I know, man. All of y'all have been real patient You've been asking me about a foot technique tutorial and I've put it off for a long time. I got about 250 something videos up
on my channel and I think I have one bass drum tutorial. So I finally gave in, man. It's been long enough. I'm gonna make sure it's a good one for you. So let's go. So like I said, man, I got like over 250
some videos up on my channel and I never really touched on foot technique because I've never,
to be completely honest with you I've never really considered myself
as having a great foot. I mean I can get done what I need to get done but I got some friends man with some alien feet. They can do stuff with a single pedal I'm not that dude.
Like I can't do any of that stuff. But the funny thing is I've been saying this for a long time during that stretch of time my foot has
actually gotten pretty good. So I'm a little confident now I can let you in on some stuff So yeah, we're going to get into this. I'm gonna give you a really
detailed lesson on how you can build a a great foot for your playing. So this is a lesson for the average drummer, okay? I'm not George Kollias or Thomas Lang or
Thomas Pridgen or Larnell or any one of them dudes. I don't have that foot but I will show you the mechanics of what you need if you want to get there, that's cool. The mechanics is the same throughout. This video is just for your average working drummer, weekend jobber, whatever. You just want to build a
nice solid foot with some decent control. I'm gonna show you some really simple
exercises that you can do to build that up. So let's get right into this lesson
man. So there was one point a few years back where I was having trouble trying
to pull off the stuff that I wanted to pull off. Anything that involved playing like fast doubles or you know quick singles on a single pedal, I could not do.
I couldn't do for a long time as a matter of fact. One day I made this discovery Changed everything. Fixed it all almost
instantly so that's what I'm going to show you today So this big thing that I
discovered that changed the game for me is actually a small thing. It's a very
small thing. And as soon as I did it, it cleaned everything up. It all has to do with your position of the foot on the pedal. So when I would watch all of my
favorite drummers play You know I'm staring at their right foot and everything and I noticed there was a common thread through all of them and it's that their foot seemed to be just sort of floating on the pedal. And it all has to do with simply raising your heel off the plate just about an inch. So you might be saying to yourself of course it is, right? I mean that's the whole point
behind playing heel up. But here's the thing man I never really gave much
thought or attention as to why my heel was up other than the fact that it just
gives me more power. There's actually way more to it than just that. And that's
what I'm going to show you right now. As soon as I discovered, as soon as I went
in there and it sort of discovered why my heel was up, the effect that it
had once I, you know started paying attention to it, everything changed. So I need you guys do me a favor for a second, all right? Just humor me for
a second I'm going to show you an illustration. I kind of drew this out real
quick and I want you to look at this and stare at this illustration for the
next 20 seconds. And when you come back I'm gonna explain what's going on with the foot, show you some exercises and then send you on your way. Now I want you to think about your foot
a little bit different than you're used to thinking. I want you to think about
your foot as sort of whatever you want; a machine or a switch or whatever. Whatever helps you. But there's basically two positions, all right? If this is the pedal here actually that's like that and that's the pedal and this is your foot when you raise your foot up It's going to be sitting around parallel to
the floor type of height and another thing too is you want to slide it back around to like the middle of the pedal. Now when you were watching the video off
the top of my playing like it kind of looks like my foot is a little further
up in the middle but it actually isn't it. It is and it isn't. The ball of my foot is right smack on the middle of the pedal. it just looks like it's further up because
you're seeing the rest of my shoe. But the actual ball of my foot, which is what
I'm using to play the pedal, is like the midpoint of the pedal. All right? So it's on an angle like that. Your foot, once you raise your heel up about an inch,
it's now sort of parallel to the floor. Think of this as the on switch or the on position. During play, your foot is going
to stay pretty well in the on position. When you drop your heel down to the
plate, you can think of that as the off position. Now when your foot is in the on
position your ankle is about right here. You want to sort of imagine that there's a hinge right where your ankle is and that right there is where you're going to
work the pedal from. So you basically have to learn how to play your pedal from the ankle. Okay? so this is your pivot point and that is where you're going to start playing the pedal. So when you're when
your foot is now parallel to the floor now you just have to learn this action here. As far as the pedal, you need to start thinking about your pedal as having the same properties as your stick. If you hold your stick
further back you get more leverage, you get more power. Same thing with the
pedal. That's why if you want to play with a little more power, you drop your
foot down around halfway. You get a little bit more momentum to swing that beater. The pedal feels a little bit heavier and then that's where you get
your power from and and all that kind of stuff. And the leverage and the momentum, that's what's going to help you get those fast singles. And when you
choke up on the stick, you lose a little bit of leverage but you get a little bit more control But at the same time, again you lose a little bit of volume.
