingers like drumsticks, hitting the kick with his alternate hand.

Anyway - that's my $0.02. I hope it provides food for thought.

drez

@garden IMO, if you want to do finger drumming on an iPad, then you want to use BM3. It's THE BEST finger drumming layout there is. And a huge reason is the giant "trigger" section of the pad screen (2 below). Its magical because you can tap a snare on a pad (1) and then immediately touch that trigger "lane" and it will trigger the same pad you just played, but at whatever velocity you want, from 0 through 127. So, for example, if you've hard coded your snare to be at a velocity of 80, you can play a ghost note after it by taping the trigger lane more at the bottom for like a 60 velocity. And for programming sounds, you can just keep looping through and play your snare parts simply by tapping the snare pad and then just record the snare parts by tapping in the trigger lane instead of the pad to get various velocities. Its amazing!

musikeer

Sitala works well for finger playing. Nothing complex about it.

Skyblazer

A lot of people do map one sample to two pads. You can watch finger drummers on YouTube, or look up "Finger drumming pad layout" or "finger drumming setup", and try to use that information to design a layout for yourself that looks comfortable.

Some people have a different layout for each song.

Dragon Finger Drums uses one layout, but he uses his thumbs, which feels awkward to me.

I use a layout that feels really ergonomical for the most simple drum beats. I started typing an explanation but then I thought hmm...maybe I'll just make a little video clip tomorrow if anyone's interested.

drez

@Skyblazer i use the hell out of my thumbs too. I use my right on a kick in the lower right corner pad and frequently the snare on the next pad over with my left thumb.

And yes on the video!

Skyblazer

@drez Here's the video of my pad layout. For some variations of this layout, I could move the fourth column over to the first column, and move columns 1 through 3 to the right by one column, and have a third snare pad instead of a third kick pad.

The basic idea is to keep my hands in a natural position, and to be able to use either pointer finger to play any of the cymbals that are commonly played on every 8th note.

I'm planning to switch to a Maschine Mikro Mk3 soon, and that should be easier to use with thumbs, so I will try a thumb-based layout at that point. I'll probably still incorporate a V-shaped layout.

jebni

Two velocity sensitive pads, same sound. That’s how I would do it.

The thing about triggering a flam when playing live is that the first note happens before the beat — you need to be in that groove anyway to hit it (unless you do it in post), so might as well do it for real… right? 😭

jebni

Actually, if you mix the kit right and have the first snare always quiet, you don’t need velocity sensitivity. Duh.

jebni

On a related note: I’ve never been much of a sequence programming person, which is why the flexibility of something like the Digitakt pattern recording workflow works well for me. Can we compile a list of AUv3 drum machines that allow for finger drumming input into their grids? (I mean a self-contained unit that you can also program, rather than a combo of products.)

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@jebni said:
On a related note: I’ve never been much of a sequence programming person, which is why the flexibility of something like the Digitakt pattern recording workflow works well for me. Can we compile a list of AUv3 drum machines that allow for finger drumming input into their grids? (I mean a self-contained unit that you can also program, rather than a combo of products.)

I’ve never been able to keep time tapping on the iPad. I need hardware buttons to get into a pocket.

Fingolfinzz

The same sample on two pads works nice for it. And turn off quantize

rs2000

I do it all in the piano roll, it's also easier to get the velocity right there. But mapping two controller pads to the same note would be my second choice.

michael_m

@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

@jebni said:
On a related note: I’ve never been much of a sequence programming person, which is why the flexibility of something like the Digitakt pattern recording workflow works well for me. Can we compile a list of AUv3 drum machines that allow for finger drumming input into their grids? (I mean a self-contained unit that you can also program, rather than a combo of products.)

I’ve never been able to keep time tapping on the iPad. I need hardware buttons to get into a pocket.

For me I think it’s fear of hitting glass. I have pretty good timing in a drum kit, but I can’t replicate it on an iPad.

garden

Thank you, all, for your thoughts and suggestions here. It’s very helpful and appreciated.
And now, back the groove.

UrbanNinja

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In AUM you could set up multiple instances of drum pads triggering sample sources alternately with and without a fast Delay with feedback set for one repeat and delay volume equal to the original note with something like Velocity KB for customizable flams or with lower delay vol for ghost notes. Or get wild and have multiple delays on a third or fourth set of pads/sample sources doing rolls and/or polyrhythmic stuff. Helpful for the latter is something like the Nembrini delay (for one cheap example) which can time various note values and triplets to host BPM -easy and satisfying.

Korg padKontrol, an older hardware unit (maybe available cheap?), has facility for flams and also rolls via an x/y pad with variable speed and velocity; I still use mine sometimes for variable cymbal rolls etc.