The Bass Pedal : Blog #5

Introducing : The Bass Drum Pedal aka Single Pedal aka Kick Drum Pedal.

(image credit : drummerworld.com)

In particular, this pedal is the Ludwig-Musser Speed King, also dubbed the Squeak King because of the odd squeaking noise the right spring makes when you play it even moderately fast.

Though almost every type of music uses some variant of the bass pedal, its most popular incarnation is used mostly in blues, rock and jazz. Bass pedals have been around for a while - in fact William Ludwig invented them back in 1909.

They're usually placed right next to a bass drum (for rather obvious reasons). And works rather simply, the drummer depresses the pedal, which moves a mechanism that forces the head of the pedal to strike the drum.
There are a lot of variations you can have, the most common however, is either a single pedal on a drum, two pedals on a single drum or two pedals on two drums.

I'd also like to introduce this man

(Image credit : Dina Regine )
John Bonham, in-arguably the greatest rock drummer of all time.
Why do I bring this up you ask? Because this man pioneered a technique using the drum pedal called the "Heel-Toe" method. Before he came into the picture, every time drummers wanted to play rolls on the bass, or play complicated rhythms, they were forced to use more than a single pedal - simply because the pedal needs time to return to it's equilibrium position before it can be struck a second time.

How the Heel Toe works is rather simple actually - instead of striking the pedal with your toes, you strike it with your heel, so that the pedal is completely depressed. Then you "catch" it on the rebound and strike it with your toes, so the pedal doesn't go all the way back to it's mean position between hits. It's a difficult skill to master but once you do, it opens you to a huge number of possible rolls that you can pull off.

To be honest, there's not a lot of improvement that can be made to this - I suppose you could switch the spring to one made out of slightly newer alloys so that the squeaking stops, which would make the sound slightly cleaner - though some would say that the squeak is one of the best things about the pedal, it's a slight imperfection that makes the music slightly more human.

If you want to look at the Heel Toe in action check this video: roughly around 1:16, he switches to a foot camera where you can see him use the technique.

Also I'd recommend you check out these videos - Good Times Bad Times the song where he first used the technique and Moby Dick where he really shows some of the excellent sounds you can create using the technique. As a plus point, they're both really amazing songs.