Blast beats

Really starting to practice these
But don't seem to have the stamina or power to keep it up
I can only do it with the right hand fast enough
so i was wondering if anyone has any tips on helping me improve?

Also
when playing a common blast beat - what beats are the bass drum played on, every single snare hit or just on the 1, 2, 3, 4? - im having trouble working it out by listening to bands such as job for a cowboy etc
And to get the faster speeds, is the motion from the fingers or the wrist?
Finally, will the speed and stamina just come from practice or is there any tips you guys can give (if not im not afraid of alittle hard work)

P.s ive looked but couldnt find a suitable blast beat thread, but if you find one that this should be in let me know and ill re-direct it

Cheers
 
Just develop hand/foot things.

Do one hand at a time (Left):

LFLFLFLFLFLFLFLF... etc. Reverse FLFLFLFLFLFLFLFLFLFL... etc.

Right hand:

RFRFRFRFRFRF... reverse FRFRFRFRFRFRFR....on and on.

Start very slow and precise, working on technique and fluid motion... for a long time. Use a mirror.

Rather than gradually speeding up the tempo, use METRIC MODULATION: Start with quarters... move up to 1/8th notes... 1/8 note triplets, 16ths, 16th trips... and on and on. Then, tempo doesn't matter. If you can play a powerful and accurate 32nd note "blast beat" in 120bpm, you're right up there with "the pros".

Then try:

RFLFRFLFRFLFRFLF... alternating strokes and then reverse: FRFLFRFLFRFL... ect.

If you use double bass, do all these exercises with one foot, then do them with the other. Then alternate them.

Very basic concepts, where you use up all the possibilities. Remember, some beats start with the foot and others start with the snare. This is why some "math metal" parts confuse guys, because they don't realize this.
 
Just develop hand/foot things.

Do one hand at a time (Left):

LFLFLFLFLFLFLFLF... etc. Reverse FLFLFLFLFLFLFLFLFLFL... etc.

Right hand:

RFRFRFRFRFRF... reverse FRFRFRFRFRFRFR....on and on.

Start very slow and precise, working on technique and fluid motion... for a long time. Use a mirror.

Rather than gradually speeding up the tempo, use METRIC MODULATION: Start with quarters... move up to 1/8th notes... 1/8 note triplets, 16ths, 16th trips... and on and on. Then, tempo doesn't matter. If you can play a powerful and accurate 32nd note "blast beat" in 120bpm, you're right up there with "the pros".

Then try:

RFLFRFLFRFLFRFLF... alternating strokes and then reverse: FRFLFRFLFRFL... ect.

If you use double bass, do all these exercises with one foot, then do them with the other. Then alternate them.

Very basic concepts, where you use up all the possibilities. Remember, some beats start with the foot and others start with the snare. This is why some "math metal" parts confuse guys, because they don't realize this.

Seemed to work for me.
 
about your left hand can't seem to keep up

my best advice is to do the straight 8s exercise.

what to do is to hit 8 even strokes with the right but for the left do 16.
that helped me greatly to train my left hand without neglecting the practice with my right hand. Sure you can do more such as hitting 32 with the left and do 16 with the right but all in all it just comes down to practicing the rudiments.

hope this helps
 
Some people told me that the flying finger thing doesn't work. So I'm just using the normal stick holding. I'm kinda slow on left hand, it's only 360 bpm...
 
Flying fingers is merely using your fingers instead of your wrists for blasting, nothing more, if you don't use your fingers much then it's not gonna help you. Use whatever method you use in the rest of your playing, a lot of people will say that you have to switch to fingers to do fast blasts, this is false, do whatever is most comfortable for you.

You should definitely not use your arms of course, wrist or fingers only, and you should be allowing the stick to rebound naturally (the freestroke). Derek roddy's exercises might help you out, there's a few videos of them on youtube, here's the first one where he gets into the exercises...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPFEP_stPGI


He mentions an exercise similar to what Ian Ballard posted, it's a very good exercise that one! But really the best way to get better at blasting is to simply do it, if your left hand is slow then just start at a speed that is comfortable for your left and work your way up, there are no tricks here. Try all the variations too.
 
Ok guys thanks very much
Ill try that exerces LFLFLFLFLF and also the derek roddy video you've posted
Thanks very much and hopefully i shall improve on them!
 
For myself i had the same porblem except my right hand was the slow and weak one only because im a left handed drummer ofcourse:p But doing all these exercises will really help and what i found out later after doing these exercises that i had the stamina and quite a bit of speed but then i tried a new technique with it called the push pull technique which is great for fast ride work in thrash, and blasting

It is basically getting two hits out of one arm movement
If you need help understanding this technique just reply to this and then i wil get back to it eventually
 
Flying fingers is merely using your fingers instead of your wrists for blasting, nothing more, if you don't use your fingers much then it's not gonna help you. Use whatever method you use in the rest of your playing, a lot of people will say that you have to switch to fingers to do fast blasts, this is false, do whatever is most comfortable for you.

