Recommend me some good SONGS or BANDS to practice with on drums. My hands are okay - my feet are a weakness.
It doesn't matter if the band is GOOD, it just needs to be a CD I have, or a video that is on youtube. Basically, I'm looking for idiots guide to double bass parts 101.
As an example, I can just BARELY choke my way through "My Curse" by Killswitch. Hate the song, but the drumming is something I can pull off, except the really fast double bass in the middle.
However, I CANNOT do the double kick pattern in "End Of The Heartache". It's super simple, but my legs won't cooperate. So I'm looking for some good tunes to bridge that gap between simple double bass stuff and weird patterns.
Remember, I'm looking for EASY double bass stuff. Like the first tune you learned or something. I can only practice in little 2 hour spurts, and I feel good if I can get all the way through a tune. NO FUCKING METALLICA.
I love warming up/practicing to Drudkh - False Dawn. It has a good constant beat for 15 minutes. In fact the whole album is great for endurance tuning. Constant beat for 15 minutes > fast patterns for 30 seconds.
Hmm, only FF album I have is demanufacture. I'll have to give it a whirl.
Also, question #2:
Shoes? No Shoes? I find my left foot likes to be bare, but my right like having a shoe on. Help me pick one, so I don't end up being the faggot drummer who only wears one shoe.
For endurance, I'd go with Nightwish - Wishmaster. Because that album has a lot of extended double-kick passages, but they are not fast or brutal. Also, the actual song Wishmaster, the kick drumming pattern during the verses is a little trickier than it sounds.
I learned double-kick using a book, "Double Bass Drumming" by Joe Franco. It goes way past the R-L-R-L that metal songs usually use. It's kind of old so I'm sure there are good newer books around.
Also, Acid Rain by Angra has some patterns that make fun playalong patterns (especially the verse)
I prefer no shoes, but all the advice I've read says shoes are better because they build your strength more. Although I suppose you could do that by wearing no shoes but ankle weights.
^ jimbo taught me this simple foot exercise done over a 4/4 rock beat with the hands, this pretty much taught me how to do patterns.
cool. That seems like a variation of something else I was having trouble with.
It's so frustrating being a guitarist already. I can count complicated stuff, and write it, but I can't get my limbs to go along. And I know it will take YEARS to get the kind of muscle memory needed to play the stuff I want.
I guess it would depend on what kind of chops you are looking to learn. But from the looks of it if you are practicing killswitch, you might want to try some old Lamb of God tunes. Chris Adler doesn't play all that fast in my opinion and has a lot of good foot patterns to practice. Anything off of "As The Palaces Burn" or "Ashes of the Wake" will give you a lot of alternating foot patterbs to work on and I'm my opinion will improve your coordination... if that's what you're looking for.
Otherwise if you are just looking to work on your speed, I would say listen to some Decapitated or maybe Arch Enemy since Daniel Erlandsson doesn't go too crazy with tempos, especially on the older stuff
I prefer no shoes, but all the advice I've read says shoes are better because they build your strength more. Although I suppose you could do that by wearing no shoes but ankle weights.
I went to college with a friend named Tom Corshia (sp). He played in an old metal band called Manhattan Project. He used to sit in his dorm room all night getting drunk watching T.V. while constantly practicing on a double beater he had set up with the tension CRANKED. To go one step further, he had a set of hi-top sneakers he duct taped weights onto that he used while practicing.
Crazy guy, I tell ya. And after all that, these days he plays in a top 40 cover band.
NOTE: I am practicing Killswitch because I have a drumless copy of the track to jam with. I HATE KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. Just so ya know. My whole goal in my drumming life is to become Sean Reinert.
Sweet, that Angra song sounds like it's a lot more on my speed. I tried a bit of Fear Factory, and I've tried some L.O.G. stuff, but it's WAY outta my league.
LOG I actually have a whole bunch of drumless tracks too. Like a dozen different songs.
yes. He and Carter Beuford have a way of using their cymbals in very cool ways. I especially am drawn to Reinert's hi hat work, and love the way he has two different hats set up on opposite sides of his kit. I actually semi-mimiced it and set up the rim of my floor tom as a second hi hat.
Have you heard the Levi/Werstler album? More straight ahead timings and stuff than Cynic, but the drumming is incredible.
Hmm, only FF album I have is demanufacture. I'll have to give it a whirl.
Also, question #2:
Shoes? No Shoes? I find my left foot likes to be bare, but my right like having a shoe on. Help me pick one, so I don't end up being the faggot drummer who only wears one shoe.
