Burying the beater question

Bull

Gold Member
My first kit had a 14"x22" kick. I always wanted something bigger with more boom.. I eventually learned that playing off the head gave me a bigger sound. Burying the beater always seemed to raise the pitch of the drum. Playing off the head just became part of my style and I never really thought about it again.

Recently, a couple of good, powerful, younger, rock drummers have played my kit. They were thrown off by my set up. My beater is far back and my spring is as tight as it will go. It's difficult to bury the beater on my kit,even if you want to.


I know ,from other threads, that many of you don't bury. I have always played Hard Rock and Metal...always at high volume.
Do any of you heavier/loud players still play off the head? Is this unusual?

Am I the only one? lol
 
Letting the beater head bounce back off the head rather than keeping it "Buried"

Whatever suits you playing, some bury some dont.
 
I've always played with the beater springing back. It seems to me that you can always "bury" the beater manually so to speak by keeping the beater close to the head without adjusting the tension.
 
I don't know where this "burying the beater" comes from. When playing a bass drum as a standalone instrument, you don't bury the mallet. Same with any other drum, you almost always rebound off the drum.

There is deadsticking, where you intentionally "bury" the stick/mallet/pedal, but that is for accents, it shouldn't be the standard.
 
I play with my magnets as loose as they will go (No springs in my pedal.. what century are we in.. springs... ) anyway.. i bury the beater and don't see any reason not to. But.. i don't play with a tight spring. just never tried it..
 
I don't know where this "burying the beater" comes from. When playing a bass drum as a standalone instrument, you don't bury the mallet. Same with any other drum, you almost always rebound off the drum.

There is deadsticking, where you intentionally "bury" the stick/mallet/pedal, but that is for accents, it shouldn't be the standard.

I've never heard this put so succinctly before. Nicely said.

I love the full tone I get from rebounding the beater on an unported unmuffled bass drum. Nothing else does it for me unmiced.
 
I've never heard this put so succinctly before. Nicely said.

I love the full tone I get from rebounding the beater on an unported unmuffled bass drum. Nothing else does it for me unmiced.

It might be succinct but its not true. Some drummers bury the beater on the bass drum, a kit bass drum, it has nothing to do with the stand alone marching band bass drum. Thats played with a hand held beater. Apples and oranges.
 
I do both - on a mic'd ported head, I bury the beater. On a non-mic'd, non-ported head, I let the beater rebound for a full sustained tone & sound. Why, because I can!
 
It's not an all or nothing kind of a thing for me. Sometimes I bury, usually for the specific reason of getting a dead stroke, but most of the time I play off the head to let the full tone ring out. The music usually dictates which sound is more appropriate.

This question (while there is some technique associated) almost completely depends on whether or not your bass drum makes a different sound if you don't bury the beater. Once you pass a certain amount of muffling inside the drum there really isn't much difference in sound either way.
 
My first kit had a 14"x22" kick. I always wanted something bigger with more boom.. I eventually learned that playing off the head gave me a bigger sound. Burying the beater always seemed to raise the pitch of the drum. Playing off the head just became part of my style and I never really thought about it again.

Recently, a couple of good, powerful, younger, rock drummers have played my kit. They were thrown off by my set up. My beater is far back and my spring is as tight as it will go. It's difficult to bury the beater on my kit,even if you want to.


I know ,from other threads, that many of you don't bury. I have always played Hard Rock and Metal...always at high volume.
Do any of you heavier/loud players still play off the head? Is this unusual?

Am I the only one? lol

I used to play loud and heavy (but slow) music and didn't usually bury the beater, it gave the bass drum a presence in the low end (and helped mask a terrible bass player). Generally I play a fairly loose bass drum pedal and that gives me the option to bury. If I'm accenting, I'd play heel-up and bury (just for that note). I switch it up all the time and I'm not doing it consciously. Most of my playing is heel-down now (both feet, including hi hat) but doing both is often appropriate and gives you a wide range of bass drum sounds.

I believe that every part of the kit is a possibility for different sounds and I don't see any difference with the bass drum. With a snare you can stay on the head, use the rebound, rim click or rimshot - all are options. With the bass drum your options are more limited but I think that should be a good reason why you should vary it tonally, rather than accept the limitation.

Sometimes I'd bury for a chorus and rebound during a verse. Or bury during a loud introduction and rebound when supporting soloists. It's individual but that's how I did it when I was regularly playing out. The other part of that was tuning my bass drum higher than most of the other drummers I came across. It gives you more dynamic range and opens up more tonal possibilities.
 
