drummingman
Gold Member
I was watching a video of a well known drummer in the death metal scene last night. He was doing double bass runs of 16ths at like 240. He was also triggering his kicks. It got me thinking about the fact that when playing double bass at those speeds if one is not triggering the hits are going to be very quiet just because of the pure fact that the beaters can only come back so far when playing that fast. So if one does not trigger it's almost pointless to play at those speeds on the feet.
This leads to the debate of power vs speed. Of course one can play very fast with their feet and still get lots of power. But anything over 220 bpm would seem to require triggering to even be heard over loud band.
One also gets to the topic of using techniques like heel toe which can alow one to play very fast but does not allow for a lot of power, even if they can get consistency with the technique. Which is one of the reasons why I don't recall ever seeing a metal drummer that uses heel toe that does not trigger.
It makes me think of a quote from Jason Bittner where he said something along the lines of how what's most important is to be powerful and solid. But with that said a lot of guitar players in metal expect drummers to be able to play these crazy fast speeds on their feet to match their riffing. But if one does not plan to trigger at those speeds they will never cut through because of how soft they have to hit to even achieve those speeds in the first place.
This is not a pro or con triggering thread by any means. I just think that one should think these things over before they put countless hours into a foot technique that may end up being almost useless on an acoustic kit without triggers.
This leads to the debate of power vs speed. Of course one can play very fast with their feet and still get lots of power. But anything over 220 bpm would seem to require triggering to even be heard over loud band.
One also gets to the topic of using techniques like heel toe which can alow one to play very fast but does not allow for a lot of power, even if they can get consistency with the technique. Which is one of the reasons why I don't recall ever seeing a metal drummer that uses heel toe that does not trigger.
It makes me think of a quote from Jason Bittner where he said something along the lines of how what's most important is to be powerful and solid. But with that said a lot of guitar players in metal expect drummers to be able to play these crazy fast speeds on their feet to match their riffing. But if one does not plan to trigger at those speeds they will never cut through because of how soft they have to hit to even achieve those speeds in the first place.
This is not a pro or con triggering thread by any means. I just think that one should think these things over before they put countless hours into a foot technique that may end up being almost useless on an acoustic kit without triggers.