Single Kick Pedal Questions

[Clayton_C]

Okay, I've been working my butt off to get some killer hands, and the practice time is starting to pay off. But I'm afraid that in my refusal to entertain the double-pedal craze, I have almost completely ignored my right foot. I'm mostly a jazz player, but the crazy Jojo Mayer single-foot rolls got my mind working. Here's the problem: no matter how long I practice with my right foot (either by itself or integrated into full drumset playing), there seems to be some fundamental block. I have been trying to get this in working order for a decent six months.

So I've decided to come ask advice of the greatest drumming community on the web. Although any advice would be appreciated, I do have some particular questions as well.


What should my pedal tension be like? I tend to "bury the beater," so I suppose it's fairly high at the moment.
Should I invest in a pedal with less obtrusive features? Right now I have the Sonor 400 Series Pedal, and seeing Jojo Mayer's pedal with only one support beam for the shaft made me wonder if that is more suitable to complex/fast playing.
Any exercises that would help me train my foot?

[MattRitter]

Okay, I've been working my butt off to get some killer hands, and the practice time is starting to pay off. But I'm afraid that in my refusal to entertain the double-pedal craze, I have almost completely ignored my right foot. I'm mostly a jazz player, but the crazy Jojo Mayer single-foot rolls got my mind working. Here's the problem: no matter how long I practice with my right foot (either by itself or integrated into full drumset playing), there seems to be some fundamental block. I have been trying to get this in working order for a decent six months.

Hey, Clayton

Don't feel discouraged after working on your foot for 6 months. I had foot troubles for about 10 years!

What should my pedal tension be like? I tend to "bury the beater," so I suppose it's fairly high at the moment.

Search on my posts and see if you can find the one that I wrote about pedal tension. I actually did a pretty thorough set of experiments to determine the effects of different batter head tensions paired with different pedal tensions. I spent several hours on this, and I took notes the whole time. Once I was done, I posted the results here on Drummer World in a ridiculously long post. See if you can find it. There's some good stuff in there.

As for "burying the beater," obviously I would advise against it. I feel that it was the cause of my bass drum problems for my first decade as a drummer. Still, if you do decide to keep burying the beater, I don't think that it means your pedal tension should be unusually high, as you seemed to indicate. I think the opposite is generally true. When people bury the beater, they usually like to have as little resistance as possible so that they can hold the beater into the head without major struggle. So, maybe this is one of the reasons for your difficulty. You are fighting the rebound by burying the beater. PLUS, you are fighting a spring tension that you said is "fairly high at the moment."

Should I invest in a pedal with less obtrusive features? Right now I have the Sonor 400 Series Pedal, and seeing Jojo Mayer's pedal with only one support beam for the shaft made me wonder if that is more suitable to complex/fast playing.

I find that the pedal is usually less of an issue than people think. Normally, I can operate pretty effectively on any pedal. You wouldn't believe some of the broken down pedals I play on in NY rehearsal studios. I used to bring my own pedal with me for rehearsals, but lately I don't even bother, since I discovered that I still end up doing fine on just about any pedal. In fact, one of my favorite pedals at the moment is a cheap Pearl pedal that came included with a drumset I bought around 1991!

Any exercises that would help me train my foot?
[/LIST]

As I'm sure you know, I have a DVD out that many people are finding helpful. Look into it and see if you think it's up your alley. It has a million exercises. You can also get some of the same exercises by contacting Modern Drummer magazine for a copy of my December 2004 article entitled "Unburying The Beater." The article will probably cost you next to nothing, and it should help quite a bit. Before I ever made my DVD, people were frequently emailing to say the article was helpful. So that might be a low cost way to get started.

Best of luck.

[sauceisback]

hi dude! i hope what im going to say is going to help

- if your asking for how tight should your pedal should be, well since you said you are a jazz drummer i think it would be better if your pedal would be on the middle of being tight and being loose, since if you tighten your pedal too much it would require much effort for you to play it and you would be more of a rock drummer in that sense. But also dont loosen your pedal up to a point that your pedal is sloppy, because that wouldnt help your foot to develop well.

- about investing in a less obtrusive pedal, actually you dont really need to picky about it, even if you use an Iron Cobra or a Pearl Eliminator Demon drive pedal it doesnt mean your not a jazz drummer. just use these tools, they dont determine what kind of drummer we are ^___^

- about foot exercise, i suggest you practice your foot the way you practiced your hands... thats right, the rudiments... not actually all rudiments, but some important stuff about it like the singles, doubles, and most especially the paradiddles. the paradiddles are really good exercises since what your dominant foot/hand does the non dominant foot/hand also does. so if you do RLRR with your dominant foot/hand your non dominant would go LRLL

i hope that helps

[Clayton_C]

Ah, just the advice I've been looking for!

