The most common question associated with playing the bass drum must be "Do you play heel up or down?". In my experience most drummers seem to start off playing heel down and then, if their playing situations demand the volume, they switch to playing heel up.
Unfortunately, at this point most of us seem to leave good old heel down playing behind, not realizing that it still has its place namely when playing quietly where supporting the whole leg in a heel up position can be uncomfortable, not to mention waste of energy.
This talk of heel up or down also brings me to what happens to the beater after the stroke has been played. With a little practice and by dropping the heel onto the the heel plate after each stroke, the beater can be kept off the head after every stroke, thereby allowing the drum to resonate.
One Drum or Two?
During the late seventies and eighties, double bass drum set-ups were commonplace, with huge multi-tom kits adorning stages and drum manufacturers catalogues everywhere. Then came the advent of the double pedal and drummers realized that they could achieve almost the same sound with less equipment.
There are probably a couple of reasons aside from the obvious aesthetic one.
Firstly, two drums respond differently to one. Take Simon Phillips for instance, he uses two twenty-four inch kick drums with very little dampening which if played with a double pedal would be hard to control. It also means that each drum is resonating as the other is being played, creating a huge sound.
Obviously, the visual appeal and symmetry of a double bass drum kit will always be there. But now, most manufacturers offering such accurate and responsive double pedal that tuning and set-up aside there seems little point in carrying two identical drums around.
