The Finger Drummer turned out to be a lot of fun to bang on, but if you have never played drums, sixteen pads is a lot to stare at. So I built it a teacher. Sam Posten's Finger Drumming Trainer Thirty lessons that take you from zero to hero. You start with two pads, a kick and a snare, and a slow steady beat. Every lesson adds one new technique and builds on the last one, and every chapter unlocks more of the grid until you are playing all sixteen pads. - Chapter 1, First Taps (2 pads): strike and lift, the backbeat, boom-bap, alternating hands, your first syncopation.
- Chapter 2, The Hat Hand (4 pads): steady hi-hats, your first rock beat, open hats and two-finger sixteenth rolls.
- Chapter 3, Groove & Feel (6 pads): stacked sounds, house offbeats, ghost notes and double kicks.
- Chapter 4, Swing & Ride (8 pads): the ride cymbal, jazz swing, the shuffle, reggae's one drop and a Latin clave groove.
- Chapter 5, Toms & Fills (12 pads): walking the toms, four-bar phrases, crash landings and linear grooves.
- Chapter 6, Full Grid Hero (16 pads): FX pads, trap hat rolls, 808 bass melodies, drum and bass, and a four-bar final boss.
How it works: - Watch plays the pattern for you. Wait mode has no clock at all: the pads you need glow and it waits for you to find them.
- Practice loops the pattern at any tempo. Turn on Auto speed-up and every clean loop nudges the tempo up until you are at full speed.
- Take the test scores your timing to the millisecond. 60% gets you a star and the next lesson, 93% gets you three stars, and three stars opens a Hero test at 125% speed.
- A ring shrinks onto each pad right before you need to hit it, a strip above the pads shows the whole pattern, and a little meter tells you if you are rushing or dragging.
- Play with your computer keyboard, a touch screen, or plug in a MIDI pad controller like an MPC or Maschine.
- Your progress saves automatically, and the Save & sync button gives you a cloud code like KICK-SNARE-GROOVE-4821 so you can pick up where you left off on another computer. There is also a transfer code and a backup file if you would rather not use the cloud.
Finish all thirty and you get a certificate declaring you a Certified Finger Drumming Hero. Suitable for framing. Probably. Built with Claude Code, same as the others. It is also in the Coding Projects box on the left. Give it a spin and tell me what breaks. |
