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3x3 grid Lightpad mode for Studio drums

 I much prefer to finger drum on a Lightpad with a 3x3 grid over the tiny pads of a 4x4 grid. I also often see people in videos using 3x3 and mention that they find 4x4 lightpad too small as well.

Therefore I request a possibility to switch to 3x3 and to use (at least) two connected lightpads in that mode, effectively giving me 18 pads to assign sounds to.


I am aware that this will afford some redesign of the UI, but I think it will be worth the effort. It's really hard to do alternating hits on those tiny targets.


I did a test triggering RSD with the 3x3 grid of the ordinary Note Grid app on each of two neighboring Lightpads and it felt and played a lot better.

Need to come up with a kit layout fitting to the rather unusual 3x9 or 9x3 grid and right now two pads are unused plus I can't use any hardware assignment to my other Lightpads. But as a prove of concept, I can say this is much more playable right away.


Thanks for considering.



1 person likes this idea

Hey Frank, as always we really appreciate your feedback.

Given that each full kit contains 16 pads, what would you imagine seeing/like to see when a 3x3 version of the kit is loaded, in terms of kick, snare, hi hat, perc etc? I'll mention this to the team as an alternative arrangement of the pads, as with the current ability to swap pads in our out to create your own custom kit, it wouldn't be too restrictive as a 9-pad arrangement.

Good question. To make it immediately accessible to users, and to not load redundant parts, the preset kits would need to be weeded out to the "most important" 9 kit parts when 3x3 mode is engaged, whichever that may be. I didn't think about that, probably because I imagined to use 2 Lightpads combined and therefore would have the luxory to add two sound to the kit...


Usually when I had drums on the 3x3, I used one Kick, one Snare, two hihats (closed and open), then some toms and cymbals, or other percussion on the rest of the pads. Often a single tom and a single cymbal were enough, if at all needed, so there was room for either an alternative kick and snare, a pedal hihat (love me some hats with variety) and/or some FX sounds if the song goes in the electronic domain.


My basic layout would be quite similar to what you do on the 4x4. Just condensed a bit :).

Bottom row would be kick/snare/HHclosed, the open hihat will be in the middle row above the closed one (pad 6 if you will). The rest depends on what's needed.

If I feel like an alternate kick or snare, they'd go into the middle row above their siblings, otherwise there would maybe be two toms (or one tom and a pedal hihat on the middle pad). Upper row for cymbals/perc/fx sounds, whatever makes most sense.


A lot of it is up to the direction the kit tends to in terms of genre, so I guess the best ones to decide what to leave out would be the creators of the kits. From there it's easy enough for the user to swap stuff out to cater the song at hand.


Btw, swapping sounds is really nicely solved in RSD if you have a spare lightpad assigned to the faders and use the second tab. Very fast, and almost mouse free, apart from switching between the handy kit pieces filters (kick, snare, percussion, etc).

Would be ideal if the filters could be switched through (always a single one active) with some shortcut keys, too. (Number keypad? Then 0 could be conveniantly used to clear all). Or do shortcuts for them exist already and are undocumented? I found out by trial and error that the left/right arrows step through the preset and kit piece lists. Must say, I'd find the up/down arrows more intuitive here, because the browser list is a vertical thing.

Oh man, I disgress, enough for now. Again, thanks for considering.


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