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Re: Playing Beatpads (mpd, mpc etc.)



This reminds me - the other day I stumbled upon a series of videos
showing exercises for mpc style samplers. Here's the first:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEpLD6vD43E
They are very similar to the left/right exercises that percussion
teachers would have you practice. The early ones are simple. By the
time you get to #16, they're really impressive.

Also, here's a guy who is really proficient on live drum machine. I'm 
jealous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oThXwURLLhs

Some things I've noticed but haven't developed further:
1) Since drum machines / mpc samplers are such small interfaces, one
of the challenges is arranging the sounds so that your hands can play
them without getting in each others' way.
2) The one time I ever got close to ever being able to hand play beats
on a drum machine, I found that using one hand was much easier than
using two. Rick told me this great percussion concept for left/right
independence once - at any point in a rhythm, you're either playing
left hand, right hand, both or neither. That concept is pretty easy to
incorporate with a single hand. Each sound corresponds with a downward
hand tap, and it's mostly a matter of extending the correct fingers.
The downside is that you can only play so fast with one hand, and that
hand'll eventually get tired.
3) Conventional drum machine arrangements put the bass drum in the
lower left corner, high hats in the lower right, cymbals on the upper
row and toms/claps, etc in the middle. This makes it easy to remember
which sounds are rare, but is not necessarily the most efficient
arrangement playing them live. Some of the impressive sampling folks
and "finger percussionists" I've seen online put the bass drum in the
middle pads, and arrange the rest based on the ergonomics of the human
hand. Think of the computer keyboard - instead of alphabetical order,
it's arranged so that the most commonly used keys are in the places
where the fingers naturally rest.

-- 
Matt Davignon
mattdavignon@gmail.com
www.ribosomemusic.com
Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com
Rigs! http://www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 11:33 PM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:
> I regularly play with drummers that use beat pads and my experience is
> that the answer to your question is the way the individual player
> designs his setup. I.e. what sounds he assigns to the different pads.
> And this has of course to a great deal to do with the physical
> locations of the different pads - the playability.
>
> Any trap set drummer starts out by adjusting every drum in the kit
> before starting to play. His allocation of drums in space depends on
> the size of his body, what drum sticks he uses and what technique he
> plays with. Same thing with electronic pads. Just set them up to be as
> physically playable as possible.
>
> Greetings from Sweden
>
> Per Boysen
> www.perboysen.com
> http://www.youtube.com/perboysen
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 5:02 AM, kay'lon rushing <k3zz21@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>> I've always wondered is there a certain technique to playing beatpads? 
>> Like
>> in piano you use certain crossovers when doing scales and etc.Whats a 
>> way to
>> get more fluid sorta like this?
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE7GHgbmlP0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
>