Double bass pedal tips n tricks

Im gonna buy a double bass pedal very soon. Ive always been a single pedal player for the 10 or so Ive been playing. I liked to hear a little input on how to develop my skills on these bad boys.

You may find your hihat foot is real good at pressing. I did. I'm a tone fanatic so it took lots of extra therapy and many years later it's only starting to come around. Other than the basic stroke - which IMO is everything, start at the beginning. 4 on the floor, tatoos on top. Walking patterns - L R L R, R L R L etc...

Use the basic stuff you have wired as an example and flip it over. Pay attention to all the details. Feel, articulation, dynamics, should be identical. This may be a fail for quite a while but it's well worth conquering.

And of course wank at it so you develop your new foot's natural voice.

Good old DB threads, how I've missed thee!

In short, every thing 1k1 said applies, great advice, dude knows his {censored}.

Now, I think it some what depends on your own style and the main genre of music you play, imo. Do what you have probably already done and, look up double bass techniques on youtube. With as many different foot techniques as there are, it's best to find every one you can, give each a try and find what works best for you at this early stage.

I wish I could get the heel-toe method as, it seems to be one of the quickest and "easiest" but, no matter what I do or, how long I try I just can't get the dynamics to flow, at best I can get it going on 4ths at like 80bpm or less lol. I play heel up which, feels rather restricted since I usually plateau at 16ths, very steady and any thing beyond that I lose stamina after about 20 seconds. Regardless of genre/style, I think a great beginners work out for double bass is the swivel technique, where you alternate the feet as though they are "chasing" one another.

Once you start feeling comfortable with the balance thing and start gaining some dexterity you're gonna love having some DB abilities. You don't need to play at 250 BPM to use a double pedal wisely. Playing even and in time is the big to do. Being able to throw out a db pattern or just blowing up fills and song endings is a blast. YouTube is your friend. Tons of good info and free lessons to start with. Good luck!

Whats tattoos on top?

250BPM is attainable by the masses. At least for a few minutes. Takes work. Doesn't require heel-toe, or anything other than good ol' fashioned brute force method, be it ankle or thigh.

300BPM is another thing entirely and requires far more dedication than I'm willing to throw at it. Plus, I'm fairly certain that I can NOT actually get that fast physically. Positive outlook is everything.

That said, basic continuous single-stroking for 10 minutes a day at whatever the metronome lets you do evenly is a good endurance starter. Learning nifty patterns and such is good for precision. Start painfully slow.

You have to be a bad ass metal head with tattoos to be able to properly play double bass, wasn't that obvious?

I'm pretty sure this is where I fail.

Quop. All those answers are correct. Tatoo is ancient slang for the cadences the snare drummer does.

brrrap rest brrrap rest brrrap papapop brrap. etc.

You can do anything else in combination with actual tatoos if you got 'em or magic marker if you don't. The idea is just to get used to playing the pulse with either foot while you do more detailed stuff with your hands.

Keep it simple and smooth.

Agreed, playing hands twice, thrice, or quadrice (made this one up) as fast as the feet (or vice versa) is a key ingredient to sexiness.

OOO No wonder suck with this DB shtuff... Im gonna get a tatoo with some chick gettin boned by the devil. That might help.. But then theres the metal head part I must work on. Im already bad ass so... lol

I got some Iron Cobras. When I first set em up I didnt want to dive in right away into the tedious, deadly slow, and agonizing practice routines. I wanted to test my nuts on em.. At first it was pretty choppy. 1K1 was right about my hi hat foot wanting to press. but in the end I was able finess my way into some pretty cool fills and drives. It will take many years of therapy before I master them.

Quit copying me. lol

Who, me?

For me it's just practice and time. Yes, youtube is your friend, but it can also be your enemy, at least mine anyway. There's vid's on there of guys doing amazing {censored} man. Darkslide on here has excellent heel/toe vids up.

