Drums have only just started to click. Now I have questions.

[The-XaiaX]

What helped me with the stock bass pedal was getting rid of one of the bars in the base of the drum set, and putting the bass pedal on the rear bar. It's a little bit more wobbly that way, but not enough to mess things up, in my experience.

Remember that a real bass pedal wouldn't be sitting directly in front of you, either, the way you kind of have to play with the RB kit. If I'm on a regular RB drumset I'll generally turn myself to the left a bit, so that the I'm basically lined up with the space between red/yellow pads, instead of lined up front to the drumset. (This is probably why I liked putting the bass pedal further back, so that I could sit a bit closer to the red pad.)

Your hip shouldn't be hurting, that means you're using too much leg and not enough ankle. Even if you're keeping your heel up, it's a little better to push off the pedal with your foot, instead of trying to lift your leg with your hip. In that way, you don't press on the pedal with your foot so much as push off the pedal and then let your foot fall on it. (This will result in a lot of stomping on the pedal, though) You can also extend this technique for double hits, by pushing off then tapping with the foot while your leg is raised, and then setting the foot down. (This makes it hard to do TRIPLE hits, though.)

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One other thing for going up drum difficulty, try changing to lefty mode. When I was starting out with Rock Band 1, I worked my way through everything on easy, then medium, and tried to go through hard but hit a wall. So I started over on easy, but on lefty mode. That quickly became too easy so I jumped it up to medium on lefty. Once I'd cleared all the songs on lefty/medium, I went back to hard and it was kind of cake. Then I repeated the process with expert and lefty/hard. Now I can play expert/lefty on damn near everything I can play on expert/righty. It seems to be a good way to teach yourself limb independence. (I used my left foot for the bass pedal, as well. I also started using the cymbals in RB2 so when "Pro" came out for RB3 I didn't have to adjust, I just had to unlearn all the places I'd mis-heard cymbals vs. drums, and completely relearn Move Along and many other things with disco flips.)

[meck77]

Heal to Toe may help with the hip pain. I think its a bit awkward personally but I would wager it will cut down on the pain in the hip

[Bront20]

I have huge legs, so I find putting the pedal out to the side of the kit worked for me.

[SJBenoist]

What are you sitting on? Do you have a throne, or are you trying to use a chair?
It sounds like you are too low to the ground and you need to elevate your seat by several inches. I'd try 3" to start.

You may also (in addition) be keeping your foot at a 90 degree angle to your ankle. Try playing either with your heel firmly planted to the ground ("heel-down") while lifting just your toes and the ball of your foot, or by keeping your heel elevated above your toes ("heel up"), and the ball of your foot down.
The first way involves just lifting the front of your foot up and "tapping" it down to play a note. The second lifts the whole leg and "bounces" it to play a note.

If you play heel-down, you may experience pain in muscle on the front of your shin, but that's normal and will get better with conditioning. AFAIK, your hip should never hurt.


P.S. Conversations just like this occur on drum forums all the time. Try searching Google for "Hi Hat Position", or "Bass pedal technique" and you'll see what I mean.

[skyp1e]

I'm using my keyboard bench (which is adjustable, but sort of a pain to adjust). I gave my son a throne to go with his RB kit, so I might borrow that and just raise the thing up to a suitable height.

The rest of your post I'll have to process and try to implement, perhaps tomorrow as it's too late to play RB tonight.

[Bront20]

I need a large person throne one of these days. I do well enough with a kitchen chair though that seems to be the right height.

[FujiSkunk]

I use an office chair with the arms removed. I'd probably like better an actual drum throne that had a little bounce to it, but I'm cheap, so this will do. Plus I can slump back in victory after the latest gold star, something that would be dangerous to do on a drum throne.

[tnevaker]

not this kind

[skyp1e]

Things have improved some on the pain issue since I discovered that you needn't allow the pedal to fully come up in order to register hits pressing down.

I was lifting my foot completely off the pedal because I thought that if I didn't that I'd fail to trigger.

Now that I know I can just let up on it a little bit and then come back down my hip has not hurt even a little bit.

Still, there's LOTS of room for improvement. I'm going to be experimenting with a lot of the stuff that Doc recommended and some other suggestions from this thread as well.

[FujiSkunk]

not this kind

Ah, neat! Pricey, but that's the cheapskate in me talking.

Things have improved some on the pain issue since I discovered that you needn't allow the pedal to fully come up in order to register hits pressing down.

Yeah, definitely don't lift your foot all the way. I'm trying to master two-footed playing, and the same rule applies to the hi-hat pedal: The less movement you can make for the same performance, the better. Actually that applies to all drum playing. At least for me, it's really easy to start showboating on the drums, but unless you have the muscles to back up your flailing, you're going to wear yourself out prematurely and you might even get hurt.