FingerDrumPad Operation Manual

1. Overview

FingerDrumPad is organized around five tabs, shown in the sidebar (iPad) or tab bar (iPhone). Switch between them at any time — your kit, pattern, and settings persist across tabs.

iPad iPhone

If you switch from Pad Edit to another tab and pad overlaps are detected, a warning dialog appears — resolve overlaps before continuing to keep playback predictable.

2. First launch & onboarding

The first time you open FingerDrumPad, a six-page interactive tutorial fills the screen. You can't get lost — each page tells you exactly what to do.

Completion is remembered on the device, so the tutorial runs only once. To replay it later, open Settings → View Tutorial.

3. Play mode

Perform. This is where you spend most of your time.

Metronome Backing Track

Performing

• Tap a pad to play its sound.
• Tap multiple pads at once with the fingers of both hands — kick and snare together, hi-hat ghosting while you move around the toms.
• Long-press a cymbal pad (≈380 ms) to choke (mute) the sound. Hit a crash and stop it dead; control a jazz ride cymbal.

Backing tracks

Choose a song from your Apple Music library and layer drums on top. The transport bar in the music row gives you everything:

• Play / pause
• ±10 s skip buttons
• Scrubber to jump to any moment, with current and total time
• Playback speed menu — 50%–100% in 5% steps, pitch preserved. Each song remembers its own speed.
• Volume Mix sheet — balance drum and song volumes independently.

Tempo & kit

• Metronome: 40–200 BPM, 1–12 beats per measure.
• Kit picker in the metronome bar and the music bar — switch kits without leaving Play.
• Pad display scale: 50%–100% — useful on iPhone or when you want larger targets.

Fullscreen

Expand the pad to fill the entire screen. The tab bar hides (Compact environment) and the "?" button fades out. Fullscreen metronome and music bars offer the same kit picker, transport, seek, speed, and mix controls.

Control reference

4. Pad Edit mode

Shape pads, place them anywhere, assign sounds. This is the heart of "layout freedom."

Selecting and editing a pad

1. Tap a pad to select it. Selection handles appear.
2. Drag the pad to move it, or drag a vertex handle to reshape it — both are always available while the pad is selected. Use the floating menu (see the reference below) for details and other actions.
3. Tap a blank area of the grid to deselect.

Reshaping a pad

Pads are free-form polygons with 3–10 vertices. Drag the vertex handles to edit the shape. Make the kick large and round, the snare wide and horizontal, the hi-hat small and compact — L-shapes, trapezoids, diamonds, anything.

Pad properties

Open Pad Details on a selected pad to edit:

• Name
• Sound source — built-in sample, SF2 region, or AUv3 plugin (see §7 Sounds)
• MIDI Note — chosen via the active drum map (see §9 MIDI & drum maps)
• Gain — numeric field plus a vertical fader with throttled live audition
• Color
• Finger type — for velocity calibration (Thumb / Finger / Pinky)

AUv3 pads

When a pad's sound source is an AUv3 instrument, Pad Details also exposes:

• Edit Plugin — opens the plugin's parameter view to design sounds or pick factory presets. Adjustments save with the kit.
• MIDI settings — Channel, Program Change, CC#1, CC#74.
• Note-Off behavior — how the plugin responds when you lift your finger.
• CC mapping.
• Audition sheet — scans the plugin for mapped notes (playing each one and detecting which actually produce sound), then pre-toggles them so you can confidently pick a starting note for the pad. Especially handy for large sample-based instruments.

SF2 pads

For SoundFont-based pads, "Browse Sounds" opens a browser that lists every sample inside the SF2 — key number, note name, sample name — each with a one-tap preview.

Templates

Apply a template to a single slot or to the entire kit. The active template name appears in the grid summary bar; a checkmark marks it in the template picker. See §8 Settings → Pad Edit → Templates to create templates manually or auto-generate one from an SF2.

Undo / redo

Every pad and kit edit is recorded on a snapshot stack. Undo and Redo are always one tap away in the toolbar.

Grid & overlap

• Grid size: 4–200 × 4–200. Pads auto-scale.
• Overlap control: allow or warn. If warn is on and overlaps are detected when you switch tabs, a dialog appears.

Kit management

The Kit Menu (ellipsis) covers: Duplicate, Rename, Delete, JSON import/export, manage templates, grid settings, New Empty Kit, Share Layout QR, Scan QR (see §10 Files & sharing).

