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How to Play a Bass Drum

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Part of the video series: How to Play Drums with Your Feet

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Summary: Your feet are very important when playing a drum kit. Learn how they are used for bass drum strokes in this free video.

Views: 415 | Tags: bass, theory, high, drum, snare, kick, beats, instruments, musical, rhythm, cymbals, toms, hat

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Contact: LeneeAlexanderDesigns.com

Joel Siegel Lenee Alexander has been sewing since she was 9 years old. When her mother left the sewing machine on their kitchen table and wasn't sewing, Lenee was. Lene... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Play a Bass Drum

JOEL SIEGEL: All right. So in approaching both your hi-hat and your bass drum, you're going to use two basic techniques with your foot. The first is going to be the heel down technique. Now the bass drum, what's going to happen is you're going to get more control with this stroke but you're also not going to be able--this is going to be kind of a moderate, a low to moderate volume stroke. So here's what it looks like. You could see my heel is down. As you can see, with the heel down, I'm able to get those really nice light hits and as well as those kind of medium dynamic hits. This is the control I was talking about. The other approach is going to be heel up. As you can imagine, I just bring my heel up. This is going to allow me to drive the beater into the head more and therefore produce more sound. As you can see, after I strike the head, the beater is kind of wobbling a little bit and that's because I don't have as much of foot covering the pedal, I don't have as much control. That's because it's just the ball of my foot driving the beater into the head.

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