The hihat FOOT technique I wish I knew as a beginner
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
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If you are unable to keep left foot time on the hihat - or you can pull it off… but it’s really cumbersome, heavy-feeling, and anything but effortless… than today’s lesson is for you!
Without this essential skill of keeping autopilot left foot time, you’ll end up very limited with what all you can do on the drums in the future - I certainly wish I knew to work on this when I was a beginner.
But thankfully there’s a simple foot technique that makes this effortless, allowing you to keep better time, build deeper 4-way independence, glue your grooves together (and make them more interesting), AND play better with a band. That means jamming well with others and nailing songs, which is awesome.
I’ll show you exactly how to do all of this in 3 simple steps. YOU CAN DO THIS.
I believe that YOU can become the drummer everyone wants in their band. Anyone can learn the drums, and you’re far more capable of mastering this instrument than you think you are. Don’t sell yourself short!
SUBSCRIBE for more Non Glamorous videos that help you know what to practice so that you can gain confidence, nail songs, and be the drummer everyone wants to jam with.
Stay Non Glamorous,
Stephen
Check out thenonglamorousdrummer.com for more content, including free e-guides designed to fast-track your drumming progress!
Total newbie here. Just got a couple of lessons and had to continue on my own. My teacher had me using the hihat with the stick and I kept noticing until yesterday evening that I was bouncing my left heel as a metronome all the time but never dared playing the pedal with the foot, just lifting it from time to time to splash a bit and for that reason I was always setting the hihat with very small distance between the "hi" and the "hat"! You can imagine my eyes watching this video today on my way to work!!! Cant wait to sit on the drums and try it. Thank you so much!!!
you are sucha good, kind, detailed teacher 🧡💛💚💙💜
21:40 "Practice until your left foot becomes an extension of your body." Wisdom. Your body isn't really your body until you have mastered its motion.
Thank you so much for this video. I am just starting out, less than a year even, and having a hard time, figuring out my left foot. This will help tremendously, thank you for taking your time to show us all these techniques. 🥁
The thing that trips me up with left foot timekeeping is switching between the timekeeping automatic motion and the deliberate variations involving my left foot.
Same
How long are you playing? It's difficult at the beginning.
Think of the changes as "lifts" or "pauses." I think of them like my foot is a flap opening up. Like a train steam whistle.
@@tldw8354 a while but not really consistently
This was a very helpful video. Admittedly, I haven't really done much with my left foot, and have mostly been hitting the high hat with my stick. I can definitely see where this would be helpful. My only problem is that because I live in an apartment, I'm mostly using an electronic drum kit, and the high hat pedal doesn't always seem to be Quite as sensitive or subtle to make this happen. I will play around with it though. As someone who has just been teaching themselves how to play drums on their own for the past few years, your videos have given me quite a few helpful tips. Thanks.
I hear ya about the e-kit hihat pedal not being very subtle or sensitive. I am struggling with mine.
Yeah it is an automatic bounce of my knee. I do that all the time just sitting, and noticed I was doing it unconsciously at the kit too. I wasn't sure that was a technique for the left leg because it was not doing much. I'm going to try this until it works. Great tip!
I was self taught, played in bands, made demos thought I knew everything as we had covered everything from In the City to Iron Man then decided I wanted to learn more so went to a teacher and said I want to play snare rolls like Carl Palmer and the first thing he did was to look at my technique and realised I didn't have much and had me playing the hi-hat with my left foot to keep time rather than just for lifts. So much for thinking I knew everything. Over the years I then went from Topper Headon and John Maher and more into Elvin Jones and Tony Williams and I started to notice a pattern great drummers used their left foot to keep time. It is a dying art but I still see some drummers use this technique.
Dude you’re helping me so much, thank you.
I love your explanation of using your toe instead of the ball of your foot. Just that amplified my control immediately
For hard rock drummer showmanship, there is a lot of value in being able to steadily splash the hi-hat so that the cymbals noticeably rock side-to-side.
Like: "Woah! Look at those things go! How are they doing that?"
I like to keep time on the "&'s" with my left foot on almost every rhythm I play, keeps things interesting and moving.
Thank you very much sir
I needed this vid 👍
Wuddup non-glam fam! 🤘
Thank You 👍🥁👍
From Sweden 🎼🥁🎼🥁🎼❤️
I leg bounce all the time when I'm NOT drumming, so when I went to drumming, I just instinctively did this. This is a good confirmation video!
EDIT: HA! At the end you ask if we ran across a method. Too funny.
Thanks for this, I do need to improve my left foot time keeping.
Great lesson! Thanks Stephen.
The Jim Chapin book 📚 'Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer' very useful.
Tony Williams had a very useful hihat technique....
✌️😎👍
Ginger Baker said in an interview one time that his hi-hat was his metronome.
Thanks for this.
Thanks for the video! Very helpful information as I didn't know what to do with my foot. 😂
im getting some crazy deja vu from this; you did this two years ago lol
Thanks Stephen. Also curious, what’s the blue plastic thing on your hi hat chain?
I stumbled upon the bounce. There are days where my left foot is better than others
Can you do an updated / very simple setup video? Where to position each drum and more importantly, high-hat and what if you have a double kick? I'm talking 101 :D
Ahhh... What if the music doesn't call for hihat notes at regular intervals. I can pump out a hihat 8th note pulse, but it doesn't make sense in most of the music styles I play.
Newbie here. Do you have a video that outlines when you would want to be keeping time with the high hat and maybe when its not needed. For instance, are you mostly using time on the high hat when you’re doing fills? I always assume time is kept by just hitting the high hat with a stick or on the ride.
If you're playing on the hi-hat with sticks, keeping time with your left foot will only make it sound worse. Keeping time with your left foot during fills is great, and it adds some note definition when you're playing on the ride
You forgot to mention that LL Bean slippers are required…
I assume this same technique works for the bass