Control reference

5. Training mode

Rhythm-game feel meets serious drum practice.

Choosing a chart

Open the chart browser (3 levels):

1. Built-in / My Patterns — bundled charts or ones converted from your Sequencer patterns.
2. Category — 10 genres: Basic, Rock, Pop, Funk/Dance, Blues/Shuffle, Jazz/Swing, Latin, Reggae/Ska, Technique, Fill Practice.
3. Chart — each shows a difficulty rating (★1–5) and BPM. Tap the info button for a detail screen with a complexity radar chart, per-BPM difficulty table, and endurance bonus.

100 bundled charts ship with the app.

Difficulty & scoring

• ★1–5 difficulty — derived from pattern complexity (5 factors) plus a per-BPM speed score.
• Endurance bonus — patterns longer than 4 bars grant up to +10 points.
• Ranks: S (95+) / A (85+) / B (70+) / C (50+) / D. Each rank has its own result fanfare.

Playing

• Tap Practice to start. A one-bar count-in plays first.
• Notes flow across the screen; tap the matching pads in time.
• Real-time judgment: Perfect / Good / Early / Late / Miss / Extra Hit.
• Consecutive Perfects build your combo and raise your score.
• Set a repeat count (1–8) to drill a chart multiple times in a row.

Roles

Charts and patterns speak the language of roles — kick, snare, hats, toms, cymbals — rather than raw MIDI notes. That is why imported kits play along with built-in content right away. Tap ⇄ Roles to preview exactly how each voice lands on your pads; see Imported kits & roles for the full picture.

Results

At the end of each run, the results screen reveals (see §11 Results & statistics for detail):

• Score, combo, and judgment breakdown
• Timing heatmap — today vs. all-time tendencies
• Per-pad stats — PAD OF THE DAY and FOCUS FOR NEXT
• Session story — a two-sentence, plain-language summary
• Streak and weekly summary
• Smart retry — next-action suggestions: Speed Up / Replay / Slow Down / Try Another
• Save Recording — keep your taps and replay them later.

Recording & playback

Every run is recorded automatically — your tap timings are captured as you play, with no extra steps.

• Ephemeral by default — the recording lives only for the current run. Start a new run and it's cleared automatically.
• Save Recording on the results screen keeps the current run. Recordings are stored on-device and survive app restarts.
• Recordings browser — tap the Recordings button in the toolbar to browse saved takes. Each row shows the pattern name, difficulty (★), and BPM.
• Faithful playback — tapping a recording restores its original chart and BPM and plays your taps back in sync with the note strip and pad flashes. You can't play along during playback, so it's purely for reviewing your performance.
• Rename or delete recordings from the per-row menu.

Control reference

6. Sequencer mode

Build rhythm patterns step by step.

Step input

• Tap steps on the grid to place hits. Tap again to remove.
• Four grid resolutions: 16th, 16th triplet, 32nd, 32nd triplet — shown as 4 / 6 / 8 / 12 divisions per beat.
• Reorder pads by drag and drop to arrange rows to your liking.

Bars

• Time signature per bar — choose from 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, or 7/4.
• Bar operations: copy, paste, clear, duplicate, fill all bars (copies the current bar everywhere in one tap), add empty bar (up to 64 bars), delete, move.
• Bar navigation: Previous / Next buttons, or swipe horizontally on the grid (an edge-overrun detector snaps the swipe into a bar change at a 44 pt position or 500 pt/s velocity threshold).
• A minimap gives you a bird's-eye overview of the whole pattern.

Playback

Next to the Play / Stop button, switch between Current Bar and All Bars playback — no digging through menus. Rows can be shown or hidden via hiddenSequencerPadIDs if you want to focus on a subset.

Patterns & folders

• Create, save, rename, duplicate, delete patterns.
• Organize patterns into a hierarchical folder tree with drag-and-drop move; create, rename, delete folders.
• Import and export pattern JSON or pattern group JSON (see §10 Files & sharing).

MIDI export

Export any pattern as a Standard MIDI File (Format 0) via the system share sheet — bring your beats straight into a DAW.

Send to Training

Turn any beat into a practice pattern. Convert "that rhythm I always want to play" into a drill — a level of freedom unique to this app.

