The (black) FGDP‑50 and slightly smaller in size FGDP‑30 (white).
Yamaha’s FGDP‑50 drum pad is designed explicitly for the digital percussionist.
Everyone likes to tap along to a song. Whether you’re a drummer or not, you’ll almost certainly find yourself involuntarily finger drumming to a tune on the radio or in the studio. If you fancy harnessing the true power of those digits though, a unique combination of electronic drumming and finger drumming has emerged in the shape of the Yamaha FGDP‑50 Finger Drum Pad.
The FGDP‑50 offers the functionality of a MIDI pad controller with the sound‑generating capabilities of a drum machine, in a compact package that includes a built‑in speaker and rechargeable battery, enabling it to be used as a standalone instrument. Featuring 50 preset kits and over 1500 sounds, as well as the ability to import and export WAV files and samples, the FGDP‑50 can also integrate with your DAW via USB, making it something of a power‑user tool for finger drummers!
Index Finger
The first thing you notice about the FGDP‑50 is its unusual pad layout. The familiar design of 16 square pads in a 4x4 grid pattern seen on most MIDI controllers has been replaced by 18 pads of differing sizes, ergonomically distributed specifically for playing beats with the fingers. If you place your hands onto the FGDP‑50, your fingers naturally fall into a comfortable playing position, with your thumb on the large kick drum pad, index finger on the snare pad and middle finger on the hi‑hat pad, with other sounds such as open hi‑hat, cymbals and toms distributed around the remaining pads in what feel like natural locations. The size of the pads and the symmetrical layout (where several sounds are duplicated on the left and right sides) also make playing with two hands very comfortable. I found the layout worked perfectly, but you can potentially assign any sound to any pad if the default layout doesn’t suit your playing style.
Eight RGB‑illuminated pads are located across the top of the FGDP‑50, which light up in a wide range of vivid and, as far as I can tell, random colours and perform different functions depending on the mode of the unit. In standard Kit mode, these pads are assigned to play additional sounds, such as cowbells, claps and, of course, the obligatory vocal samples. If you use the click features, the RGB pads will flash in time from left to right, to provide a visual metronome.
The FGDP‑50 measures 223 x 223 x 51mm and weighs 1.1kg.
A small LCD sits above dedicated buttons for Menu, Kit, Audio, Session, Registration and Click settings, with navigation arrows and +/‑ buttons to the right. Setting the FGDP‑50 apart and putting it squarely in the instrument category is the small but surprisingly powerful 2.5 Watt built‑in speaker. Along with battery operation, this allows the FGDP‑50 to be used as a standalone device with no requirement for power supplies or additional amplification.
The connections at the rear of the unit are minimal: just two USB sockets and two 3.5mm jack sockets. The first USB socket is a micro‑USB connection used to charge the battery and to transmit audio and MIDI data to and from a computer. With USB‑C being the connector of choice on the majority of modern devices, and offering greater power, more charging capacity and faster data transfer speeds than micro‑USB, I was surprised at the choice, although (apart from charging speed) I wouldn’t expect there to be any performance difference between micro‑USB and USB‑C.
The second USB socket accepts a standard flash drive that can be used to record audio from the FGDP‑50, which is saved as a WAV file. You can also import sounds, samples or play back audio files, again in WAV format, directly from a connected USB drive — which we’ll come to later.
If you’re more comfortable with analogue connectivity, Yamaha have provided a 3.5mm aux in jack that you can use to bring in audio from an external source to play along to. A second 3.5mm jack socket provides a stereo output you can connect to headphones or external amplification.
Round the back we find just a pair of USB sockets, an aux input and headphone/line output, both on 3.5mm sockets.
Trigger Finger
The FGDP‑50 includes 50 preset kits, spanning everything from acoustic maple, birch and oak kits to EDM, big beat and metal offerings. Percussion is also well catered for, with African, Brazilian and Arabic collections alongside orchestral and classic 808‑ and 909‑style drum machines. A further 50 user memory locations are provided to save your own kit creations made from the 1500 onboard samples.
The pads are extremely sensitive, allowing a great deal of expression when playing with fingers. They also feature aftertouch, which is used to great effect on several preset kits, enabling crash cymbals to be choked, effects to be added and even pitch‑bend to be applied to drums for authentic African talking drum and Indian tabla sounds.
A feature applied to the sounds on the RGB pads in the preset kits, but available on any pad, is the option to create repeats at set intervals. A voice assigned to a pad can be set to repeat in time with the current metronome tempo, in anything from one beat per bar to 32nd‑note resolution, including triplets. The repeats then play for as long as you press the pad, as well as responding to any aftertouch assigned. This allows a single pad to play a simple shaker or hi‑hat pattern, for example, or lets you create a range of EDM‑style snare fills that vary in pitch or tone depending on how hard you press the pad.
