Stu_Strib said:
With the duelist double, I guess the only way to do a real triplet (unlike their non-triplet demo) would be DUD UDU DUD UDU, but who thinks in Up and Down when playing a pedal? And god forbid if you end on a down beat, because you are gonna get the upbeat weather you want it or not (as soon as you lift your foot).
This is the main problem with this contraption.
Oh and yeah, before you guys say it, no I haven't used it, but I saw enough on their own promotional videos to smell a skunk.
This is a common mistake for those who are not familiar with The Duallist and its subtleties. Because all they know is the inefficient ham-handedness of traditional double pedals, they assume The Duallist has the same limitations. It doesn't.
At first, I thought you'd only be able to play LRLRLRLR patterns on The Duallist. In fact, you are playing on two planes, separated by a midpoint. At the midpoint, both beaters are even and the same distance from the drum head (around two inches or more, depending on individual settings).
When you press down on the pedal (going south of the midpoint), the primary beater moves to the head and the secondary moves away. You could play south of the midpoint all the time, so the secondary beater would just flop around but never come close enough to contacting the head. Likewise, you could stay north of the midpoint and play with the secondary beater only - the primary beater would flop around, but never contact the head. (In this case, you're training your foot to play a note on the upstroke, which is pretty difficult, but if you have a well-trained right foot, it's not that hard.)
So, you could play paradiddles, double strokes, ratamacues, flams, etc., simply by playing combinations of strokes above and below the midpoint, all with one foot. This takes practice! About the only thing you can't do on The Duallist that you could do on a traditional double pedal is splashes (both beaters hitting at the same time).
As I said, for those who have a well-developed right foot, this will come quickly with practice. But if you've spent years and years building your technique around the wastefulness, inefficiency and clumsiness of traditional double pedals, you're rightly going to feel threatened.
For those with good right foot technique, The Duallist catapults you past the drudgery of re-learning basic patterns on two feet and it immediately gets you into new, exciting and FUN creative territory.