One Year Finger Drumming Training Review

Watch Vlad Crisu from The Joy of Finger Drumming celebrate his one-year training results with a blockbuster-lenght review video:

I decided to copy my own YouTube and paste it here so you can read my thoughts about it:

SORRY, THIS IS GOING TO BE A BLOCKBUSTER-LENGTH COMMENT

Hey Vlad, Thanks a lot for making this video! And most of all: Congratulations for having put in the endurance and efforts to keep doing the training for a whole year now. It is quite an investment to dedicate so much time of your life into learning a new skill, especially when you’re a father of a little girl and have a fulltime job. I’m truly impressed by your perseverance and by the results of your one year training of the XpressPads finger drumming technique!!! I absolutely noticed your increased finger strength and accuracy of playing. What a great progress!

Blockbuster length… 😀 Man, that’s incredible… I would not have dared to expect that. Thanks a lot for diving so deep into all the topics you’ve covered. It took me a few days to find the time to watch it completely in a calm and concentrated fashion, that’s why I’m commenting so late.

I made a lot of notes when watching your video, but I feel like I have too much material to comment on here on YouTube, because it’s really a lot. Maybe I’ll just dive into the ones that resonated the most with me, which are:

I’m soooo happy to hear that starting to learn the XpressPads finger drumming technique is one of the best decisions you’ve ever made. Man… it warms up my heart and I’m super-grateful that you’ve been documenting your journey and thereby spread the word. So grateful…

Practice time reduction. Absolutely get that point. It’s really difficult to keep at a high pace after a couple of months, because your progress curve flattens down naturally and trying to achieve big results takes much more efforts than it takes in the very beginning.

The level of precision and timing you’ve gained over one year. Clearly see your incredible progress. I’m astonished that you’ve achieved that without exercising with a metronome. Great to hear that you’re not bored of progressing to learn finger drumming even after one year! 😀

Feeling exhausted after extended finger drumming training sessions. Good point that you’re raising here. I experience the same. I also learned that when I haven’t played finger drumming for a longer period of time that the first day I “re-start” I feel incredibly capable and “light”, while on the day after I feel incredibly bad about my (in)capabilities… Something in the finger muscles must be challenged on day one of re-starting in a way that requires recovery… like when you lift weights after a longer break and then get sore muscles the day after… you can’t repeat that great day one experience and it feels strange that you can’t. That brings me to the point that we need continued practicing if we want to keep things rolling on a high capability level.

Great to see that you’ve been checking out the Metal and Latin expansions and liked them so much. Indeed, I’ve tried to put a lot of beat examples in there and I’m glad you like what you’ve seen so far. Looking forward to one day seeing some street samba beats on your channel. 😉

Nice background stories about Novation and XLN Audio! Those companies acknowledge your work and I can feel the level of satisfaction you gain from that. They’ll start sending you free gear soon. 😉

Your plans for 2020: If I were you, had a kid and a family life, I’d be happy to get a third of your todo list items done! 😀 Anyway… I hope you’ll make it real. Good luck with your own compositions on the streaming platforms when releasing an album.

Your plans for next XpressPads videos. I absolutely like the two ideas about (1) doing a chronologic compilation of your performances you’ve recorded within the last year and (2) summarizing the progress that you’ve made within one year.

Stress management. Man, this part of your video resonates so much with me. Believe me, I know what insomnia and high levels of stress mean and I can only tell you that finger drumming has been my choice of meditation technique so many times in my more recent life. It teleports you into a different sphere in which everything’s good and you’re in the moment.

The seven tips for real finger drumming joy. 😉 I dig them all, that’s why I want to just paraphrase / repeat them here: (1) listen to music A LOT, (2) learn groove examples from your drum software (Addictive Drums 2 / EZdrummer 3 or whatever it may be), (3) participate in challenges, (4) go with a two 4×4 pad controller setup, (5) take longer breaks, (6) practice on a random desk if a pad controller is not at hand, (7) get a woodboard, place your two pad controllers on it and that board on your lap. I love that setup.

Again, man… thank you so so much for your channel and everything you’ve done this way for the me and my brainchild XpressPads. I appreciate your work so much and I’m happy to see that your channel has been a door opener for so many other good things, such as making new friends, composing music, improving your hand health condition, and so much more. It’s such a good story…

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