It might be succinct but its not true. Some drummers bury the beater on the bass drum, a kit bass drum, it has nothing to do with the stand alone marching band bass drum. Thats played with a hand held beater. Apples and oranges.

It's not apples and oranges, it's a bass drum. The drum set bass drum is effectively the same thing. The foot pedal is meant to mimic the mallet.

The proper way to play the bass drum, either by foot or by hand, is to allow the mallet/pedal to rebound. The same as every other drum. You can choose to deadstick if you want, it doesn't make you a bad drummer, it's just not proper technique.
 
I naturally play heel up, so when I practice, I always practice heel down. I practice burying, and I practice not-burying the beater. Sometimes I'll do B/NB patterns when I'm working on hand/feet.

Since they make two different sounds, I use which ever technique gives the desired sound for the part. I can take all the muffling out of my bass drum, and choose between a resounding wide-open note, or I can use the BD beater as a mute and get a lot of velocity going in with a very short note.

I guess that the point is that the BD can make a variety of sounds depending on how you hit it, and the only way of incorrectly hitting a BD is to hit it the same way all the time, every time, regardless of the music you're accompanying.
 
It's not apples and oranges, it's a bass drum. The drum set bass drum is effectively the same thing. The foot pedal is meant to mimic the mallet.

The proper way to play the bass drum, either by foot or by hand, is to allow the mallet/pedal to rebound. The same as every other drum. You can choose to deadstick if you want, it doesn't make you a bad drummer, it's just not proper technique.

It's not black and white. When I'm playing jazz on my Gretsch bop kit with an 18" unported and hollow kick, burying sounds horrible. But with my metal band while playing my ported 22" kick, there's no way I could play the things I do without burying. So it's very much situational, "proper technique" be damned.
 
I play off the head (I don't bury) but I use loose spring tension and this is regardless of the music style/volume. I don't like fighting the pedal. IMO it's more of a technique thing than forcing it with high spring tension. But I suppose it's a matter of taste/preference.
 
It's not black and white. When I'm playing jazz on my Gretsch bop kit with an 18" unported and hollow kick, burying sounds horrible. But with my metal band while playing my ported 22" kick, there's no way I could play the things I do without burying. So it's very much situational, "proper technique" be damned.
I agree; it's totally dependent on the player and the situation. Great examples, too.

When I hear claims about what anything is 'meant' to do, or what is 'proper' I just roll my eyes. A pedal is only 'meant' to allow your foot to play the bass drum, and the only 'proper' use of it is make the music sound good. If you like a shorter note, then bury it; if you want it more open, then don't. If you don't care that much about note duration (especially if you use a pillow) but find one way more comfortable, that's cool too.

Bass players argue about this kind of stuff too, mostly about whether or not using a pick is proper. The old guard argues that upright bass players never used picks, so electric bass players shouldn't either; while more modern players argue that electric bass is relatively new and unique in its own right, so isn't subject to the old rules. The fact is that people have been playing electric basses with picks almost since they came onto the scene. Paul McCartney and Carol Kaye used picks for some very time-tested and iconic bass parts back when electric basses had only been around for like 10 years. I don't see that it held them back in any way.

Only thing I would agree with is that there are these two basic ways of playing the bass drum and they're subtly different. It's a good idea to be aware of the differences in their respective techniques and sound qualities. Then you can make up your own mind about which one works best for you in a given situation.

Just like you wouldn't want to limit yourself by the ignorance of an available option or the lack of facility to execute it, I don't think one should be limited by blind adherence to some narrow and misguided idea of what's proper.
 
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I don't know where this "burying the beater" comes from. When playing a bass drum as a standalone instrument, you don't bury the mallet. Same with any other drum, you almost always rebound off the drum.

There is deadsticking, where you intentionally "bury" the stick/mallet/pedal, but that is for accents, it shouldn't be the standard.

I use both at my whim... I'll play whole sections on or off the head depending on what the music around the section is. Like palm muting for a guitar. Some passages warrant a short punch sound, others, the more open off-head sound.
 
If you like a shorter note, then bury it; if you want it more open, then don't. If you don't care that much about note duration (especially if you use a pillow) but find one way more comfortable, that's cool too.

This is an interesting point and I will admit that not only do I not bury the beater, I can't. I've tried and it sounds all bouncy and horrible. It never even occurred to me that it might be useful. But I'm set in my ways now, lol.
 
I should have expected for this to become another "my Kung Fu is better than yours" thread.

I was really just asking if anyone else didn't bury while playing loud,heavy music.
 
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