You should definitely not use your arms of course, wrist or fingers only, and you should be allowing the stick to rebound naturally (the freestroke). Derek roddy's exercises might help you out, there's a few videos of them on youtube, here's the first one where he gets into the exercises...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPFEP_stPGI


He mentions an exercise similar to what Ian Ballard posted, it's a very good exercise that one! But really the best way to get better at blasting is to simply do it, if your left hand is slow then just start at a speed that is comfortable for your left and work your way up, there are no tricks here. Try all the variations too.
Derek says you should use arms when playing metal.
That sounds crazy.
I can't trust him.
 
Well he probably just meant for big accents and stuff...moeller is an arm based motion and loads of drummers use it, so maybe he was talking about something like that?
 
personally i would suggest looking up the push-pull technique
:)
 
Hmmm I dunno if that'll work for him, if he's not using his fingers at the moment it will take him years to become proficient enough at push/pull to actually use it in blasting, I have seen plenty of drummers use push/pull for blasts and they seem no faster than guys that use wrist or fingers.
 
Ok, in my opinion, I do not believe that when you are starting blast beats you need to practice hand foot stuff. I believe, and Derek says in one of his videos, that getting hand foot up to blasting speed is much harder then it is to blast at that speed. I can blast around 200-210, but I cannot do hand foot stuff nearly that fast. I work on it, but it is not at that speed. I just practiced blasts very slow starting at 100 and moved tempo up gradually, and one day it kinda just "clicked" and I could play 50bpm faster fairly accurately. If hand speed is the problem then either practice blasting near your maximum tempo for good periods of time, or just take it to the pad and work your hand speed there. Speed comes with time. By the way, a normal blast beat is this-Ride syncs up with bass on the beat and the ands, snare fills in on e and a.
 
Last edited:
Really starting to practice these
But don't seem to have the stamina or power to keep it up
I can only do it with the right hand fast enough
so i was wondering if anyone has any tips on helping me improve?

Also
when playing a common blast beat - what beats are the bass drum played on, every single snare hit or just on the 1, 2, 3, 4? - im having trouble working it out by listening to bands such as job for a cowboy etc
And to get the faster speeds, is the motion from the fingers or the wrist?
Finally, will the speed and stamina just come from practice or is there any tips you guys can give (if not im not afraid of alittle hard work)

P.s ive looked but couldnt find a suitable blast beat thread, but if you find one that this should be in let me know and ill re-direct it

Cheers

This is what you need my friend........
http://www.hudsonmusic.com/site/pro...=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=118&category_id=8

Haha.
Cheers.
D.
 
Ok, in my opinion, I do not believe that when you are starting blast beats you need to practice hand foot stuff. I believe, and Derek says in one of his videos, that getting hand foot up to blasting speed is much harder then it is to blast at that speed. I can blast around 200-210, but I cannot do hand foot stuff nearly that fast. I work on it, but it is not at that speed. I just practiced blasts very slow starting at 100 and moved tempo up gradually, and one day it kinda just "clicked" and I could play 50bpm faster fairly accurately. If hand speed is the problem then either practice blasting near your maximum tempo for good periods of time, or just take it to the pad and work your hand speed there. Speed comes with time. By the way, a normal blast beat is this-Ride syncs up with bass on the beat and the ands, snare fills in on e and a.

I hear ya. Technically, I can blast up to about 220 - 230BPM (as in, my hands are fast enough to do so), but my right foot speed isn't nearly that fast, so my actual top blasting speed is usually about 200 - 205BPM.
 
I don't understand the whole numerical obsession with tempos. Why worry about 200... 300 bpm? If you have a competent ability to modulate the rate in which you perform your beats, you can start at 120 bpm in quarters and by the time you've reached 32nd notes, you are blazin'!

Quarters: 120 bpm.

Eighths: 240 bpm

Sixteenths: 480... etc, etc.

I'm just not sure you're ever going to go into a studio and play at "360 beats per minute". They will set the click at the song tempo and "blast" will be a modulation of that. I've played in many metal bands, and nobody's ever said, "Hey, my new song is 340 bpm!".
 
When people give say "I can play 250bpm" they usually mean they can play 16th notes at that tempo. I guess 16th notes have kinda just become the standard to measure speed in the metal world.
 
Oh God....don't get me started on this 250 thing.
Besides.....300 is the new 250. Hahahahahahaha. Didn't ya know? LoL.

Still in all the years of playing this stuff....I've seen only a handful actually play 250.

D.
 
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