Control reference

7. Sounds & sound sources

Three kinds of sound sources: built-in samples, SF2 SoundFonts, and AUv3 plugins.

Built-in drum samples

Twelve sounds ship with the app — kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, crash, ride, china and ride bell — ready to play with no setup.

SF2 SoundFonts

• Import an SF2 file and FingerDrumPad treats it as a sound source.
• Browse Sounds: open any SoundFont to see every sample inside — key number, note name, sample name — each with a one-tap preview. Find the sound you want by ear.
• New Template from SoundFont: every drum sound in the SF2 is auto-laid-out on pads. Sounds matching the GM drum map get appropriate colors, finger types, and names — the base of a new kit, complete in seconds.

Imported a kit in an unusual layout? Its sounds are matched to charts and patterns automatically through drum roles — nothing else to configure.

Imported kits & roles

Why imported soundfonts work with built-in charts and patterns — no extra setup.

Imported kits rarely follow the general-MIDI layout: your kick may live on note 60 under the name “BD”, where a chart written for note 36 would stay silent. FingerDrumPad bridges the gap with drum roles — every note and pad is classified into one of 19 voices (Kick, Snare, three hi-hats, Toms 1–5, Crash, Ride, Splash, China, Cowbell, Side Stick, Clap, …):

• Standard GM notes map directly — 36 becomes Kick, 38 becomes Snare, and so on.
• Toms are ordered by pitch. The GM tom range is ranked highest-to-lowest within your kit or pattern, so three toms become Tom 1–Tom 3 automatically — sound names never matter.
• You can override anything via Pad Details › Drum Role.

Training charts, sequencer patterns, and saved recordings all route through roles, so they keep working whichever kit you switch to. Tap ⇄ Roles in Training or the sequencer any time to audit the mapping — unmatched voices are flagged until you fix them.

AUv3 instrument plugins

Any AUv3 instrument plugin installed on this iOS device (as an Audio Unit extension, not just the host app) can be used directly as a pad sound source. Play synths from drum pads, lay out piano scales on pads — assign a different plugin to each pad if you like.

• Edit Plugin opens the plugin's parameter view to design sounds or pick factory presets. Your adjustments save with the kit.
• MIDI settings per pad: Channel, Program Change, CC#1, CC#74.
• Note-Off behavior and CC mapping configurable per pad.
• Audition sheet: scans the plugin for mapped notes by playing each one and detecting which actually produce sound, then pre-toggles those mapped notes — so you can confidently pick a starting note. Especially handy for large sample-based instruments where the note layout is a mystery.

8. Settings

Sections are ordered to mirror the tab order — General → Play → Pad Edit → Training → Sequencer → About — so you can find a setting next to where you use it.

General

• MIDI Output — enable/disable, channel (1–16), destination device, connection status. When enabled, the internal sound is muted. See §9 MIDI.
• View Tutorial — re-display the six-page onboarding.

Play

• Velocity — Fixed (127) or Touch Estimated.
• Haptic Feedback — Off / Light / Medium / Heavy.
• Calibrate / Recalibrate Touch — per-finger-type calibration (Thumb / Finger / Pinky). When calibrated, the row shows the calibrated finger summary and offers Recalibrate.

Pad Edit

• Templates — open template management (manual creation + auto-generation from SF2).
• Drum Maps — open custom drum map management.

Training

• Result Animation — toggle the multi-phase score-reveal animation and result sound/haptics.

Sequencer

Reserved — an empty placeholder for future sequencer-related settings.

About

• Diagnostics — opens the Diagnostics screen (privacy preview, Crashlytics toggle, generate/share JSON report). See §12 Diagnostics & privacy.
• User Guide — external link to this online manual.
• Privacy Policy — opens the in-app privacy policy view.

9. MIDI output & external devices

Use FingerDrumPad as a MIDI controller over USB.

Connecting to a Mac

Connecting to a Mac uses Apple's built-in IDAM (Inter-device Audio & MIDI). After a one-time enable in macOS's Audio MIDI Setup, your iPad appears to the Mac as a MIDI device.

1. Connect your iPad or iPhone to your Mac with a USB cable.
2. On the Mac, open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications → Utilities). Your iPad appears with an Enable button — press it.
3. IDAM activates and the iPad is exposed to the Mac as a MIDI input device (highlighted below).
4. In FingerDrumPad, open Settings → General → MIDI Output, turn it ON, and select IDAM MIDI Host as the destination. The status shows Connected (USB).
5. Optionally pick your transmit channel (1–16). You can switch between multiple destination devices.