I played and came up from 4 years old on single pedal. I didn't play for damn near 26 years and got back into it four years ago, maybe five now. Makes no difference, I digress. I tried different pedals. First set was DW 7000, not impressed, then went to IC's. GREAT pedals no doubt, but sold them and bought Axis LB's. Another great pedal, almost to great. It's the same as I don't care for DW 9000's either because they feel TOO smooth to me. Now I play Eliminators. Love 'em. I have a chain drive set and a strap drive. One for each kit. I like them the best of all of them FOR ME. I beat myself up at not picking it up fast enough for what seemed like forever. Now, over time and not being so hard on myself, I'm getting there. Some guys are gifted and pick up DB so fast it's freaky, I'm not one of those guys. I don't play speed or death metal anyway, or anything over 180/200 bpm's for that matter. Plus, I like them for color more anyway, that's just me. Bursts, trading back and forth between hands and feet, triplets and quadruplets. Ultimately I'm just saying give yourself time man. Don't beat yourself up if it seems to be coming slow, it may not for you. But if it does, don't beat yourself up or you'll get so pissed you'll feel like you'll never get it- not true.

Side note: If ya notice, I tried all of these "top-of-the-line" pedals thinking "these will do it". I took up golf back in the early '90's. Same thing. Bought all the "newest and greatest" clubs. Never made a bit of difference. Ya still have to practice and be patient. Hell, I've still to this day only shot under 90 a handful of times. I guess the low 90's is the best I'll ever play since I'll never play everyday.

Good luck with it man and HAVE FUN learning.

marko

The best day in your golfing career is the day that you quit.

No Dylweed. He wants to suffer for years or something.

LMAO!

The main thing is to start slow. Trying to match those fast Gene Hoglans will only piss you off and never want to work on it. There's a few things that can def. help:

1. Work on it away from your kit. Whenever I'm at the computer, I'm constantly moving my legs along to the music, and I know that has already improved my endurance, etc.

2. Just like with your hands, you need to learn some rudiments with your feet. Singles, doubles, paradiddles, etc. try them all using your feet.

3. Once you can do some fundamentals with your feet, start doing some mixing your hands and feet. If you ever did paradiddles before using your hands and right foot, now use the left foot. Or play once with the right foot and then the next time with the left, etc. Being able to do this can allow you to throw out some killer fills.

You'll also need to find the technique(s) that work best for you. When I'm playing slower double bass, my feet are on the boards and I'm using mostly my legs. When the tempo picks up, my feet slide back so only the front part is on the pedal, and my calf and ankle take over while my legs are almost stationary.

I agree Marko youtube is a great tool to be used but sometimes I get into so much and watch people that are ridiculously awesome!! They came out the womb with sticks in hand. Ill look at my set and wanna throw in it the trash. I learned something from instructor though, and he knows his way around trapset, hes a badass. He was showing me some samba polyrthms and we were looking at this the one beat with straight eighths and a triplet swing, nothin to hard. I had no clue, and he hopped on the throne ready to learn me a lesson, and show me how it was done. The fat {censored} couldnt do it.. lol not until he slowed down and broke it down each note at a time. So I learned prolly the best lesson from him and it had nothing to do with polyrythms but our ego. We allow our egos to get in the way to truly learn something. Humble yourself.

That's cool. I didn't stay in lessons long enough to find something the teacher couldn't do.

While you're on that, the thing that makes advanced drumming or any instrument-ing work is the ability to produce dead solid streams of perfect notes. It's fundamental. With drummers it's the stroke. X4 of course. Without that ability even simple beats will lack feel.

That just came to light to me quite recently. I quit playing for about 3 years after high school, cuz i was adjusting to the real world, and Ive been back in it for about 7 months or so. When I first started to jam with people again (4months ago) I was always just slightly ahead or behind especially recovering from a fill. So I pulled the metronome out and practice my time keeping. Ill sit there in the morning doing 8 on a hand with 4 on ze floor, at moderate speed, to fast, down to really slow. That {censored} is tedious but very important.

You'll do just fine Dyl. You've answered the bulk of your questions yourself Bro.

The most obvious answer usually sucks and is correct.

+1000

LOL