Im wanting to learn how to do blast beats. I can sort of get one going for a little bit but then either my arms get tired or something throws me off. Any suggestions about praticing or tequnique or whatever?

__________________

lots of practice, you can't sit down at a kit and blast for half an hour straight, you need to build up, try Dereks exercises (visist the derek forum to find them, they are explained better there than I can do) or try things like playing with heavy sticks against a pillow, (this is great for building wrists cause a pillow offers no rebound and so each hit is all from the wrists, a great little work out)

erm there are other little tricks etc. but on of the main points I learnt a while back about drumming, going slowly for ages works your endurance better than 5 seconds of shere speed.

hope that helps, I can blast for around a minute and I only tried blasting a year ago...

Yeah, its the same with blast beats as it is with running, you start out slow to get the technique in and get used to the motion and as you go on you can do it longer and longer and when your at a point where you can do it long (your choice) you can start working a little with speed.

__________________

Ive only been blasting for about 2 months and im not that bad for a starter. But i can only do it for like 10 seconds. My band wanted to do a Malevolent Creation song that started out with blast beats so i was forced to learn how to do it . But when i first started, i didnt realy know what a blastbeat was. I saw tabs on the different types of blasts and i have been just practicing playing them. I just play blasts while practicing randomly for like 10 seconds at a time. No hardcore practicing, just playing them for a couple seconds at a time. I can already see results. Other than that, i have nothing else to tell you.

__________________

thanks

__________________

hehe. it's all about relaxing your muscles. there's plenty of ways to blast (wrist, fingers, gravity, rebounding, whatever) and most people I know that are avid blasters use their fingers because it prevents as much strain and you can keep it up longer. I agree with that, but I do think using the wrist provides more power and more stick control. pretty much the best thing I can tell you to do is just exercise your wrist and blast as fast as you can for as long as you can, also doing paradiddles very quickly helps. you'll need to make the muscles loose and strong. I don't really know.....there's not much of a professional explanation for it. just do a few speed exercises like hitting your right foot with your right hand on the same beat and keeping it even while seeing how fast you can go. that's a good stamina-builder and also good for coordination with the legs.

^ thanks

__________________

I was just practicing today and found an effective method that helped with my double bass and blast beats. As i said, i just did it today so im not sure if it will have a big effect but it seemed like it did after i did it for about 5 minutes. So i thought i would share it. I just played a medium tempoed double bass beat. Dont work your ass off trying to do the double bass, just do it a good speed for you that you will be able to hold for a few minutes. So the double bass pattern would be RLRLRLRLRL. On every R, hit the snare and a cymbal of you choice at the same time. In other words, both hands hit the same time as your right foot. I was doing this for about 5 minutes straight, changing the cymbal i was playing on every few seconds. After i did it for about 5 minutes, i started blasting and playing double bass as fast i could, and it was pretty damn fast. The muscles in my wrists and legs felt sore after so i know it must work. Im going to start doing this everytime i practice to see if it makes a difference in my playing. You could probably change them around to practice different types of blast beats also. If you managed to read through the whole thing, i congratulate you.

__________________

what speed are you talking About?!

The easiest way to blast is using the rebound of the snare (so I had to put my snarehead as tight as possible) and put the stick back with your fingers...elsewhere you`ll hurt your wrists if you´re doin it wrong.

I dont know about you guys but when i blast at slower speeds, i use my wrists. Then when im doing faster blasts i use my fingers and my wrists.

__________________

the best advice i can give on the art of blasting is to sit at your set and play sixteenth notes with your right hand (or left if youre a leftie) until youre comfortable doing that (i dont mean youll be comfortable after one sitting) then work on the doublebass drum techniques. good songs to start out with would be 80s-era slayer (espicially reign in blood) when dave lombardo would play straight sixteenths and use the snare on down beats only, more modern blasting beating, like that of cannibal corpse, is a more intense and thus more difficult style, and cannibal corpse's drummer isnt that creative (doing mostly blast beats i mean)

What are blast beats? I've been playing the drums a long time, but I have never heard that term before.

.....I'm obviously new to this forum eh?

okay since you are obviously a CoF fan, you know the ending to duck and her embrace, right after the drum solo, that really fast beat that sounds like a slow snare roll, that is a blast beat.

it goes something like this:

HH *********
SN *********
BD *********

usually played as 16ths at around 120 Bpm.

they sound very cool

and are very Kvlt, there are other types of blast but that is your most basic and well known blast.

__________________

HH *-*-*-*-*-*
SN *-*-*-*-*-*
BD **********

But it needs much more work...especially in the 200+ zones.

what you have there mr. Worm, is a cannibal blast

__________________

Haha, this thread seams like a blast beat class. There are a ton of different blasts.

__________________

thats cause blast beats are so cool

__________________

Thanks, I get it now. I've seen them explained in drum magazines, but they didn't call it a blast beat, they just called it a "fast" beat.

yeah the technical name is a blast beat.

__________________