You're leg should make between a 90 and 120 degree angle. Sit up straight, don't lean back or to the sides, keep a strong center of balance.
Start slow. Play with a metrenome and play a speed for as long as you can to build up endurance. Slowly work your way up increasing your speed by 5-10 bpm. Don't try and play fast right away, you'll just strain yourself.

thanks

ive just started with my metronome today and i can do 95 easily, i havent tried going faster just yet


afk doing it now

Amberlin is right your centre of balance needs to be perfect. You might find yourself leaning back at faster speeds, this isnt too much of a problem as you'll get used to sitting strait but watch out for it.

Also, DONT CURL YOUR TOES EVER!

curling your toes is an obvious sign of not playing relaxed and is a big problem with stiffening up the whole ankle. sounds weird but i have known many people to do this without realising.

make sure your pedal is set up correctly so your feet are at equal angles and your legs are equally forward.

I think 95 is way to slow to put the metronome on to start on once you have warmed up. After a nice warm up getting into the groove of playing start at 120-140 depending on how comfortable it is.

random excersize: Only move the ankle at very slow speeds and keep all of your legs still while only moving your feet to play. this isnt effective in real playing but will get your muscles hardcore ready for the basketball bounce you'll be doing at high speeds.

use your all of your legs moving up and down at very slow speeds
use your legs AND ankles at medium speeds
use 90% ankles at fast speeds (unless you use the flat foot technique which i'll teach you aswell)

do constant double bass with HEEL DOWN occasionaly to strengthen your shins, dont overdo this it'll screw your shins up bad if you do.

YOUR PRACTICE WORK OUT (yes its a work out). AT LEAST 3 TIMES A WEEK TO SEE FAST IMPROVEMENTS

lets say you start at 120 BPM on your metronome..

1. one minute constant double bass at 120 bpm
2. rest for 30 seconds
3. one minute double bass at 130 bpm
4. rest for 30 seconds
5. one minute double bass at 140 bpm
6. rest for 30 seconds

keep going up like that untill you reach your limit, once you reach your limit you can go back maybe and keep going up again to see if you break it this time, or maybe keep doing the same tempo but make sure you rest after every 1 minute of constant double bass. remember you dont have to put it up by 10 bpm every time, u can do 5 bpm if you want maybe even just 2..

if you really want to practice going faster when you reach your limit, just do short blasts of 4's, 6's, 8's etc on your desired speed.

always play around with your hands while your doing your double bass, just for the hell of it... dont use your hands at all sometimes too, only feet - just make it varied and imaginative.


IMPORTANT: Your muscles only do anything while your resting, all the time they're active nothing is really getting improved. in the 30 second rest is when your muscles develope, heal and get themselves ready for the next ammount of hardcore drumming.

its the same if you are doing weights, you have a short rest after every small session.

the real techniques can only be demonstrated by video.

sorry about spelling mistakes and grammar, in a bit of a rush

please dont use your skills to play to bands like my chemicle romance or bullet for my valentine, use them wisely

This post was edited by dysgenics on Mar 29 2009 02:34pm

ive been practicing and can do 115 bpm easily
so ill try ure workout tommorow ( too late now )


also, ive been going heel down the whole time, it just seemed "right" but started to hurt my shins, is it better to play heel up??

yes heel up for sure, heel down just for getting your shin muscles amazing there is a flat foot technique that is neither heel up nor heal down but you need some experience with heel up to be able to do that anyway

you will find a "sweet spot" on your footboard at every speed you play, usually its quite high up near the chain at most speeds but when you get real fast it tends to go to half way down the pedal..

make sure you tighten the springs on your pedal to maximum too

This post was edited by dysgenics on Mar 29 2009 02:39pm

how do i tighten it up??
my pedal confuses me

I'm following this now except for ive always played heel down and it doesnt hurt my shins atall, so i hope thats ok? ;O
thanks for guide etc

as for the headphones question pm'd from hellohal:

I use a pair of DT-100 Headphones, theyre around 100 quid but for pure sound quality theyre basicly the best you can get. they dont look good and they do move if you headbang but as i said - pure sound quality here.

If you really cant save up (concidering DT-100's would be the best for anything not just drumming - I couldnt write proper drum tabs from listening to music with a set of headphones that wasnt this quality) then look at the DT-100's specs and just get the best ones you can get for your price range.

if you just want it for a click track or metronome. some ear plugs would probably be better, with headphones linked in. but you should be using ear plugs anyway if playing with acoustic drums. without them you'll probably go def eventually

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taking the "workout" i wrote earlier (1 minute of play, 30 second rest - repeating this indefinately) and applying it here:

you need to make your limbs work seperately, so dont just play with both your feet all the time.

try the same workout but only on your left foot, increasing tempo by 5-10 every time and resting 30 secs in between. then do the whole thing again on the right foot. if you want you can do them at the same time: doing the left for 1 minute, then doing the right for one minute, then increasing tempo.

you should also be practicing things like paradiddles on your bass drum, you know just mess around, even if your first foot paradiddle is at 60 bpm, at least you learnt it.

also try this - i cant explain it properly here but theyre great to practice and fun to learn if you understand.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

ok when I write an L its for the left foot, when i right an R its for the right foot. here are some things you can do to get your independance.

do RRLLRRLL with the hands, standard double stroke roll here. then do RRLLRRLL on the feet, but half the speed. it actually mix's iteself up and is really pretty difficult even at lower tempos to start with. the "jsp tab" would look like this:

Hands (top)
Feet (bottom)

R R L L R R L L

R - .R - L - .L

(jsp wont let me put more than one space, so i filled gaps with -'s and .'s... thats not added tabs thats just to put the R's and L's under the correct ones)

The feet go at exactly half the speed of the hands, you just repeat this obviously.

This one is more for developing speed but is good for independance too.

RRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLLRRRRLLLL

as you can see thats 4 hits on each foot without any breaks - again dont only do it the ammount i wrote down, do it for 1 minute... next

RRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLL

here's 8 on each foot one at a time again.

then you want to put it from a 4/4 time signiture into a 3/4 and start doing 12 on each foot

RRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLL

remember thats 4 sets of 3's on each foot.

Now you go back to 4/4 and do 16's on each foot.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

........

hope this was comprehensive enough.

Remember treat them all as the workout i said in the last post. 1 minute at a time, rest, increase tempo. remember to do it for the entire 1 minute even with mistakes.

This post was edited by dysgenics on Apr 3 2009 03:59am

where the springs are, tighten the springs... you'll work it out i cant be bothered to explain .. just remember springs and tighten them, its really simple if you examin ANY pedal

okey dokey
imma practice the things in the post above later, too early atm xD