What Is Finger Drumming?

Finger drumming is a relatively new performance art that's been steadily growing in popularity in recent years. Finger drummers use a pad controller to trigger drum samples, creating a completely new way to play drums with just the fingers.

Here's an example of what finger drumming looks like:

You may have seen viral videos online where producers will use these controllers to trigger all kinds of different sounds, including drums, piano samples, or melodic elements. The artist will combine all of these sounds in a live performance to play a song.

This is one way to play the pads, and commonly, the term 'finger drumming' is used to explain this type of live musical performance – but there's another way to use the pads that's quickly becoming more popular.

This new way to play is strictly finger drumming, using the pads to only trigger drum samples, so that the musician is literally playing a full drum kit with just their fingers.

While it may at first seem more restrictive than using the pads to play a combination of drums, bass, keys, and melodies, this new style of finger drumming actually gives the artist more freedom to express themselves on the pads.

Imagine a musician strumming a guitar with one hand, playing a piano with the other hand, and using his feet to hit a couple of drums. It may sound really cool, but he simply won't be able to give as much focus and control to any of these instruments, as opposed to just using one at a time.

Finger drumming works in a similar way. When the pads are programmed to just emulate a full drum kit, the finger drummer can focus fully on drumming, and the result is that they can take their skills to a very high level, eventually playing the pads with as much speed, dexterity, and articulation as a real drummer.

This style of finger drumming is what I teach here at Dragon Finger Drums.

I've been playing acoustic drums for over 15 years now, and finger drums for over 9 years.

In my years of playing, I've discovered that finger drumming can be taken to a very high level of development, just like acoustic drumming.

You can learn to play very precise articulations, dynamics, lightning-fast rolls and fills, and even use drum rudiments on the pads.

This is an exciting new way to play drums, and it won't be long before it takes off into the mainstream, making the world of drumming accessible to millions of people.

Think about it: a hundred years ago, if you wanted to play keys, you had to buy a huge, expensive, noisy piano.

Maybe you could afford to pay the multiple thousand dollar price tag, but then you needed a place to store it, and hopefully the people you lived with would be okay with listening to you practice all the time.

But then, the electronic keyboard was invented.

Suddenly, anyone could learn to play the keys. Keyboards cost a fraction of the price of pianos, they're totally portable, and you can plug headphones in and practice silently!

It's obvious that the invention of the keyboard revolutionized the music industry, and made playing keys accessible to so many people who would never have been able to play before.

Now, the world of drumming is in exactly the same place.

If you want to buy an acoustic drum kit, you need to spend many hundreds or thousands of dollars, you need a big space to store the drums, and you need to be able to make a TON of noise to practice.

If you live in an apartment building, forget it.

If you live with a family, forget it.

If you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on the drum kit, plus replacing your sticks, cymbals, and drum heads, forget it.

This is the power of finger drumming.

It does everything for drums that the keyboard did for piano:

It makes drumming affordable.

It makes drumming portable.

And it makes drumming QUIET.

It's easy to see that this will make drumming accessible to so many people who want to play, but simply can't learn an acoustic drum kit.

In the near future, I believe finger drumming will become a common and mainstream way to play drums.

It will genuinely revolutionize the music industry forever.

If you already have a pad controller, there's no better time than now to start playing.

If you start learning finger drumming now, you'll be ahead of the curve, literally riding the wave of a whole new musical revolution.

If you want all the tools to get started, click here to get my free Finger Drumming Starter Course.

Inside, you'll learn all the secrets of playing realistic drums on the pads, including easy setup walkthroughs so you can get the best-sounding drums possible.

Let's revolutionize the drumming world together.

Happy finger drumming!