NO SHOES.
i've played with shoes on for my entire life and just recently tried it out with no shoes on. i was having issues really getting some of the fast triplet patterns down because my left foot wasnt really able to properly feel the rebound and motion of the pedal. its so much smoother without shoes on, and in my opinion if feels tighter too. you have a direct feel and connection with the pedal, cuts out the middle man.
never heard about having more power with shoes tho
yeah i found i had to give up the shoes for a long time. now, as long as i'm not wearing steel toes, it really doesn't make a difference to me, but i guess i prefer NO SHOES.
the thing i noticed with NO SHOES is that i can place the spot on my foot from my toes to the ball of my foot completely flat on the pedal. with shoes i often dont realize if i am not making full contact with that entire portion of my foot. this in my opinion actually builds more power and better accuracy than shoes. before i would find that only the ball of my foot would be touching the pedal while i'd have shoes on and my toes would point up most of the time
I've always done no shoes, but about a year ago I switched back. I found that without shoes on I was trying to compensate for shitty technique by trying to incorporate toes into moving the pedal. Boo-urns. When I fix my shitty technique I will most likely go back to shoeless. Mostly just for the fact that if it's raining out, all I have to do is take off my shoes, rather than playing with wet pedals.
lol @ practice...but yeah when i do, it's solo at the band space. i use a drum pad at home sometimes. my kit goes in and out of my basement, which is a bonus if you have a basement. i play 3 times as much if my drums are in the basement.
In all sewiousness... I JUST started practicing on my own again. I haven't practiced by myself in years and it's starting to show badly, so I'm forcing myself to pretend to like music enough to practice on my own.
i dont get to practice alone. i only practice at band practice. 4 hours on a good week. but that's 4 hours of writing/playing songs not working on drums stuff. kinda sucks. practice pads dont do it for me.
as for shoes vs. no shoes. i usually wear shoes when i play in the doom or hardcore/thrash band. no shoes in the black metal band. i sit way further back and lower than most everyone else so the angle my feet come in contact with the pedal is much different. the ball of my foot is usually centered in the middle of the pedal.
It's wonderful. I load up a track, metronome beat, or drumless song. Then I throw on my headphones, select a drumkit, and rock out.
The big setback is it still makes a lot of noise, so I try to only play for a little while and only when no one seems to be home around me. (I live in a condo).
Because of the noise thing, I am transmorgrifying from a pretty decent heel up double bass player to a goddamned shitty heel down player. But I am improving quickly.
With the shoes thing, I must tell you a little about my sexy body. I have what I have always referred to as "duck feet". When I stand straight with my knees pointed forward, my feet stick outward at 45 degree angles. SO when I play, I don't play with my foot properly on the footboard. I CANNOT angle it in a way where this is possible and where my hat pedal can still be there. Instead, I kinda keep my HEEL on my hat pedal, and play the kick pedal with the toes of my right foot. That's the reason I prefer the shoe. The curve of my sneaker will sit nicely in the toe guard of the pedal. On my bare foot, it rest awkwardly against the side of my big toe.
Haha, practice? I wish. Been trying to force myself to start practicing on my own, if I do its usually at the jam space, but most of the time I just focus on proper technique during actual band practice. It's not much but it still helps, that and having band practice 3-5 nights a week doesn't hurt, gotta stay loose and in shape behind the kit and the only real way to so that is to play every day. Taking one night off a week is usually a good idea tho to let your body rest
AH, that's a cool setup. I hope that drum throne isn't that close to the kit when you actually sit down!
Normally I like my switch foot very close to the hi-hat too, but don't be one of those guys that can't play if the gravity in the room is a little bit off, and they have to adjust every little piece of the kit to play.
The throne is pushed in when I'm not playing. Otherwise my stoned ass will fall over it.
As for pickyness, it's not so much that. My right foot is at such an angle when I play, that I CANNOT extend the pedal far enough to angle it the way my foot is. Instead, I have to extend it all the way and play it with my foot angled. because of this, I also play with my hihat pedal on the INSIDE of my kick, not the outside.
Yeah, I had to take a close look to notice that after reading your description and then thinking "wait a minute, how does that work". You also do this for an acoustic kit by threading the connector through the hi hat stand? Or, do you always play the electronic one?
Mark: exactly, I had to thread it through the hi-hat leg on my acoustic kit. Problem there is that where the pedal slides forward it would rub the leg, so the axle has a big groove worn into it.
MSD: You're just jealous that his band gives him chewing gum. I don't blame you, hubba bubba is delicious.
Under the Table and Drumming is in my top 3 drum video hall of fame. Also in there is the Chad Smith video, believe it or not. He's too damned good for the crappy bands he plays in. And soon to be my new favorite video: The upcoming Sean Reinert DVD. YES! He is making a drum DVD!
Is there anyone around here that can play like this guy? I know Jim is more of a technical fancy pants kinda guy.
I know Mike is kinda all over the place like this at times, and uses the shit out of his cymbals. But it's a little different in the context of slammy death metal.
