64-Pad Practice Notes: Playing Chord and Melody Together

It’s been just over a year since I started taking the 64-pad seriously as an instrument.

For those unfamiliar: a 64-pad is an 8×8 grid of pressure-sensitive pads, typically used for finger drumming or triggering samples in a DAW. What I’m doing with it is different — using it as a harmonic instrument, something between a keyboard and a guitar. The layout (set to 4th intervals) makes chord shapes consistent across the entire range, which turns out to be genuinely useful for learning music theory alongside technique.

The first goal I set for myself was layering — recording multiple passes of a song to create something that sounds like a full arrangement. After about a year, I can do that reasonably well. Here’s a recent example:

So I moved the goalpost. The new challenge: playing chord and melody simultaneously, in real time, with rich voicings. No separate passes. One take.

Here’s where I was three weeks ago:

And two more recent attempts — both jazz standards, both works in progress:

Fly Me to the Moon:

All the Things You Are:

What I’m actually working on

The key thing about this practice is that there’s no score to copy. I’m working from chord symbols and melody, figuring out my own voicings — thinking through what to play before I play it. Right now I’m not at the level of doing this in real time (that would be improvisation), but I can design the arrangement slowly, then execute it. Incrementally, I’m building a mental model of how to get there live.

One year into lessons with my teacher, and practice has finally reached the stage where I’m genuinely thinking for myself. That feels like a milestone worth marking.

Notes on Fly Me to the Moon

Fly Me to the Moon was a good choice to start with.

The basic voicing I was taught: left thumb plays the root in the bass, right hand plays a shell voicing anchored at the octave above — root, 7th, 3rd. The combination gives you six notes: root, root again, 5th, 7th, root (an octave higher), 3rd. It sounds much richer than it looks on paper.

The interesting thing about Fly Me to the Moon: when you walk through the A section with this voicing, you realize the melody almost always starts on the 3rd of the chord. So the voicing naturally puts the melody right where it needs to be. The harmonic structure and the melodic shape align more than I expected.

One thing I’ve started doing: using the 6th in place of the major 7th on major chords. In jazz, maj6 voicings are extremely common — the 6th has a warmer, less tense quality than the maj7. Going through the tune and substituting 6ths wherever there’s a major chord changed the feel considerably.

The part I’m still working out: the melody occasionally lands high enough that the standard voicing can’t cover both the chord and the top note without something dropping out. I’m experimenting with which notes to leave out — balancing playability against harmonic completeness. There’s no single right answer. It’s more like sculpting.

On writing about practice

I’ve started to think of writing these notes as practice itself.

Explaining what I’m doing — why I chose this voicing, why that note feels wrong — forces a level of clarity I don’t get from playing alone. The explanation is another form of the work. It makes the thinking visible, which is the only way to actually examine it.

This probably resonates with anyone who keeps a learning journal, or who writes to understand rather than to report. Playing and writing about playing turn out to be more connected than I assumed.

More on the 64-pad as an instrument: How I Started Playing the 64-Pad →