So if you want to play quieter then you're simply just going to slide
your foot way up, like further up on the pedal. But we're talking about
something different today. But that's basically how you want to think about
your pedal. Like it really has the same properties as the stick. So there are
optimum points on the pedal that'll give you better rebound and all that kind of
stuff. Again, generally around the middle and that's where you want to be playing
for most of the time. And once you start giving that kind of stuff a little bit more thought things that start to fall into place and become a little bit easier to do. now when your foot again is parallel to the floor,
so if this is the pedal here and your foot is flat like that, I want you to think of this as zero When you drop your heel below that, we're going to call that negative one. So there's zero and negative one. During play, zero is the ground floor. So you generally want to make this sort of home position, I guess you can sort of
call it that. Everything that you're gonna be doing
on that pedal, you don't really want to go below zero. When you're doing things like doubles, when I'm playing doubles now, it's sort of a tap. The first note is a tap and then the second note, I'm dropping
my heel back down to zero. Not back down to the floor. Back to zero.
So my heel is still suspended, that's just where it's stopping. Now when I'm
playing doubles on the kick, first note is a tap. So I'm
actually lifting my heel up so we can call that plus one, I guess. Up to sort of tap that first note with the ball of my foot and then drop it back down to zero for that second one.
So you sort of get this thing kind of happening, but again
my heels not dropping below zero when I do that. Now everyone of
course is physically different, right? You hear a lot of drummers talk about the whole sliding foot kind of thing. You might actually find that your foot will
probably just start doing that naturally when you take that approach. When you tap that first note and then slam your foot down to zero, that sort of imaginary
cushion that's keeping your heel suspended, you might find that for that
second note your foot's just going to naturally start sliding a little bit.
Some drummers might slide a little bit more. Some a little bit less but the
core principle is the same. Raising your foot and then dropping it back down to
zero for the second the second note. There are basically two movements that
that you have to learn. First one is to be able to work your foot, or work that
pedal from the ankle. Again you want to imagine that hinge right there going straight through your heel and you're sort of working it from there. That's how you're gonna play your singles,
your fast singles. That kind of thing. And then the
doubles thing that I just talked about where you're raising your your heel up to plus one and then dropping it back down to zero. So there are three
different exercises that I'm going to show you. They're super simple. You can do
them with really slow tempos because like I said, like I always say, right?
Repetition fixes everything. It's about muscle memory. Once you learn the
mechanics of this then you can take it as far as you want. You can keep
practicing until you can get as fast as Thomas Lang or whoever else you admire
doing this kind of thing. Or you can just be satisfied with just being good at it. So these exercises are fun. They're super effective and they're built for endurance so that you can do it on a repetitive sort of basis. Take breaks,
pick it up again and and do it again. Let's break these down. I'll show you these three. This first one that I'm going to show you is targeting your
ability to do singles. This going to work on that that hinge on the
heel and this one super simple. You're going to play a simple groove
okay? It's a sixteenth note exercise and you're going to be playing notes,
single notes in succession. From two to four. First two and then three
and then four and then back down to two. You're going to do this over and over
and over again. Instead of trying to explain this to
you, I'll just show it to you and it looks like this. Now the second one I'm going to show you
is a super awesome one for helping you to build that ability to you know tap
that first note and then play that second one by dropping your foot back down to zero. The best exercise or the best groove to play to help you develop
this is sort of the Bossa Nova/Samba type groove. This is super repetitive. You can play it at slow tempos until you get it and then
gradually work your speed up. So you're going to be playing that sort of rhythm on the bass drum while you're grooving out sort
of two and four on on the snare. For all my level 42 fans out there this is the
World Machine groove. Now this last exercise I'm going to show
you is going to help you to develop your doubles. This is another super simple
exercise that just involves playing R L Foot Foot, alright? So this one is a 1 bar flip.
We're gonna break this up because you want to be able to do
this for a good stretch to sort of help you develop it but you don't want to do
it over and over and over and over and over again. Your foot's gonna start
burning or you know down here like where your shin is. It's probably
gonna start burning. So this is cool because you'll get little breaks the
entire time you're doing it. What this is, one bar flip like I said and it's
just simply going to be R Foot L Foot R Foot L Foot RL Foot Foot RL Foot Foot RL Foot Foot RL Foot Foot like this So that's it man. These three exercises are going to help you to sort of develop the muscle memory and the mechanics that you need to know to help you start working that that foot from the ankle. Again, you'll want to keep in mind foot position. Drop it down about halfway on
the pedal and be super conscious about keeping your foot at zero. So raising your heel up about an inch so your foot is about parallel to the floor and that's your on position. That's where you're going to start playing from This will eventually become second nature. You won't really have to think of it anymore.
But that's the big thing man about playing those fast singles and playing
nice strong doubles and stuff. It really only has to do with raising your heel. There you have it man. That is my foot technique tutorial. it was nice and detailed.
You got a lot of information there. Take it. Run with it. Have some fun with it. Learn it so you can forget it. Thanks for watching this video. Share it if you dig it, of course. Like. Subscribe. See you next video.
