learning to play a double bass drum pedal

Teetonetal

Soooo, got a 2nd hand mapex p800 tw for Christmas. It's very alien to me

WiresDreamDisasters

Get metronome, set to 70bpm. Try and do left/right/left/right in time to the metronome quarter notes. Then try and do it in eighth notes. Then increase the bpm and do it again.

That'll give you a feel for the basics, and then you can branch out from there doing stuff like left/left/right/left combinations. Then it's on to 16th notes.

One of the things I'm practicing is nailing the 16th after a snare on either kick pedal - so kinda like 1, 2, SNAREkick, 4....1, 2, SNAREkick, 4....1, 2, SNAREkick, 4....1, 2, SNAREkick, 4....1, 2, SNAREkick, 4....

If that makes any sense.

But basically... pick a basic pattern and try to nail it with the metronome.

Teetonetal

@WiresDreamDisasters awesome, that is pretty much what I have started doing. Pretty depressing how weak my left foot is (being right handed).

WiresDreamDisasters

You'll get there. I'm not great myself, but being a lefty, my right foot is used to hihat control and not kick work, so it's something I've had to put a bit of effort into.

Same with my hands - my left hand is used to tatum work (hihat and ride usually) and I'm trying to be more flexible with my playing. 

My rudiment chops are piss poor!

PolarityMan

I'm not the worlds best straight double kick player but my favourite thing is firing double bass in between toms in fills. There's a great video by Gavin Harrison going through the concept applied to grooves and I also nicked some ideas from Mike Portnoy drum lines but a really easy one that sounds much flashier than it is is to do this pattern as 16ths

Snare: RLRL
Kick RL
Tom1: RLRL
Kick: RL
Tom2: RLRL
Kick: RL
Tom3: RL
Kick: RL
Snare: RL
Kick: RL

You can also play about with adding 3 kicks in between your hands as well. 

Another really nice pattern you can use which lets you nail the 1 beat with your snare is:

Snare: L
Tom1: RL
Tom3: R
Kick: RL

You can orchestrate that round all the toms, sounds very Danny Carey-ish if you play 4 of these in a row. 

WiresDreamDisasters

Yeah I'm not good enough to do that Dave!

Teetonetal

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Yeah I'm not good enough to do that Dave!

Lol, I was thinking that too... Not sure I'm ready for Gavin Harrison yet.. but something to aim for

LuttiS

I also got a P800 tw earlier this year and have been trying to get to grips with it.. needed (and still do) to spend quite a lot of time strenghtening mr left. Slow metronome, and bunch of lefts, bunch of rights, then LR in the same time, keep doing just that for a while keeping it as even as possible.

Then spaz out as fast as you can for the three seconds until it becomes an uneven mess because double bass is hella fun.

PolarityMan

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Yeah I'm not good enough to do that Dave!

Its honestly much easier than doing sustained double bass (at least in time sustained double bass or modern metal style pattern playing.