Any proggy bands around boston with good drummers?
sorry, WICKED fucking busy day at work so i'm just looking at this thread now. Here's my 2cents.
-I think that shoes or no shoes is a personal preference. There are obvious differences, you just need to decide what your priorities are... and keep in mind that nothing that you can do one way is impossible the other, they just feel different. Playing with shoes will give you a harder hit because your foot will be heavier, but at the same point it's also more for you to lift for every upstroke, and therefor will make most drummers lean more towards burying the beaters between strokes.. which is obviously bad.. playing without shoes will let you really feel how the pedal is responding to you and the drumhead, and if you pay attention to it, it will help you not waste energy needlessly. Also i find that i have better control when i can feel the pedals inertia pressing on my foot. I would never go back to shoes again, as for the "power" people use them for; I feel that if your technique is good:
-a ready position with your foot parallel to the ground, a couple inches off of the floor, with the balls of your feet touching the "meat" of the floorboards.
-a "wave" like movement with just a little "leg" movement, a little "foot" movement, and a little "ankle" movement.
-a swift upstroke back to your ready position after EVERY hit.
then you won't have ANY problem getting the "power" that people claim you need to wear shoes for, and you get to save your body the energy of moving that weight around with every hit.
As far as songs to practice to:
What you should consider before deciding what songs to practice double bass to is whether you want to focus on chops with your feet, or overall control/speed/endurance.
From what you said in your original post, i would assume the second to be true (control, speed, endurance)
in which case, i think you should either just use a metronome on a really slow click and do VERY simple patters focusing on technique and consistancy, or find some electronic music that is a good slow steady tempo (music that you enjoy that is... i hope you like SOME electronic) and use that for your metronome. But if you do this, you should make sure you don's play with the same song too much, as you'll get too used to that tempo. Here is an example of what you should be doing to that metronome/slow electronic music:
r r r r l l l l r r r r l l l l rlrlrlrl r r r r r r r r l l l l l l l l r r r r r r r r l l l l l l l l rlrlrlrlrlrlrlrl
(obviously do this exercise at a speed where the faster portion (rlrl etc..) is not just doable for you.. but EASY. And VERY consistent. Otherwise your reinforcing bad habits. I can't stress this enough, too many people will put in the effort, but not be willing to play it slow enough that they play it properly because they feel like they're "above" it. Well.. they're not. If it doesn't sound good, then you should slow it down. Do that for a half hour, 3-4 times a week... (AT LEAST.. if you can do 4 hours, 5 times a week, all the better.) and when you turn up the metronome/pick a faster song, you'll be BLOWN AWAY at how much your faster playing has improved.
*the reason why i think this is better than learning songs is the same reason that if you wanna learn to sweep pick, you wouldn't just play songs that have some sweeps in them.. you'd pick a scale, and play them slowly, until you build up more speed.. because if you're just playing songs with double bass parts, then your not really FOCUSING on your double bass technique, and you'll never make the improvements that you want to see. You need to come down for a lesson if you want a lot more than that. *smooch*
oh and, yeah i can do some of that stuff in that video too, thanks.
I know you can do that stuff, but I always though you were more technical that that. To me, Reinert seems more like he takes really simple stuff and MAKES it technical. Boarcorpse actually IS technical, no?
I'm doing what you say with the metronome too, but I really get bored after a bit and want to spend a little time rocking out to a song. Problem is, the guy I leached drumless tunes from is WAY outta my league. It's all BTBAM, LOG, System of a Down (how did I not realize how hard the drums actually are on this stuff), Dream Theater. Hell, if you want any of this stuff I can steer you in the right direction, I bet you'd have WAY more use for it than me.
Right now the only stuff I feel comfortable with (because you're right, I don't wanna jump into harder stuff and get bad habits) is a few Megadeth songs, the Killswitch song, and oddly "Fight The Good Fight", the jesus rock song by Triumph. Dunno, simple-ish but without a metronome and no drums in the track it FORCES you to keep time during all the stops and starts.
Another one I've been playing along with that has a cool (I'm lefty) L RLRL R LRLR L RLRL R pattern on the kick is Crimes Against Humanity off the American Way by Sacred Reich.
