Balance of Power and Control

[Cheungman]

This is regarding Bass pedal techniques. Now i play heel up which was a recent change (about 6-8 months ago) from heel down. I don't know why but at the time i felt my bass wasn't getting enough sound from my hits, probably because my leg was still healing from an injury and i didn't want to exert too much force and hurt myself again for the time being. The change however only brought up some issues. I had much more power, but my control slipped a bit and i buried the beater more than once on occasion. This might have been due to the immediate change in my form that had not developed proper muscle memory to be as proficient as i was heel down.

On my hi hat stand, i still prefer heel down as i don't require quite as much as umph as i did on the bass. However, whenever i switch to my double bass pedal, i always seem to have much cleaner strokes heel down with both legs rather than my now preferred heel up on a single. Again it maybe from failure to attain the correct feel to playing differently.

Now that you have some backround story on me (feel free to discuss and maybe explain some of the occurrences in there), but my main inquiry is Which form of technique played on pedals do you think is a wholesome balance of Power vs Control vs Cleanliness?

[Josiah]

Heel down is nearly useless for playing a kick drum, esspeccially in todays modern world of playing.

How you play a bass drum - Pick your leg up, let it drop on the pedal. Drum go Boom!


Cleaness comes from control. Control is earned. You should always play with power and conviction in every note you play. If you use the above described technique, you don't have to worry about power. The average human leg is about 50-60lbs, that's more then enough weight dropping on a pedal to get sound out of the kick. From there it's only tuning.

For the modern drumset player, the kick and snare should be the loudest things.


Secondly, you should learn all the techniques, slide, heel-toe, heel down, heel up (not ankle twitching). Then forget about them and just play. You don't have to worry about your feet getting hurt playing drums.
Just get the notes out, make em clean and confident, if you do the described above, your brain will work with your feet to figure out what technique best works for the phrases you are playing. Use your ears to make sure the notes are solid and clean.

[Cheungman]

I actually wasn't worried about how i played, just getting some opinions of others and how they prefer using their bass pedal. I do make an effort to learn all techniques of playing. The part about my feet hurting, I injured myself (not drumming related) and was just getting back to playing on the set with some uncomfortable feeling still lingering in my legs and didn't want to overwork them so i switched then.

[Josiah]

Well there really isn't much you can do is the thing.

And truth be told, in the end. Your foot movements become a hybrid of what techniques there are.

[billdrum]

I agree that heel down is almost useless these days. In fact, I believe it's almost obsolete. You really don't see many drummers using it much anymore.

Your balance point should be on your butt/throne. Heel down transfers weight to your feet, throwing your center of balance off. Heel up also generally provides more power and fuller tone, as I have clearly demonstrated for many a student in side-by-side comparisons.

However, for advanced hi-hat playing (footsplashes, and advanced open/close techniques, etc.) you will need to use a combination of techniques.

[Ollie The Drumming Legend]

Hmmm well from my limited experience I would agree with the heel-up consensus for the bass drum, but I mostly go with heel down for hihatting, unless it needs a really firm click or fast opening/closing.

[dairyairman]

i originally learned heel down on both feet, and played that way for a long time, but a couple years ago i forced myself to learn heel up because of all the reasons above. at first i didn't have as much control, but after practicing it a bunch i have just as much control if not more. i still play heel down at certain times, especially if noise is an issue. i've also learned to play heel up with my left foot for double bass, which i think is really hard to do heel down. my left foot is weak and needs the power heel up gives. lately i've also been playing heel up on the hats. i've been learning to play fast foot patterns with the hats and that seems to be easier heel up. so anyways, yeah, heel up is where it's at for almost everything.

[jiashen]

Hmmm well from my limited experience I would agree with the heel-up consensus for the bass drum, but I mostly go with heel down for hihatting, unless it needs a really firm click or fast opening/closing.
I only started working on hi-hats recently, but I've really started to take a liking to that rocking motion, where you drop your heel then you press the ball of your foot on the pedal. It's really comfortable and feels pretty automatic, easy to get going and keep it going.

[Josiah]

Hats have totally different, and a much wider range of techniques due to the massive amount of sounds you can get out of them.

It's a bummer most people never work out much hats w/ foot stuff.