After about a year of settling for triplets, I have decided to actually learn some double bass. I'm having difficulties starting because I don't know which technique I should learn. There's single strokes, but I don't know how far that can take you speed wise, and going at really high speeds seems like it would quickly get really tiring. I've looked at heel toe method, but I've seen it get trashed by elitist drummers because it produces uneven strength beats, plus I have a bit of difficulty doing it with my sexy clown feet (made some progress on my left, shout out to lefty drummers!). Then there's swivel technique, but youtube hasn't been too clear with this one, and I heard it can be hard on the knees, and my knees are already bad. Lastly, I've looked at slide, which I've already been doing with one foot, but I haven't seen anyone apply it to double bass.
Basically, what I'm leaning towards is heel toe (all about efficiency). However, if slide technique also works, I'm down for that. I guess this blog is just so I can gather some information before I really start practicing (brought some pedals to my desk). I'd also appreciate any recommendations/tips. If people give me info/links, I'll update the blog so that it becomes a compendium of double bass techniques. I'm really disappointed with other double bass threads on drumming forums. Guess sometimes it takes a Team Liquid to do a drumming forum's job. I'll call what comes of this my 500 post gift.
EDIT: And I'm talking about fast double bass here, for slower speeds, single strokes are obviously better.
Poll Inaccuracy: Smoke has clarified that swivel, heel up, and heel down are single stroke techniques for double bass, and heel toe is a double stroke method for playing double bass.
Poll: Best Double Bass Technique?
Single Stroke (10)
77%
Heel Toe (1)
8%
Swivel (1)
8%
Slide (1)
8%
13 total votes
Your vote: Best Double Bass Technique?
(Vote): Single Stroke (Vote): Heel Toe (Vote): Swivel (Vote): Slide
You start with single strokes, heel-toe or any of the others are cute but if you don't have good singles it doesn't matter.
I would say do singles and try to (this will take a while) get pretty fast with them until you notice that you can't get any faster without losing evenness. (honestly you would be surprised how fast you can get your singles if you work at it, there are plenty of metal drummers out there that play very fast and don't use heel-toe or swivel) Then, if you need it, start dabbling in the other methods and see which one is right for you.
But definitely be careful and read up on how to do them properly because you can really fuck your body up doing them incorrectly.
When I used to play double bass I mostly did single with a little bit of a swivel and there wasn't really any speed or duration I couldn't go. Nowadays I just play single with slide for quick doubles and swivel for longer strings of quick notes (single is the way to go, double just limits what you can do with your left foot on the hi hat, but I guess that's only true if you aren't playing metal).
id imagine its no different for anything else in drumming
start with simple single strokes and focus on control NOT speed. find your threshold (highest speed u play with perfect rhythm and accuracy) and just play at that for a while
work on increasing that
for double bass idk because ive never been interested in playing it but i can see slide working for quick bursts of speed
Buy a metronome first, if you don't have one already.
start out playing slow. get faster. build chops.
All of those "techniques" are just poor excuses of techniques thought of by youtube celebs across the world. Minus heel-toe because that's actually used in native african hand drumming.
Just play how it feels comfortable and start slow. I play a lot of progressive metal, and I also teach drum lessons so hopefully you heed this if anything;
There is no magical technique that makes your feet fly. It is all in hard work.
On December 09 2010 12:06 xLethargicax wrote: Buy a metronome first, if you don't have one already.
start out playing slow. get faster. build chops.
All of those "techniques" are just poor excuses of techniques thought of by youtube celebs across the world. Minus heel-toe because that's actually used in native african hand drumming.
Just play how it feels comfortable and start slow. I play a lot of progressive metal, and I also teach drum lessons so hopefully you heed this if anything;
There is no magical technique that makes your feet fly. It is all in hard work.
Of course. I'm just looking to guide my practice so I don't waste my time learning some bullshit. I think I'm gonna go single strokes and practice heel toe as well. I'll see where that goes.
My advice, which is the same as the advice my instructor gave me, is to learn how to use your feet in the same way you learned how to use your hands (use the same mindset). Get yourself a book and a metronome and start on the simple end, practicing single strokes only with your feet. It can be frustrating to start so slow, but people often don't appreciate how much strength/control it takes to play double bass well. Once you're solid on the basics you can start messing with those other techniques, though I've never really tried any of them myself.
Hey! I'm a Metal drummer, I go to Berklee in Boston, and have been drumming for about 10 years. So I have quite some experience with doublebass.
Unless you can hit about 190-200bpm (16th notes), with single strokes and be comfortable and very consistent with it (at least 8 to 16 measures), don't even worry about those other techniques, cause they all (with the exception of heeltoe), kinda need you to have good single strokes.
My personal choice for over 200bpm doublebass is swivel, just because it sounds WAY more consistent and powerful than heeltoe.
If you have any questions regarding anything, feel free to ask me, I'll try to help .
Also, I recommend you do the George Kollias 16-week Speed and control double bass training, it's on his website for free.
Swivel is only hard on the knees if you do a really big swivel, which is not the optimum way to do it, so that isn't a problem. There's a lot on youtube about swivel, check out chris thorpe. Also George Kollias is the pioneer for it.
I don't think your poll options are accurate, and here's why:
"single stroke" is not a doublebass technique, it just means you alternate the hits between your feet. Swivel, heel up, heel down are all single stroke techniques.
"Slide" is just moeller technique on the feet, and is not good for doublebass because you can only do doubles, and the reaction time to do another double is longer than the space you would need to make it a stream of notes; it would not sound even. Important note is that you do NEED to learn this "slide" double technique on your leading foot no matter what, because it is really important for drumming vocabulary in general.
On swivel:
George Kollias talks about the 3 stages of how your feet should react to different speeds, stage one having independent leg movements, stage 2 having simultaneous alternation , and then stage 3 is pretty much all in the ankles, and that's when swivel will come in.
Swiveling is just a natural response to high levels of stress, spreading out the tension in your tibia muscles, it can be trained to become super efficient though, but is only really necessary if you are playing over 200-210bpm, before that you should stick to straight heel up.
Posted it up in the op. I'm gonna give it my best shot!
EDIT: No problem man, I was gonna ask you about swivel. I'll put a note by the poll, and look up George Kollias' stuff. Thanks for joining TL, two posts in and you already rock!
Thanks man! I've been lurking TL for some time now hehe, but today I saw a drumming thread and just couldn't resist posting.
Double bass drumming is a big part of my playing, and I'm also a big geek so I've investigated and learned all I possibly can about different techniques, how the work, pedals, pedal setup, etc.
EPT
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