More idolatry: Here's another of my new favorite drummers -
and yes, the key to getting good at any facet of drumming is repetition. figuring out how to manipulate your body into a rhythm where you're timing is perfect, your attacks are perfect, and you're not in too much pain. with my double bass students we go through simple lil patterns and whatnot, at not very loud speeds just to get a consistency in sound and just getting the timing right.
sorry, on my PS3, so ill be short. metronomes r VERY boring until u force yourself to use them for a while, but you'll end up really enjoying it. (This of course takes a while, and will b helped by your fast improvements.........like anal...hehe?) You'll notice improvements manifest quicker too as long as u play controlled, and focus on posture, and overall technique... which is very hard to really focus on while playing songs.... but not with the metronome. ***that drummer f'n grooves, even on computer speakers.. very nice of you 2 say that.
go get this book and practice it with your hands AND feet. w/metronome.
there is some closed roll stuff that probably doesn't apply itself to the feet very well (unless you're hell hammer) but the open roll stuff is sick for developing double strokes with your feet. especially since you're playing an electronic kit, working up your doubles with both your feet could actually be useful/audible.
Stupid broken computer. I could always install the drum sounds on my laptop, but it literally takes about 20 hours to load it all. (there's 35 gig of samples in the Superior 2.0 alone, plus EX Player, all the EZX packs, and the NY addon packs for superior. Those alone add up to about 50+ gig.)
R L R L RLR L R L R L R LRL R L ^ jimbo taught me this simple foot exercise done over a 4/4 rock beat with the hands, this pretty much taught me how to do patterns.
cool. That seems like a variation of something else I was having trouble with. It's so frustrating being a guitarist already. I can count complicated stuff, and write it, but I can't get my limbs to go along. And I know it will take YEARS to get the kind of muscle memory needed to play the stuff I want.
Yeah it was funny the day I sat down at a drum kit, tried to play metal, and immediately understood why all of the drummers I know feel underappreciated
yup, i've done a bunch of the excercises from stick control with my feet too.
ARROW- as far as playing with songs for fun, (because even though i use my metronome every day, i still play with tunes for fun before i finish for the day.) you don't need to limit yourself to the songs you have without the drum tracks, in fact, it's sort of good to have them there. That way it's more obvious when you're not right with them.
Good advice Jim. My secret with the drumless tracks is that I use them to
a) force me to keep time in my head, I don't use a metronome track when I use the drumless tracks.
b) I record every single take and listen back to it. I like to be BRUTALLY honest with myself. So with no drums there, I can hear my own playing crystal clear and see exactly where my mistakes are and such.
Keep in mind, I am SO barely there yet as a drummer. My rudiments are terrible, and I can't even do doubles with my right hand (I'm lefty). So I can do nasty LLR triplets all day long, but can't do 16th doubles or 7 strokes or whatever at all even at moderate speeds. I can do so-so singles.
My feet are coming along, but the problem is my lack of extended practice time. Where normally I'd take an hour break, wait for my legs to relax a little, and then play more to build endurance here I find I take a break, the neighbors get home, and I'm done drumming for the day.
Once I get a fucking job again, I'm converting my entire kit over to mesh heads.
The handedness factor really grates on my brain. I grew playing overhand right handed, but some years ago I decided to set up my kit mirror image and play overhanded left handed for a few hours.
The next day my entire left side hurt so bad I was practically collapsing every time I took a step.
Now however, (years on) I am almost equally comfortable left or right, and when playing right handed, I play open-handed (left on hi hat, right hitting the snare). Just my way of reacting to the imbalance of handedness.
Just got all mesh heads for my kit, new DM cymbals that are less noisy than the metal surge cymbals, and the Superior add-on Metal Foundry, which has some awesome sounds in it.
Welcome to "fuck the neighbors, I can play whenever I want!"
And, I can take those stupid condom rubber bullet things off my drumsticks now! Silenttips are teh GAY!
go get this book and practice it with your hands AND feet. w/metronome.
there is some closed roll stuff that probably doesn't apply itself to the feet very well (unless you're hell hammer) but the open roll stuff is sick for developing double strokes with your feet. especially since you're playing an electronic kit, working up your doubles with both your feet could actually be useful/audible.
I definitly recommend this book, I used this bood when taking lessons and it helped a lot then and now when I have to refer to it!!!! I approve!!
post by Seth at Jul 9,2011 2:03pm
I know this is old school, but I would try listening to Dark Angel/Gene H. The man, Darkness Descends (1986) Leave Scars (1989) Time Does Not Heal (1991). Yes this is old school but Gene on a lot of the long songs and instrumentals just plays double bass for whole songs. Some are fast, triplets and so forth. I used to jam to these every day to work on my speed and for steady feet exercises. I guarantee it will help for the general and stable base of the feet. Why? All the feet in these albums are not just fast either or really slow but change and I feel started my feet on its way. No books back then could help. Double bass drumming was not the thing in the public, especially for metal. I would at least give it a try and see what you think. I know there are tons of drummers but to me to start with the basics is always the best and the diverse from there. Good luck!!
post by Seth at Jul 9,2011 2:04pm
Sorry kids we did not even have drumming DVD's to buy only VHS and they still did not have any double bass, except for the greats, but not for metal!
