Fingertip is the default, and it's the one that plays best. Point one index finger
with the others tucked in, and the tip of that finger is what strikes. Relax the hand and it
stops — the other fingers can't set anything off, because the pose itself is the switch.
It is steadier for a reason worth knowing: your fingertip is a point the tracker
reports, while a stick's direction has to be worked out from the shape of your hand,
and every way of doing that gets shakier as you turn your hand toward the camera.
Drumsticks are under Play with if you want them. Each one is gripped in the
fist and points where your hand points, so angle your fists down at the kit — hold them
upright and the sticks point at the ceiling, exactly as they would in life. If a stick looks
short and stubby, it's pointing at the camera: tip your hand forward and it comes back.
The drum you're currently aimed at is ringed in your hand's colour, with a bright line
drawn across it: that line is the drum's surface, and coming down through it is the hit. If the
ring goes faint and dashed, you're already below the surface — lift and it comes back.
Sit wherever is comfortable. Closer to the camera just means bigger hands on screen, not a
different instrument. There is nothing to calibrate — the kit is already where it needs
to be.
Playing
Bring the tip down through a drum. The hit lands the moment it passes through the
head — not when you stop afterwards — and how fast you were moving is how hard it lands.
Harder is brighter, not just louder. A ghost note on the snare and a full backbeat are
two different sounds, the way they are on a real kit.
Both hands are independent, and each is drawn in its own colour so you can see which
stick did what.
Hi-hat: through the middle is a closed hat, out at either edge — the two
banded ends — is an open one. A closed hit slams the open one shut, exactly as the pedal does.
Ride: the middle is the bell, the outside is the bow — the same as on the real thing.
Lift the stick between hits. A stroke needs somewhere to come from, so the stick has to come
back above the surface before it can land again, which is how drumming works anyway.
If hits aren't registering
Watch the ring. It tells you everything: no ring means the tip isn't over a drum, a
faint dashed ring means it's below the surface and needs lifting, a solid ring with a line
across it means a stroke will land.
Try Fingertip. If the sticks are wandering or pointing somewhere you didn't intend,
switch under Play with — there is no direction to infer, so there is nothing to wander.
On sticks, check where they're pointing. If they're aimed off the top of the frame, your
fists are upright — tip them forward and down, as if the kit were on a table in front of you,
and the sticks come round with them.
Check the track figure in the header. Below about 20 detections a second a stroke can
begin and finish between two looks at your hands, and no amount of tuning recovers it. Closing
other GPU-heavy tabs and enabling hardware acceleration is the fix.
Go through the drum, not near it. A stroke that stops above the head, or that sweeps
sideways past it, plays nothing — which is what lets you move between drums without sounding
every one on the way.
If you're reaching uncomfortably far for anything, try a smaller Kit size. The stick
tip hangs below your hand, so the kit sits lower in the frame than a photo of a kit would —
that is deliberate, and it is what makes the top row reachable at all.