Finger On The Pulse
The user presets give you almost everything you might want for playing along with various genres and styles of music, but should you want to tweak a sound or two, the editing power available within in the FGDP‑50 is quite extraordinary. Within Kit mode, a press of the right arrow button steps you through the Kit Edit, Pad Edit and Voice Edit screens. Here you can assign any of the 1500 samples to a pad, as well as adjusting individual volume, pan, tuning, decay, cutoff and resonance. Three effects are available to each kit; Reverb, Chorus, (which includes a host of modulation effects) and Variation Type (featuring delays, distortions, filters and compressors). Each of these effects can be applied to any pad in varying degrees, using individual send levels, enabling you to tailor any kit to your exact requirements.
Four Kit Variations
In what I believe is a feature borrowed from Yamaha’s PSR range of keyboards, the FGDP‑50 includes something called Registrations. This enables you to store four kit variations that can be instantly recalled by selecting one of four dedicated registration buttons: I, II, III and IV. This is ideal for live performance, allowing different kits to be stored together and quickly selected.
Any edits made to a kit, including tempo, trigger settings and effects, are saved in the Registration. It’s thus easy to add more reverb to a snare in a chorus, or change kit completely in a middle eight, for example, although you must be sure to save edited kits to a user preset slot, or they will be lost once the unit is powered off.
I found this a useful, if somewhat confusing, feature. Having initially thought there were only four Registrations (which seemed more than enough), I then discovered there are 50 banks, which can each store four Registrations, giving a potential 200 kit variations!
Give It Some Stick
While the FGDP‑50 has the look of a drum machine, it doesn’t offer the ability to record, edit and play back parts in the same way as a conventional drum machine. What it does allow you to do, however, is record your performances as WAV files saved to a connected USB stick drive.
Pressing the Audio button and then the Record button puts the FGDP‑50 into Record Standby, at which point you can start the metronome if you want to play to a click. A second press of the Record button starts the recording process and displays a counter on the LCD, showing elapsed time. As soon as you press Stop, the file is saved to the USB drive and can be instantly auditioned via the Play button.
The audio record function not only records your performance, it can also record audio from the USB host input and aux in jack, as well as audio playback from the Session Creator function (see ‘Finger Buffet’ box). Using this method, you can record complete performances combining backing tracks and drums, or play along to backing tracks and choose to only record the drum performance. The files on the USB drive are saved in 16‑bit/44.1kHz WAV format and can be imported into your DAW or shared with other musicians.
In addition to saving recorded audio, you can also import samples into the FGDP‑50, using the same USB port. Again, audio needs to be in 16‑bit/44.1kHz WAV format but can be anything from a single drum sample or loop to a complete instrumental phrase. Once imported, user samples can be assigned to any pad within a kit and manipulated in the same way as the factory samples. This means you can import your own snare, kick drum or keyboard stabs and create a completely unique kit, which hugely expands the sonic possibilities of the FGDP‑50. Unlike audio recorded into the FGDP‑50, imported samples are saved to the internal 50MB memory of the FGDP‑50, which equates to 600 seconds (mono) or 300 seconds (stereo), so any kits you create using your own samples can be instantly recalled without having a USB stick connected.
The USB connectivity provided by the FGDP‑50 makes it a great option for integrating with your DAW and drum software running on macOS or Windows.
Virtual Handshake
These days many people are choosing virtual instruments as their preferred source for drum sounds, playing in parts via a piano keyboard, electronic drum pad or MIDI controller. The USB connectivity provided by the FGDP‑50 makes it a great option for integrating with your DAW and drum software running on macOS or Windows.
The USB connection provides MIDI and audio communication between the FGDP‑50 and computer, offering stereo audio in and out along with 16 channels of MIDI. Integration with various VIs installed on my Mac was seamless, enabling me to play them using the comfortable pad layout provided by the FGDP‑50. In most cases, the mapping of pads to instruments was perfect, with only a couple of tweaks required on Addictive Drums. Toontrack’s EZ Drummer 3 offered particularly impressive results, with aftertouch translating into the same choked crashes offered by the FGDP‑50 itself. Audio recording also worked flawlessly, the stereo output of the FGDP‑50 immediately becoming available as a track input source in my DAW. The option to play back audio via the FGDP‑50 is also available, so you can potentially use it as a basic audio interface.
Thumbs Up?
First things first: the FGDP‑50 is great fun! The battery operation and internal speaker mean you can pick it up and play, anytime, anywhere, without having to think about audio connections, headphones or power sockets. Playing through the small 2.5 Watt speaker sounds surprisingly good, and at full volume it’s more than loud enough to accompany an acoustic guitar player.
