iOS App · The Index / 02
PadCoach.
Finger drumming, actually taught. Notes fall down a highway, you catch them on sixteen pads, and a real piece of music plays underneath while you do it.
- Price
- 5 lessons free, then $39.99 once
- Subscription
- None, ever
- Plays with
- MIDI pads or on-screen pads
- Data collected
- None
Most people who buy a pad controller never learn to play it. They learn to program it. PadCoach is the other path: sit down, put your hands on sixteen pads, and play a groove in time, from the first minute.
A lesson is not a loop you grind. It opens slow with one voice isolated, adds a part at a time, and ends on a full sixteen-bar arrangement at tempo. Pass a section and it speeds up. Miss it twice and it offers to slow down. Your hits are judged against the audio clock and your controller's own hardware timestamps, never against the screen, so the timing you are told about is the timing you actually played.
Underneath all of it is music. Fifty-four backing tracks, one per lesson, grouped into nine sound worlds that shift key and instrumentation as the curriculum moves. You are not drumming along to a click. You are the drummer on a record that is already playing.
The practice loop
- 01 A note highway you can read at speed One lane per sound, colour-coded by hand, with the finger letter printed on every note before it arrives. Hits are graded perfect, good, or missed, and the ring at the playhead tells you which.
- 02 You can see where your hit landed A note that has passed stays on the highway as a ghost: a green outline and a tick for a clean hit, and a small dot marking the exact spot your strike actually landed. Rushing and dragging stop being a feeling and become a picture.
- 03 54 lessons in 10 courses A single ordered path from one hat on the beat to a full-kit take with a melody on top. Real named patterns along the way: The Pete Rock, Impeach the President, The Funky Drummer, the Amen bar.
- 04 Your controller, or your fingers Plug in an MPC-style pad controller over USB, or pair one over Bluetooth MIDI. No hardware nearby? The on-screen 4x4 pads are properly multi-touch, so two hands at once register, and they play every lesson in the app.
- 05 Backing music, not a metronome A different track for every one of the 54 lessons, grouped into nine sound worlds. Rhodes, drawbar organ, muted guitar, vibraphone, horn stabs, sub bass, tape wow, tempo-synced delay. All synthesized on-device, all following the lesson's tempo.
- 06 Practice aids that are not cheating Wait Mode holds the highway until you play the note. Slow Practice drops to three-quarter speed. The tempo slider goes down to 30 BPM. Metronome, click volume, and backing music are each switchable.
- 07 20 technique cards and a 12-chapter book, free The how and the why, written out: how to strike a pad, who plays what, subdivision, swing, dynamics, and how to get faster without getting hurt. Not behind the unlock. Read it before you buy anything.
- 08 A streak that rewards playing, not finishing Five minutes on the pads counts the day, even if you never complete a lesson. Plus per-lesson stars and personal bests, and 16 badges across streak days, lessons done, perfect hits, and hours logged.
- 09 Twilight or Classic Twilight is a deep aubergine studio with a violet left hand and a mint right hand. Classic is the original navy screen, blue and gold. Switch any time in Settings.
The curriculum
- 01 First Beats 6 lessons. One pad, then two hands, then a real boom bap groove. The five free lessons live here.
- 02 Sixteenths and Swing 6 lessons. Find the notes between the beats, then learn to lean on them.
- 03 First Fills 4 lessons. Punctuation: how a phrase ends and the next one begins.
- 04 The Left Hand 4 lessons. The hand that was holding still: a second snare and two kicks in a row.
- 05 The Hat Hand 5 lessons. Open it, choke it, and keep it moving all sixteen bars.
- 06 Rolls and Bigger Fills 5 lessons. Snare rolls, tom runs, and the most sampled bar in music.
- 07 Groove Depth 5 lessons. Move a note you already own and the whole beat changes.
- 08 Drumming With Dynamics 7 lessons. Optional depth: loud, soft, and almost silent, on purpose. The only course that grades how hard you hit.
- 09 Melodic Integration 8 lessons. Hand the hat to your thumb and play a melody on top.
- 10 Fluency 4 lessons. Full kit, full phrases, one take.
The first five lessons are free and they are real lessons, not a demo. After that, one payment of $39.99 unlocks all 54 for good. No subscription, no consumable currency, no second purchase later.
PadCoach collects nothing. No accounts, no analytics, no trackers. Your progress, streak, and settings live on your device and nowhere else.