Matt - I will definitely be looking up that article, and I believe I may have seen your DVD in a local music store, so I will be keeping an eye out for that as well. Knowing that it's a common struggle will definitely keep me motivated to practice my socks off (literally!)

Sauceisback - Good words of advice, especially knowing that I don't need to search around for a new pedal! Since I don't use a double pedal, I suppose those foot paradiddles you were talking about could be adapted for use between the kick and hihat? I will give some "hand rudiments" a test-drive on my feet and try to get them up to speed.

Thanks for the advice!

[MattRitter]

Matt - I will definitely be looking up that article, and I believe I may have seen your DVD in a local music store, so I will be keeping an eye out for that as well.

Good luck with it. If you ever have any follow-up questions, feel free to drop me a line through my website (I'm not always on the forum).

Knowing that it's a common struggle will definitely keep me motivated to practice my socks off (literally!)

Great. Just make sure to not practice your SHOES off. Seriously, I know this is also a controversial topic, but I personally recommend wearing shoes. A guy emailed me earlier today because he wanted bass drum advice. He was complaining of knee pain, and he sent me a couple of video clips to look at. Well, he was pounding away on that pedal...with no shoes on! I can't say for sure if this is the whole cause of his problem, but I'm convinced it's a factor! Our feet and legs take a bit of abuse on the pedals, and I think shoes can help by absorbing some of the shock. Just wanted to throw that out there so you don't end up emailing me down the road about knee or ankle pain. Take care.

[aboylikedave]

One bit of advice I would give is that the problem might seem to be about speed wheras it is actually not its about muscle memory.

For example, play straight quarters on the kick with whilst playing HH eights and snare on the backbeat.

Easy? Now play the kick on the second sixtenth (one-EE). Same speed...but a bit harder to get right.

Similarly playing doubles ONE-EE...TWO EE is fairly easy. now, at the SAME SPEED play EE-AND of every beat, in other words the second and third sixteenth. You may well find this a lot harder to play accurately but its actually exactly the same speed of double.

Then do the same thing with alternating HH sixteenths instead of HH eights. When I do it I find its different again even though it is eactly the same kick pattern just as its got different things going on at the same time,

My point is you may need to work on muscle memory - do it slowly and very repetitively - not until you can do it but for a while once you can do it.

I hope this makes sense..its just my own experience.

[sauceisback]

Ah, just the advice I've been looking for!

Matt - I will definitely be looking up that article, and I believe I may have seen your DVD in a local music store, so I will be keeping an eye out for that as well. Knowing that it's a common struggle will definitely keep me motivated to practice my socks off (literally!)

Sauceisback - Good words of advice, especially knowing that I don't need to search around for a new pedal! Since I don't use a double pedal, I suppose those foot paradiddles you were talking about could be adapted for use between the kick and hihat? I will give some "hand rudiments" a test-drive on my feet and try to get them up to speed.

Thanks for the advice!

yes between the hihat and the bass pedal RLRR LRLL

[Toza]

- about foot exercise, i suggest you practice your foot the way you practiced your hands... thats right, the rudiments... not actually all rudiments, but some important stuff about it like the singles, doubles, and most especially the paradiddles. the paradiddles are really good exercises since what your dominant foot/hand does the non dominant foot/hand also does. so if you do RLRR with your dominant foot/hand your non dominant would go LRLL


hey friend. You should check out Thomas Lang's - "Creative Coordination And Advanced Foot Technique" DVD. This guy is sick,sick,sick drummer. And you can play all exercises with your left foot pedal high hat.

[sauceisback]

hey friend. You should check out Thomas Lang's - "Creative Coordination And Advanced Foot Technique" DVD. This guy is sick,sick,sick drummer. And you can play all exercises with your left foot pedal high hat.

yeah i actually have one, and im on the part when you need to play 32nd notes with the left pedal while playing a different beat with the right, i can actually play it well on the first 20 secs but not for a whole minute hahaha thomas lang is a monster. haha

[lewisn27]

Take a look at this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0LaJ_ftT0&feature=channel_page
I would say that the tension is just personal preference, experiment around with it and see what you like.

[VedranS]

Ok, this'll be long.

I felt that my foot technique tightened up quite a bit once I figured out how to do up-strokes and down-strokes so to speak with my foot, or in other words, how to use alternating muscle groups.

