Double Bass Drum Technique

I'm the tutor at drum tech and I like to talk to about tuning drums. When working on the double bass drum technique , the first things to worry about I think are articulation and precision and sound , there are the three most important things for me , speed comes with time ,if you try and get fast double bass drum technique before precise double drum technique it will never sound any good, so if you think about the guys that are really good at double bass drum Joey Jordison from slipknot or someone like that ,the impact comes from being able to hear every note that their are playing on the double bass drum and not necessarily just through the speed ,so I have a kind of sequence of moving just a very simple thing on the bass from all around the bar so that I can practice starting my double bass drums rolls and stopping them as well which are always the moments that is kind of get a little bit wonky so I am just going move a group of four semi quavers around different places around the bar while playing a straight beat with my hands.

one two three and three one .



so that exercise is just taking that simple four semi quavers and placing it in every position I can on the bar really trying to concentrate on the accuracy of starting those notes and stopping and making sure that every note is really coming through in those four semi quavers. Like I said before the kind of actual technique on the pedal is quite important in relation to the action of the pedal so when I mention before that some people have their pedal setup with the beats very close to the head if I try and swing my bass from there to the drum I am not going to get any kind of tone out of it and I just have to rely hopefully that a sound engineer would turn my bass drum up to get a good sound out of the kit on it own naturally its good to have the beats quite a way back so you can get a really get quite a nice smack on it and I think 90% of drummers using double pedal would play with the heal up technique on the pedal it just kind of lets allows you get a little more power a little more volume so this is where my heal is of the pedal and then I am swinging my toe down to tap the floor so that in a same kind of motion still not playing totally from the thigh or anything like that not shifting my whole leg in the motion still my toe is moving I'm using my calf muscle like that so you can get a really nice sound.

so to round up the important factors of double bass drum playing are accuracy ,precision and sound and once those three are happing then you could move up to work on speed as well.

try on concentrate on how your legs are moving and make sure that your calf is being used and your swinging your toes down on the pedal.

and that's how to get started on double bass drum technique.