Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Single or Double Kick and one more thing

On Facebook, on the Christian Rock Drummers page, David Borchers wrote:
here is a question for all you drummers; old school single pedal VS. Double pedal? myself I think double pedal is over used, but then again im old school 43 yrs. ive been playing and i listen to today's drummers and wonder were is the individuality! it all sounds alike! is it just me?
So this is what I wrote. It seemed interesting enough to post here:
I say single pedal. Same age as you, been playing since 1982. I went through the double bass drum phase when I first saw/heard Tommy Aldridge, Neil Peart, Lars Ulrich, and Alex Van Halen. But I distinctly then remember seeing an Eddie Money video on MTV (back when MTV showed videos) and his drummer had a single kick and I remember going down and tearing apart the double kick set I had created and going back to a single kick. I never liked the way it felt to play to two kicks – the balance – and I also didn’t like shifting my foot from hihat to bass drum. I spent many hours trying to make it feel natural but I just couldn’t get there. I also remember reading a drum magazine (maybe “Drums and Drumming” was the name) and they had a special issue about double bass. There was an article about why single kick was better. The author, whoever it was, talked about how it was really simple for him. All he had to do was listen to John Bonham to make him realize he wanted to do what Bonham could do on one kick that others couldn’t do on two. Since I have a Ludwig Vistalite with the clear shells (what he played), I adopted that thesis. So, short answer, single pedal.

Even though I've been sober since 1/1/11, I thought this was a good explanation of how the world works: http://www.ijreview.com/2012/04/688-tax-system-explained-beer/

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