You might already be aware of this, but many people use some kind of alternating muscle movement to achieve doubles or longer fast strings of notes on the bass drum. I think of it as analogous to the "drop-catch" "wrist/finger" or whatever you want to call the hand technique for doubles. So far I've only practiced it to do double strokes, so I can't help you with any foot rolls. Also, if you want to go to the source of where I got this stuff from, it's explained in Steve Smith's "History of the US beat/Drumset technique" DVD, and I've also picked up things from Derrick Pope (his foot technique video is on Drummerworld), as well as watching a ton of other drummers and just thinking about the stuff. Anyway, here's a try at explaining "constant release":

Start in the heel down position. Make sure you do these motions in a really slow, exaggerated precise way at first when doing the exercise (when you do the exercise, do it, don’t try to play music). You have to allow the beater to rebound, so you can't be burying it.
1. With your heel down, use ankle movement (calf muscles) to hit the drum. When the beater touches the head, your heel should still be down.
2. As the beater rebounds off the head, follow the upward motion of the pedal by picking up your whole leg using your thigh muscles (quadriceps?) and hip flexors. Your toes should still touch the pedal, but you should be raising your heel. After the beater has completely returned to its starting position, your heel should now be up, with your toes touching the pedal, and your foot angled to point downward. Think of this as the up stroke. You're now ready for the second motion (I think of the stuff so far as one motion), or down stroke.
3. You now hit the drum again by dropping your leg down, with your foot still pointing downish. The motion comes from the leg/thigh, not the ankle.
4. Once the beater has touched the head, allow it to rebound by following the pedal back up with your foot. You now use ankle motion to trace the upward motion of the pedal, while still lowering your heel down to the ground using your leg. You’re now in your starting position with your heel down and the beater cocked for another stroke. Start at step one again.

So, that's the gist of it, I hope it made some kind of sense. In my mind I compare this to a Moeller or Push/pull kind of thing, where you're alternating muscle groups to make your strokes (forearm/wrist or wrist/fingers). It's also a good idea to practice using these muscle groups by themselves, so Steve Smith advocates practicing playing just singles heel down for a few bars, then with the heel up but using the whole leg dropping, and then with the heel up but using the ankle. Then do a few bars of the "constant release". He also says that you shouldn’t initially worry about really getting a sound out of the bass drum, but rather about getting the motions correct so that you gain that muscle memory and it becomes comfortable.

I practice this exercise apart from playing, and I've noticed that the technique has definitely crept into my doubles. I don't think about it when playing a double, but I end up using an ankle motion followed by a leg drop. It doesn't end up being exactly the "constant release" technique when I'm actually playing, but a sort of approximation of it. As I practice more and more, I imagine it'll be more precise of a motion when I actually play, as right now there's still some swiveling, and also some random "muscling out" the double involved…

I also practice exercises to be able to do doubles in different parts of a bar. I’ll keep eights or quarters on the hats, 2 and 4 on snare, and then do different permutations of bass drum doubles at the sixteenth note, triplet, and sixteenth note triplet rates.

For example, here’s something to do with sixteenth notes: Play the hand ostinato, and then play doubles on 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e. Then play them on “e&”. Then play a double on each “&a”. Then on a1 a2 a3 a4. I hope that made sense. You can also do this by playing sixteenth note triplet doubles at all different parts of a bar. This is a good way to get your “Bonham triplets” down. So, that’s just some stuff I do, I’m sure you can make up much better exercises for yourself that would fit into your style of playing.

[wy yung]

Great answer Vedran.

Would like to mention Colin Bailey's classic book, Bass drum control.

http://colinbailey.com/books.html

[Clayton_C]

Excellent, excellent advice, all around. I've been working on this quite a bit, and am getting better at unburying the beater. Vedran, the technique you described seems familar (I probably watched the Derrick Pope vid) and I definitely need to give that a try! Thanks again for the solid advice, everyone!

[VedranS]

Excellent, excellent advice, all around. I've been working on this quite a bit, and am getting better at unburying the beater. Vedran, the technique you described seems familar (I probably watched the Derrick Pope vid) and I definitely need to give that a try! Thanks again for the solid advice, everyone!

Yeah, Derrick describes it differently, I think he refers to his as a heel-toe technique. While the way different people approach this and articulate the idea varies, I'm of the belief that the basic concepts are the same they're just different interpretations. The idea is to find a way to use two different muscle groups so that you can achieve two quick consecutive notes, much like an up and down stroke with the hands. I feel that even something like the swivel technique comes down to this concept. Smith's method really resonated with me, but somebody else's approach might might work better with your mind and the way you learn.... I'm just saying, developing some kind of motion like that could get you started on another level of foot control, speed and power..

