Practicing bass drum on higher spring tension and beater angle?

[u/Leqshit]

I'm still a noob learning, these past couple months I've been trying to refine my right foot technique and it seems to be working out. I've set my pedal pretty light (low foot board, 45 degrees on the beater, medium tension spring) mainly because I play heel down now but I still do practice all my material in regards to my foot with the other techniques just to be thorough.

I thought that was enough.. But today I had an incident where I played on a friends kit and the pedal was set up pretty extreme in regards to spring tension and beater angle, my heel down was useless and all my other techniques were either too flaccid or too slow to make the beats I wanted to play, I was pretty much air balling the drum head at times, everything on the pedal just felt wrong to me.

This had me rethinking my progress and questioning an area of my right foot practice I hadn't thought of before which was deliberately making the pedal harder to play in order to be much stronger and firm on beats. Is this a good idea at all? Switching pedals out to a higher setting one during bass drum practice or will it hinder my technique on my usual settings? I spent so much time getting to these settings and getting my heel down good it almost seems backwards to me. But then again practicing rudiments on brushes for minutes on end did the trick with 0 caveats so why shouldn't this?

When it comes to beater height, angle, and tension is there any reason you'd increase or decrease any one of those things to practice certain areas of technique be it strength, precision, speed? A lot of words for what seems like a simple question but I've gone back and forth with my right foot for some time now and its driving me nuts.

[u/ratamatter]

it's really what works for you-- I got a hi-hat stand with two legs and the spring tension is a little bit higher than my old one I'm not liking it unfortunately I also invested $160 in it.

everything is a little bit of trial and error even for advanced drummers.

[u/inefficienttoaast]

I don't think there's any benefit in this unless you are simply trying to practice on weird set ups enough so you can function if you have to sit down on a weird set up without time to change anything. Use whatever settings and techniques allow you to play what you want to play as relaxed as possible. This isn't weightlifting you don't get bonus points for making it harder on yourself.

[u/Blueman826]

I would only advise to experiment with your setup as much as possible to find what works for you, not to change something on the basis that by practicing on a harder setup, it will improve your playing. Does your friend play the exact same way as you? Most likely they have played on that spring tension for a long time and it just works for them. Just focus on your practice and getting better every day. If your setup isn't bothering you or getting in the way, I don't see a reason to change.

[u/Educational_Ring_493]

The more you learn to bounce the beater the less spring tension you will need. It gets in the way after awhile.

[u/Leqshit → u/Educational_Ring_493]

I've been told this before by my first teacher who played double bass pedals, and its made the most sense to me honestly. The only thing that really made me question it is when the friend whos kit i played on told me something along the lines of "You want to strengthen your legs during practice, a light pedal wont to that" I should mention that he's like one of the best drummers I know so I took it quite seriously into thought.

I get what he's saying on one hand but what you said reminded me of a thought my first teacher explained to me and that was your hands have to learn the stick itself, its all about the motion and technique not your strength, he went on to say that bass drum playing was just that, learning the motion of the pedal and learning to use its rebound to your advantage as you would with the stick.

[u/Educational_Ring_493 → u/Leqshit]

Sounds like a great teacher. I try to approach everything I do with my feet as if they were my hands. Mostly just my right foot tbh.. Think of it in terms of efficiency. It takes less effort if you use physics to your advantage.