Interesting Situation

I recently posted a thread about how I can't do the double bass technique I used to do for fast double bass because of a back injury. On a good day I was able to do close to 200 bpm.

I've started a new technique for fast double bass which doesn't cause any back pain. This is a huge blessing, but at the same time I'm starting over from scratch. I'm learning the motions of this new technique very slowly to get it right so that when it is fast it's perfect. At this point though I can't do it fast at all.

The reason why this is an interesting situation is because I just started looking to join a original metal band. Being that I can't do any fast double bass yet it's going to be strange when the other band members ask me to do so for a song. Trust me, I want to be able to do the fast double bass right now because I love that stuff. But it's going to take time at this point.

I'll be honest that it does worry me a bit that since I can't do the double bass yet it may effect what bands want to play with me right now. But I know the worst thing I can do is not join a band until I have this technique working up.

Please feel free to give your thoughts about what I've said.

My advice is not to worry about it especially if your doing original material, I aren't an amazingly fast double bass-er, 200bpm max for about 3-4 mins then I have to stop sometimes its 210-220 on the odd good days.

I'm in a metal band too so what I do for songs where my endurance/speed isn't up to scratch is just skank beat, or do a skank beat with the odd double kick, or even a cyclone blast, or my most hated drum beat, the blastbeat.

There's tons of metal beats you can do without double bass, hell if you listen to a lot of metal songs, alot of them dont have massive 200+bpm double bass rolls its mainly one footed stuff.

I believe there was a thread recently about metal drumming without double bass, you could search for it and see if any of that helps.

Firstly metal is a pretty broad term. There are loads of metal bands that don't rely on constant double kick.

As an ex-metaller (here's a video of me from 2007 http://youtu.be/dCRNmoLv4dM ) I listen to some of the death and black metal out today and honestly don't think the drummers are serving the music if all they do is the constant speed thing. Sometimes a metal drummer drummer should leave space to create the rhythm.

See how often you can get away with playing 8th notes (like in 80s-90s metal) and throw some 16th note accelerando's or diddles in there.

Maybe try and influence the band to play thrash (kick snare kick snare kick snare a-la 80's metallica) to give you a break from time to time.

What's this new magic technique?

Good luck, hopefully they're not too demanding.

I'm not a metal drummer, however, I do love the speed around the kit - especially the fast double bass beats I use in certain fills.

Now, if your band has a particular need for fast double bass beats/rolls, here is something you can do in the meantime for those fills. Consider also using your floor tom as a substitute for the 2nd bass beat. Use it in a 32nd note roll, as: FT KK FT KK FT KK FT (where FT=Floor tom, KK=Kick drum).

As long as you can get the double bass beat in, you're good. Mike Johnston has an older lesson where he teaches this. I didn't bother with the HH technique portion of it. Jump to 1:35 and you'll see it. Now, the key is to have at least a 16" FT that sounds as close as possible to your bass drum. If you can play 8th notes on the HH's with the left hand, that will "mask" any sound differences between Kick and Floor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ZUPEgbzu0&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLFBD8E869F04D5F0E

As long as your band mates are not looking for "technique" you'll be fine using this in the meantime.