Connecting to a Windows PC does not use IDAM — pair the iPad as a class-compliant MIDI device or use a USB-MIDI adapter, following your DAW's iOS MIDI guide.

Custom drum maps

Customize MIDI Note assignments to your liking. Register different drum maps for models from Roland, Yamaha, and others, then quickly select the right one when editing pads. Find map management under Settings → Pad Edit → Drum Maps.

10. Files, import/export & sharing

Share your kits and patterns through standard iOS share sheets or QR codes.

File-based sharing

• .fingerkit files carry a complete kit (pads, shapes, sounds, settings).
• .fingerpattern files carry a single pattern or a pattern group.
• Tap a file (in Files app, Mail, AirDrop, etc.) and iOS launches FingerDrumPad to import it. The app is registered as the default handler for these file types.

QR code sharing

Kit layouts can be shared as compact QR codes:

• Share Layout QR — in Pad Edit's Kit Menu. Encodes grid + pad shapes only (a PadLayoutSnapshot), zlib-compressed, so the QR stays scannable.
• Scan QR — in Pad Edit's Kit Menu and the Pattern list. Reads the code through the camera and applies the layout via the same import path as files.
• Patterns have a Share Pattern QR in the row context menu and a Scan Pattern QR in the pattern list.

Advanced JSON (power users)

The original JSON import/export is preserved under an "Advanced JSON" submenu for automation and scripting workflows.

MIDI export

Sequencer patterns export as Standard MIDI Files (Format 0) via the system share sheet — available alongside .fingerpattern in the pattern row's context menu.

11. Practice results & statistics

The results screen turns every run into feedback you can act on.

• Score & judgment breakdown — Perfect / Good / Early / Late / Miss / Extra counts and the resulting score.
• Combo — your max consecutive Perfects, and your all-time max combo record.
• Timing heatmap — visualizes today's timing deviations against your all-time tendencies, so you can see exactly where you drift.
• Per-pad statistics — your most accurate pad (PAD OF THE DAY) and the one to focus on next (FOCUS FOR NEXT). Your practice plan writes itself.
• Session story — a two-sentence, plain-language summary auto-generated from your score, combo, accuracy, and timing tendency.
• Streaks — daily streaks and a weekly recap keep motivation going.
• Past-history comparison — see how this run stacks up against your previous attempts.
• Smart retry — based on your score, the app suggests what to do next:
  • Speed Up if you scored high
  • Replay to chase a better rank
  • Slow Down if you need work
  • Try Another for variety
  One tap takes you to the optimal next session.

All practice data lives locally on your device — see §12 Diagnostics & privacy.

12. Diagnostics & privacy

You control what leaves the device. Crash reporting is off by default.

Crash reporting (opt-in)

• Crash reporting uses Firebase Crashlytics and is disabled by default.
• On first launch (right after onboarding), a one-time dialog asks for your consent. Both choices are saved on the device.
• Change your choice any time at Settings → About → Diagnostics → Anonymous Crash Reporting.
• When enabled, only anonymous crash data — stack traces, device model, iOS version, instance ID — is sent. No personal information, no location, no IDFA, no behavioral analytics. FirebaseAnalytics is intentionally not included, so there's no App Tracking Transparency prompt.

Diagnostics export

At Settings → About → Diagnostics → Generate Report, the app builds a JSON containing the last 24 hours of app logs (OSLog, filtered by the app's subsystem, capped at 500 entries), MetricKit diagnostic summaries (hangs, CPU and disk-write exceptions), an app-state snapshot (selected kit, AUv3 plugin names, sound source count), and device info. The file is written to a temporary directory and shared only when you tap Share Report. A privacy section in the UI lists exactly what is and isn't collected — before you generate or share anything.

On-device data

All practice history, kits, patterns, templates, calibration, app logs, and MetricKit diagnostics live in the app's on-device sandbox. They're included in standard iCloud or Finder/iTunes device backups, but never transmitted to us. Uninstalling the app removes this data.

For the full text, see the Privacy Policy page and the in-app policy at Settings → About → Privacy Policy.

13. Quick reference

Gestures and shortcuts at a glance.

Gestures

Where to find things

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