The Drums - Feet Technique

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Transcripts

Hi, I'm Wes Crawford and right now we're going to talk about the feet a little bit. We want to have, again, proper technique, efficient technique with the feet to do the job that they need to do in performing on the drum set, so that again we can extend our technique as far as it would possibly go, and we wont get tired too quickly. So, I recommend starting out by putting both feet flat on the pedals. Just about everything I'm going to say about the feet right now, you can find exceptions in situation where you need to vary this a bit, but what I want to stress is to begin your study of drums by using this technique, because this is very natural, but it might be just a little bit hard for you at the same time. Its a very natural technique and will be easy as far as not wearing yourself out. Put your feet flat and forward, I call it the three Fs; feet flat and forward on the pedals. Lets start with the Base Drum. Start with your ankle back. We want to make the strokes with the ankle. We're going to do a quick jab to the Base Drum head and the pedal should rebound to get the most full round sound and the most low fundamental out of the Base Drum. Get used to performing this way. Again, you're going to see people that dont, but get used to doing it this way so that you can when its appropriate, and then you can do other ways when you want a different sound. I'm going to demonstrate this ankle stroke technique. Most of my weight is on the ball of the foot, and as soon as I strike, I'm relaxing so that the spring brings the beater back. You dont want to leave the pedal after you strike the Base Drum head, because then the spring will bring it back and it will wag and it will be out of control. You dont want that. So, you're not just stomping with your toe. Now, you will see a lot of people play with their leg, and they get this kind of action. You can get a lot more power with your leg and you're going to be in situations, maybe playing in a fraternity basement with three guitars turned up to eleven, where you need more power out of your Base Drum, and you can do that, but you're not going to ever be able to play too fast if you're depending on your leg, that's why you want to get used to using your ankle, so that then when you incorporate your leg you have some ankle motion too. I'm doing this even with my leg involved, so get used to that. Now, if you want a muffled sound on the Base Drum, we just hold it in and bring your whole leg down. See the difference, hopefully you can hear the difference. With the Hi-Hat foot it takes some pressure and some strength to keep the Hi-Hat close at first, in particular when you didnt realize it did. So, what you want to do, the resting position of the Hi-Hat you want to think of as the cymbal is being closed, so you're again using the ball of your foot to extend the pressure, to keep the cymbals together, so you're fighting against the spring. So, then when you want to make a sound, a chick sound, you would go (Music). You can do it -- a lot of times we do use more leg here, we need more power to make it speak, and if you're not going fast, but again, I want you to practice with your ankle strokes too. All of this will prepare you for possible double Base Drum pedal playing later on or something too. We also sometimes want to get a splashy sound out of the Hi-Hat for an effect, and that you can do with your ankle, or you can actually sort of stomp down on the pedal with your heel a little higher up, and that can come in handy.

So, these are the basic techniques with the Base Drum and the Hi-Hat pedals. Again, Base Drum pedal should be relaxed, use ankle strokes. Hi-Hat, you're actually putting physical force down to keep it close, and then you can bring it up to make -- and back down to make it sound, but I do emphasize thinking of the resting position as you close, because most often we're hitting with the stick with the Hi-Hat cymbals closed.

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