Kick drum speed is something that all drummers strive to get better at. It’s incredibly motivating to watch drummers play insanely fast patterns, and it’s natural for us all to want to do that ourselves.
If you want to get better with your foot, you need to focus on it and work on improving. We’ve listed a few areas to focus on. If you cover all of them, your ability to play quick bass drum patterns should improve in no time.
Technique is the very first thing you need to focus on when improving your bass drum foot speed. Incorporating certain techniques will help you play things that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
The two big techniques to choose between are the slide technique and the heel-toe technique. They both allow you to play quick doubles with your foot.
For the slide technique, you need to place the top part of your foot in the middle of the pedal. When you press it down to play your first note, you’ll feel a bit of resistance when the pedal comes back up. As you feel that, you should slide your foot forward to get the second note.
For the heel-toe technique, you should play the pedal with your whole foot first and then play the second note with only the top part of your foot.
Using a metronome is vital for improving your drumming abilities. You have to use it cleverly, though, as doing that will help you get quicker faster.
One of the best methods to do is to work on your muscle memory. You can do this by practicing kick drum patterns at a slow BPM for a few minutes. Once you get used to that, you just need to raise the BPM by about five beats.
You won’t notice the difference, as five beats aren’t much. However, you’ll be tricking your body into playing those bass drum patterns faster.
When you constantly increase the BPM by five beats every few minutes, you’ll eventually be playing those bass drum patterns up to 60 BPM fast than when you started.
Another great strategy to increase foot speed is by playing different groupings on the bass drum.
You can start with two, meaning that you play two consecutive bass drum notes and then have a pause for one note. Incorporating this into a groove will work well.
When you’re comfortable with that, try grouping three bass drum notes together with a break in between every group of three.
Then try four. Then try five. Doing this will help you maintain consistency between your bass drum strokes. The more comfortable you feel, the faster you’ll be able to play. The exercise helps a lot with control.
Another thing you can do is adjust your bass drum pedal settings. Every bass drum pedal has a variety of adjustable parts.
Every drummer has specific preferences, but some adjustment settings cater more to speed than others.
The biggest one would be your beater height and how far it sits compared to the bass drumhead. If the beater is very high, it will take longer to go from starting position to the batter head. So, try lower it a bit.
Do the same for the pedal itself. Just note that having closer distances between the beater and the batter head means that you won’t get as much power. Sacrificing power for speed may be worth it, though.
This tip is fairly obvious, but everyone needs to be reminded of it. The more you work on your bass drum speed, the faster you’ll get.
You may not be as fast as you want now, but you’ll get faster over time, and you need to keep that in mind to motivate yourself to practice.
Find exercises that are fun to play, and do them on the drum kit every day for a few months. You’ll undoubtedly get faster with your bass drum patterns. The key to getting better is to practice, and that’s what repetition is all about.
The final tip is to work on specific grooves and fills that incorporate quick bass drum patterns. This would be the most applicable way of working on your bass drum speed, as these grooves and fills could be used when you play to music and with bands.
It’s very common to have two quick bass drum notes in certain grooves and fills, but you could also come up with ones that have three or four consecutive bass drum notes.
The key to playing fast on the drums is to have as much control over what you’re playing as possible. The more control you have, the faster you’ll be able to play.
To develop control, you need to play patterns slowly and internalize them with your body. This is called muscle memory, and it allows you to play different things without thinking too much about them.
High-quality kick drum pedals have many adjustment settings that can make it slightly easier to play faster. However, your personal ability is the biggest contributing factor.
Drummers who are able to play very fast foot patterns will have no problem playing the same things on a cheap pedal.
Beginners should focus more on improving their control behind the drum kit. That will eventually lead to getting faster, but it’s not something to put too much emphasis on in the early stages of drumming.
It feels amazing to be able to play quick patterns on the bass drum, but you have to do the work to get to that place. This includes practicing with a metronome, mastering bass drum pedal techniques, and playing to as much music as you possibly can.
As you do that, you’ll start to see your bass drum speed improving over time. If you use a double pedal, the same concepts apply. Just don’t rely on your double pedal to play things that can easily be done with a single pedal.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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