Playing Feathered Bass Drum Notes in Jazz

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is David Pakman on behalf of Expert Village. In this video series, I'll be talking about the fundamentals of jazz drumming. Okay, now that we've found one way to add in our snare drum into what we're doing with our fundamentals to jazz drumming series, the next step is to use the bass drum. And, in jazz, something you're not necessarily going to hear too often is that loud bass drum playing, because you're really dropping the foot in this heel up manner that I'm doing here and really slamming it down against the bass head. Something common in jazz drumming is called feathering the bass drum, where we're actually trying to play as softly as possible. And I'll demonstrate that with my heel down on the foot board. As you can see, I'm playing extremely quietly, my foot is staying as relaxed as possible, and I'm just tapping the beater against the snare drum. So what, or rather against the bass drum head. So what I'll do now is I'll play my high hat and jazz ride pattern and I'll very lightly feather those quarter notes on the bass drum."