The pad layout is extremely well thought out, feels very natural to play and, in conjunction with the sensitivity of the pads and aftertouch, makes creating dynamic and naturalistic patterns a breeze. The sonic palette is extremely wide, with great‑sounding acoustic drums and percussion alongside classic electronic beats. The ability to import your own samples and integrate them into kits is a feature I hadn’t expected but is very much appreciated. The ability to export recordings to your DAW as WAV files takes the FGDP‑50 to another level, enabling you to create beats anywhere and integrate them into your studio‑based projects.
If I’m being really picky, the small LCD makes navigation around the menus a little tricky, with only limited information visible. Ironically, this is only an issue because the FGDP‑50 offers such an extensive level of editing. I have a similar feeling about the Finger Drum Pad having only a stereo mini‑jack output and no dedicated MIDI ports. The lack of connectivity feels at odds with the generous functionality Yamaha have crammed into this unit.
With a little practice it’s possible to play some very complex and impressive‑sounding beats.
At around £250$260, the FGDP‑50 isn’t exactly a casual purchase, but it does provide a lot of functionality that songwriters and live performers will find fun and creative, as well as offering studio professionals a very well thought‑out and fully featured MIDI input device. The pad layout makes creating a passable rhythm very easy, even for someone who has never played drums, and with a little practice it’s possible to play some very complex and impressive‑sounding beats. I’ve even managed to integrate it into my acoustic drum‑kit setup as a way to add some additional percussion. If you don’t need all the features of the FGDP‑50 but you like the concept, it may be worth looking at the FGDP‑30 (see the ‘Little Finger’ box), which offers a slightly reduced feature set for around half the price.
Finger Buffet
The Session Creator function offers the option to play along to 23 pre‑recorded backing tracks stored in the FGDP‑50 and features a range of styles from synth‑pop and funk to metal, trance and jazz. Each ‘song’ is split into six sections: an intro section, main sections A‑D (four variations), and an ending section. In Session Mode, instigated by pressing the Sess button, the RGB buttons are used to select each section and start/stop the playback, as well as muting and unmuting the pre‑recorded drums on each song.
Once a song is selected, you can use the RGB buttons to choose the section of the song you wish to start with. When you press the RGB Play button, the currently selected song section will begin playback and the Play button will flash at the song tempo. During playback, the LCD shows the number of bars in the section, as well as which bar is currently playing, which is a very handy way to locate where you are in the section. To move to another section of the song, you simply press the corresponding RGB button and the FGDP‑50 waits until the current section ends before switching. Each section will continue to loop until you select a new one, with the exception of the ending section, which will play once and bring the song to a close. Playback will continue even if you move to a different mode (other than Session Creator), so you can easily switch to Kit mode and audition different kits while playing back. You can even mute individual parts (or voices), such as the bass or piano, to change the feel of a song.
Session Creator includes the usual slightly cheesy backing tracks you find as demo songs in many keyboards and modules, and isn’t something I personally would use, but it is a fun part of the FGDP‑50 that allows you to practice your finger drumming techniques in a range of styles. You can even record your performance using the USB audio recording features and impress your friends!
Little Finger: The FGDP‑30
Retailing for considerably less than the FGDP‑50 and slightly smaller in size is the FGDP‑30. Resplendent in white, the FGDP‑30 includes the same ergonomic pad layout as the FGDP‑50 but most notably misses off the RGB pads and LCD. The built‑in speaker and battery are still present, along with the USB host port, so for use primarily as a standalone instrument or MIDI controller it would be ideal.
Featuring 39 preset kits and 1212 Instruments, the FGDP‑30 still offers a big enough sound palette to satisfy the most demanding user, but the lack of a USB flash drive port does mean you can’t import your own samples. It also precludes recording your performances and exporting to a DAW.
The lack of LCD, while not necessarily a big issue for those using the FGDP‑30 as a simple instrument or controller, might be significant if you wanted to edit in detail. The process is made slightly more irritating, in my opinion, by the fact that Yamaha have chosen to include a voice prompt to help you navigate the menus. As you select a kit or function, a female voice announces ‘10, Modern Jazz Kit’ or ‘Pad Volume 5’. Whilst it’s impressive that the FGDP‑30 offers an almost identical level of editability, in terms of kits, pads and effects, as its bigger brother, navigating menus and activating functions by way of voice prompts isn’t ideal.
If performing drum and percussion accompaniment, working on your finger‑drum technique and controlling a virtual instrument via the ergonomic pads are what interest you most, the FGDP‑30 is a decent option, but for me the FGDP‑50’s LCD and ability to import and export WAV files are must‑have features, so I’d go with the 50.
Pros
- Unique pad layout.
- Great sounds.
- Internal speaker and battery for standalone use.
- Impressive feature set.
Cons
- Only has mini‑jack and USB connections.
- Small LCD.
Summary
In addition to being a great excuse for finger‑related puns, the FGDP‑50 is great fun to play! Moreover, an incredible feature set elevates it to a serious tool that is as much at home in the studio as it is on your lap.
Information
£253 including VAT.
$259.99
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