[SEVNT7]

"Constant Release" vids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNzyCeJ8nzA&feature=channel_page, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCUqdPhWz44&feature=channel_page, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCLVHgmFXRg&feature=channel_page,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecJ6Xbd8KgM&feature=channel_page,
-Steve Smith, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqj3p8rF4ew&feature=related.

There you go.

[JoeLackey]

You have two other limbs - don't just use hands on fills and whatnot. A good practice for this, would just be to alternate singles between the right hand on the snare and right foot on the pedal (left handers, just flip around). Do this all around the kit. Don't stop at doing singles - do rudiments. Paradiddle, dragadiddle (advanced), etc. Just do the best you can. If you want more info on this, just message me.

[nick.bedford]

Burying the beater usually means you're tension is looser as they'res less resistance. I tend to like looser tension as it gives the beater (and ultimately the pedal board) more momentum. For me this feels much more stable as I'm not trying to hold my leg up when doing doubles or triple strokes. The momentum of the return of the beater helps push on my foot for a more solid "push back" when doing the slide technique.

This is something that absolutely shot me down when I tried moving from a cheap Gibraltar (with loose tension but lots of swing momentum) to a Pearl Eliminator. I was falling forward because all of a sudden that "push" on my foot, not from spring tension but from the pedal board's returning momentum, was gone and wasn't helping to support my lifted leg during eighth and sixteenth note double or triple strokes. I would get fatigued and frequently lose balance and hated having bought the thing.

Like you, heel up control has become a passionate focus of mine as it's something that's always eluded me and forced me to play heel down for many years. Last night I bought a Tama Iron Cobra and while it still has that quickness of the Eliminator, I immediately was able to play it relatively ok and weren't fumbling like a mess on it. That beater inertia and bigger momentum was there still which I am used to (muscle memory).

Good luck with it :)

[evanw123]

For the last couple of months I felt the same way. It was hard to get any sort of fast foot rolls going. Turns out my pedal tensions were way to tight. I loosened them right up, and it made playing a lot easier, it feels better, and I actually get a better sound out of my bass drum now.

[toddbishop]

"I'm mostly a jazz player, but the crazy Jojo Mayer single-foot rolls got my mind working."

So you know a thousand tunes, have crushing time from 30-380bpm, have all of your styles together, have mastered the brushes, know all you need to know about composing and arranging, play decent arranger's piano, and have hustled up all the gigs you have time for, so now it's time to develop a skill that will get you instantly fired if you ever try to use it?

Just kidding- I understand. Read on:

"What should my pedal tension be like? I tend to "bury the beater," so I suppose it's fairly high at the moment."

Just medium tension, with a medium throw. I think the biggest thing you could do to improve your speed, accuracy, and sound is to not bury the beater. Try practicing some easy stuff heel down, with more of a full-stroke kind of approach- start and end each stroke with the beater as far back as it will go. You'll notice your foot binding up at the bottom of the stroke- work through that so each stroke is a fast, smooth "down-up!" Since you've been burying the beater, you'll probably also notice your foot trying to pick up before you play a note, even though the beater is already as far back as it can go- try to avoid that and just attack each note directly.

"Should I invest in a pedal with less obtrusive features? Right now I have the Sonor 400 Series Pedal, and seeing Jojo Mayer's pedal with only one support beam for the shaft made me wonder if that is more suitable to complex/fast playing."

Just do the Peter Erskine thing and grab the cheapest Yamaha pedal. Or anyone's cheapest pedal- they all pretty much have the same mechanism these days, the old Frank Ippolito (I think?) design used most famously by Gretsch, Camco, and DW. Light is good.

"Any exercises that would help me train my foot?"

A good place to start would be the triplet and 16th note sections of the Chapin book. Also,
sambas are good. Try to use the full-stroke technique I described above even (especially!) when you're playing fast singles.

[harryconway]

So you know a thousand tunes, have crushing time from 30-380bpm, have all of your styles together, have mastered the brushes, know all you need to know about composing and arranging, play decent arranger's piano, and have hustled up all the gigs you have time for, so now it's time to develop a skill that will get you instantly fired if you ever try to use it?



The OP is dated 11 months ago.

[toddbishop]

The OP is dated 11 months ago.

It's eleven months old going on eternal, though.