These exercises are intended to help you improve your double bass drum technique. They can be played with two bass drums or with a double pedal.

   I am indebted to Ryan McDaniel for this lesson. He suggested it and provided all the exercises and the basic instructions. Thanks, Ryan!

   The concept here is simple: exercises intended to help you improve your double-bass skills. Play them at a steady rate, then increase the rate past your comfort zone.

   As always, these exercises are meant as a starting point: you are encouraged to develop them further.

   First, let's engage in a little bit of single-stroke warm-up. Play single-strokes with your feet, starting slowly, increasing your speed, holding, then slowing down. Do this three time - this will warm up your muscles.

Double Bass #1

   The first exercise adds ride cymbal and snare drum to our warmup. Play three times, each time starting slow, getting faster until you reach your limit, then pushing past your limit for a count of 60, then slowing down.

Double Bass #2

   Now we do triplets. This will have a different feel than Exercise #1. Note the cymbal is now riding quarter notes, not eighth notes. Play as above, three times, slow-to-fast-to-slow.

Double Bass #3

   This exercise breaks apart the first exercise a bit. The trick here is to play the two different "tempos" (eighths and sixteenths) evenly, without rushing one or dragging the other. Do as above.

Double Bass #4

   Now we begin to break out the triplet exercise. Note the rest in the first triplet. You can make your own exercises here by moving the rest around the measure (see the second example), and adding rests! How may variations can you come up with? Do as above.

Double Bass #5

   In this exercise we do the same thing with triplets, adding a couple quarter note rests. Note the footing! Do as above for both exercises: slow-fast-slow, three reps.

Double Bass #6

   Now we're going to mess with your head! Note the note values in the bass drum line, as well as the footing. Note also we're riding on the hi-hat: open the hat on the last note! This will mean your hat foot comes up when your right foot goes down (you'll need a hi-hat clutch to do this, because you're going to be shifting your left foot back and forth between hats and bass pedal!). Do as above.

Double Bass #7

   This exercise is pure triplets: they're just spaced out a bit. Do as above.

Double Bass #8

   This exercise combines triplets and sixteenth notes. Try to give them the "tempo" they deserve. Do as above.

   As always, feel free to develop your own double bass exercises. If you have any cool double bass exercises you want to share with others, drop me a line! And don't forget to drop Ryan a line thanking him for these great exercises. Get out there and ride your bicycle!