How to Muffle a Bass Drum

Video Transcript

"Next, when we talk about acoustically mounting a drum set, definitely have to talk about bass drum muffling, which is a topic that is very commonly discussed among drummers. Now on one hand I want to mention that for some muffling, I have what's called a kick pad here. And I have a double pedal, and this is a pad specifically for a double pedal. What this does, is it's just going to slightly change the sound that we get when I play the bass drum. I happen to like the sound that this gives. The other thing you can see in here is that I do have a pillow. And there's a lot of discussion about whether a pillow is ideal. Whether you want to just have a tee shirt in there. John Bonham from Led Zeppelin famously had just some strips of newspaper that he would use to provide muffling and get the sound that he wants. I have a pillow in there, I used to have the pillow in there really up against this head, coming almost all the way up to here and it really gave it a very clicky, muffled sound. And what I've done now to slightly open it up a little bit more is to really move the pillow down so it's just kind of resting up against this back batter head on the bass drum. And it really gives me the sound that I like. And now if I was recording I might use a different sound. If I was playing in a live environment, I might also use a different amount of muffling. For practicing here in this room, this is what works best for me. And it's really individual, you have to figure out what works best for your bass drum and the room that you're playing."