My Progress over a year

Hey guys, I'm finally back! Over the past few months i've been playing and practicing on and off. (I've been playing for a year so far) I noticed that I've gotten a lot better and drumming is awesome. over the this year i've been focusing mainly on my hand speed a little bit on my footspeed. I've noticed today that my foot speed is not that great but i think my hand speed is incredible. Today i practiced and it was hard to play a couple songs because of my single pedal footspeed, which made my timing off. It was alittle disappointing because I thought that after a year my foot speed would be a little better. I think it's possibly my technique. I use Heel up technique andi find it very difficult to hit 3 times in a row. Most of the songs that I would like to play requires your foot to hit 3 times in a row constanty ( dont know what it's called when you hit 3 times in a row with your foot triple). Anybody know what i could do to increase my single pedal foot speed? Also when you guys were new and played for a year how good were yall? I wanna know where i stand and how long it will take till i get a little better. I think im good but today felt like a n00b cause my foot couldnt move fast and it caused my foot to hit extra beats or lighter sounding hits.

That would be called a triplet (see/hear Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times" for the always mentioned classic example).

What helped me was just playing those steady and fast 4/4 punk/gospel beats as fast and hard as possible (gratuitous, "that's what she said"). I eventually realized that I was able to manage the bounce of the pedal so that you could slip in another stroke whilst doing a double. Kind of imagine a basketball; the motion of bouncing it once, and then two times but faster, and then three times but even faster. It's kind of the same thing. I usually don't play nearly as fast as punk beats go, so when I noticed I was able to slip in a triplet at a slower tempo I was jazzed.

I think Bill Bruford said it best," just think of you feet as a couple of smelly hands". I think what he means is in order to develop your feet you need to spend the same amount of time and attention as you would on your hands. If you are playing the rudiments with your hands, try playing them with your feet.

If you want to be able to play three strokes in a row, use a metronome and play it as slow as needed to play it perfect and gradually increase you speed over time. Be patient and good results will happen with consistent practice. It would probably be a good idea to get a qualified instructor or at the very least check out some instruction videos to ensure proper technique.

Theoretically anything you can do with your feet you can do with your hands, I'd say it comes down to practice. There is definitely technique involved and plenty of brilliant topics on it, perhaps if gave us an idea of what you are doing specifically, like how do you use the kick pedal, what kind of pedal is it? Some cheap pedals will make achieving any kind of speed very difficult.

Thanks everyone for your replies they really helped me out. I'm going to practice more on my speed. I use a pdp double bass I think it's called something like that it cost 100. Not gonna blame the pedal I thinks it's me lol. The thing is I practice my double bass on this soft practice pad I bought for double bass. I hate it makes it so much harder on that pad. Plus I fell like it's not helping when I practice on it. Anyone know why ?

on the triples / quads on a single pedal, i would check out Jojo Mayer's method. i also really like Steve Smith's re-vamped method as well. here are some links to Jojo's method on YT:

+ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jojo+mayer+foot&aq=o

paanbeen said:

Your body, is your own. So you can do whatever you want. You don't need to have one theme, like many do. Some people get random stuff on their bodies.

Click to expand...