Be sure to check out the other videos in this series first, and the MasterClass lesson on bass drum technique.
You can get PolyNome at www.polynome.net, or if you don’t have an Apple device you can get Pyramid for Mac & PC here
Be sure to check out the other videos in this series first, and the MasterClass lesson on bass drum technique.
You can get PolyNome at www.polynome.net, or if you don’t have an Apple device you can get Pyramid for Mac & PC here
Here’s a list of the hand foot combinations you could work through:
Be sure to check out the other videos in this series first, and the MasterClass lesson on bass drum technique.
You can get PolyNome at www.polynome.net, or if you don’t have an Apple device you can get Pyramid for Mac & PC here
Here’s a list of the stickings I worked through in the video:
Be sure to check out the other videos in this series first, and the MasterClass lesson on bass drum technique.
You can get PolyNome at www.polynome.net, or if you don’t have an Apple device you can get Pyramid for Mac & PC here
Be sure to check out the other videos in this series first, and the MasterClass lesson on bass drum technique.
You can get PolyNome at www.polynome.net, or if you don’t have an Apple device you can get Pyramid for Mac & PC here
If you’re a heel up player you might want to check out part 0 of this series (on technique) and the MasterClass lesson first.
Although I only spend a few minutes explaining the exercises in these lessons, the key to mastery is to spend a long time practicing them and don’t move on until they feel comfortable to play. It takes time for your body to learn new techniques. By playing around with these exercises and making small adjustments to your technique as you go, you’ll be giving your body chance to figure out the best way to play with precision and control.
PLEASE NOTE: This is the first in the series on Bass Drum Control. More videos will be added soon. Like the Facebook page, subscribe to my RSS feed, or get a free MasterClass account to be notified of new videos when they’re posted.
One thing I’d love to master is the ability to play bursts of 3 or more notes on the kick with confidence and accuracy. My right foot is the weakest element in most grooves that I play and I think it’s about time I paid more attention to it. I’ve been working on exercises to develop control and I’m going to share them with you in a series of videos.
First I recommend checking out the bass drum technique lesson in the MasterClass on my site : http://www.joecrabtree.com/masterclass
It’s an hour long and talks about heel down playing, heel up playing, switching between them, dynamic control, and lots of other things. It’ll give you a good grounding for working on the videos that follow. Of course, I also recommend all the other videos on there. A lot of my best stuff is in the MasterClass lessons and they help support the free lessons on YouTube.
I’ve changed a couple of things since recording the MasterClass lesson and I demonstrate those in the following video…
Here are some links for things featured in the video.
Porter And Davies BC2 Drum Stool
This is the pedal that I use (and like a lot)
These are the shoes:
Here’s a brief summary of what I talked about.
“Call supposed to kill help the URL something requires the same skills are supposed to be good at which means if you absolutely hopeless INMAC exactly the schools that you need to know that you’re absolutely home” – John Cleese (transcribed by Siri)
What the f&*k am I talking about?
There’s a model of learning which involves four stages of competence. It’s supposed to represent the stages we go through when learning a new skill.
The first stage is unconscious incompetence. That means that there’s something we don’t know how to do, but we don’t know that we don’t know how to do it. If you’re a musician maybe there’s something you want to play that involves triplets, but you’ve no idea what a triplet is. You’ve never even considered that you could divide a beat into three parts instead of two. At this stage it’s really helpful to have a teacher who can introduce you to things you didn’t know you didn’t know.
The second stage is conscious incompetence. Now the concept of triplets has been explained to you. You understand it, you just can’t play them.
Stage three is conscious competence. Now you can play triplets but you have to think really hard when you’re trying to play them. It’s still very much under conscious control.
The final stage is unconscious competence. Now you can play them as easily without much thought. This is where we’re aiming to end up. Walking, talking, running are all things you can do without having to think about them. You decide where you want to go and what you want to say, but the mechanics of getting to those places and saying those things are done by the unconscious mind.
It’s a good model, and one thing that we learn from it is this:
“To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means if you’re absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills you need to know that you’re absolutely hopeless at it.”
That’s the actual John Cleese quote I tried to insert at the beginning of this post. I thought it might be fun to see if Siri on my iPhone would do the job of transcribing it for me. What I learned was that Siri lacks the skills to know that it’s hopeless at something – just as the girl in the video does.
If you have some time to spare I highly recommend the following two John Cleese videos about creativity. He’s a fantastic speaker and the things he talks about will be extremely valuable to anyone who wants to be more creative.
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I want to know if you find this as difficult as I did. It feels easy to me now, but for 20 mins last night I was finding it pretty tricky. Post in the comments and let me know.
The basic swiss 6-stroke roll is two 8th notes followed by four 1/16th notes. The 8th notes are accented. I’ll put underscores to represent 1/16th note spaces:
R_L_rlrl
All I’m doing is taking out some, or all of the left hand taps. Taking them all out gives you:
R_L_r_r_
…which is evenly spaced 8th notes, playing the last two with the right hand. Just look at the original pattern and you’ll see that this was present all the time.
Then add in one of the left hand strokes:
R_L_rlr_
or the other:
R_L_r_rl
Here’s a video demo.
Here’s the Alan Dawson book…
Check it out on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
If you play matched grip it’s likely that one hand feels more comfortable than the other. We’re so used to playing with sticks that it sometimes becomes difficult to notice the differences in your hands.
I like to pick up other objects to see if my hands seem to hold them in the same way. Lighter objects can reveal a lot about how tight your grip is.
Check out the video to see what I mean…
The idea of practising rudiments with brushes came from the Alan Dawson drum book (see links below). It’s worth checking out.
Check it out on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
