Bass Drum Technique

Your dominant foot is going to play more notes over a lifetime than either of your hands. It deserves the same technical attention that grip and stroke get on the snare. There are two basic foot positions and two basic stroke types, and most of what a working drummer does is some combination of the four.

The two positions are heel-down (the entire foot rests on the pedal board, the leg is relaxed, the ankle does the work) and heel-up (the heel lifts off the board, the leg drives the stroke from the hip and thigh). Heel-down is for soft, controlled playing — quiet ballads, jazz comping, anywhere the kick should be felt rather than heard. Heel-up is for everything else: rock, funk, pop, anything loud or fast. Most drummers settle into heel-up as their default and bring heel-down out for specific situations.

The two stroke types are the buried beater (the beater strikes the head and stays pressed against it, choking the resonance) and the rebound (the beater strikes and bounces back off the head, letting it ring). Buried-beater gives you a thick, articulate thud — perfect for rock and metal where a clipped kick cuts through. Rebound gives you a longer, fuller boom and also makes fast playing physically possible: you can't bury every stroke at 16th-notes. The choice is style-dependent and tempo-dependent, and once you have both, you mix them constantly.

Exercises

1 — Quarter-Note Kicks, Heel-Down

4/4 · ♩ = 80

Heel stays down, leg relaxed. The ankle moves; the rest of the leg is quiet. One kick per beat, perfectly even. Listen for accidental volume drift — heel-down playing exposes any unevenness in your ankle motion. If a particular stroke is louder than the others, your ankle tensed there.

2 — Eighth-Note Kicks, Heel-Up

4/4 · ♩ = 80

Heel comes up; the stroke is now driven from the leg, not the ankle. Eight even kicks per bar at ♩=80 is roughly the speed at which heel-down stops being practical. Don't lift the leg high — a small downward stroke is enough; gravity does most of the work. Each stroke should sound the same as the last.

3 — Buried Beater, 4-on-the-Floor

4/4 · ♩ = 110

Same notes as Ex 1, but the technique is different: at the bottom of each stroke, press the beater into the head and hold it there until the next stroke starts. Choking the head produces the dry thud at the heart of disco, four-on-the-floor rock, and most dance music. The sound is clipped, not ringing — that's the point.

4 — Rebound Strokes at Higher Tempo

4/4 · ♩ = 130

Eight kicks per bar at ♩=130 — roughly 17 strokes per second is too fast to bury. Let the beater bounce off the head; meet it on its way back up and use that bounce to power the next stroke. The kick will ring more, but you'll be able to play this tempo without your leg cramping. This is how drummers play sustained 8th-note kicks for a four-minute song without injury.