now we're ready to talk about basic playing techniques so let's actually talk about the position of the drum and the position of the music stand when we're playing you want to position yourself so that you're facing the conductor make sure that the drum is either straight up and down or at a slight angle you don't want it to be all the way horizontal otherwise the sound won't project correctly also with the music stand be sure to place it in front of the drum at just below eye level with the conductor so what you're looking for is being able to see both the music and the conductor without having to look up and down like this when choosing your bass drum Mallet remember that you want to use a concert bass drum Mallet you don't want to use a marching bass drum Mallet or a Tony Mallet for for instance the bd1 is a great Mallet because it's soft felt it's a nice good sized head and it's got a good weight so you can activate the whole drum for your playing area you want to generally play just off the center of the drum you'll get a nice big deep full sound in general your stroke is just going to be slow keeping the hand relaxed using the arm big muscles so again you're you're getting a deep deep sound a dark sound from the drum now let's talk about muffling the base drum some stands come with a foot rest so that you can prop your foot up and use your knee to muffle the drum if your stand doesn't have a foot rest you can also use a chair or if a chair is Too Tall you can use the base of a snare drum stand as I'm doing here just rest your foot on it and your knees at the correct height to muffle the drum now in general en what you're going to do is play the drum and let the the sound resonate no muffling and then muffle after you've played when you muffle you reach around with your left hand to muffle the resonant head and you use your knee to muffle the batter side head for faster passages or for instance during marches you may want to use a little bit of muffling that stays on the head as you play so in this case I'll let my knee rest gently on the batter side head as I play this ensures that you hear the definition of each note that I play now you want to be careful that you don't press too hard muffle too much because then the drum will sound dead and and sort of boxy now let's talk about some different sounds that you can get out of the bass drum we've already talked about the bd1 the the general Mallet you can use this same Mallet and play in a different beating spot and get an entirely different sound if you play right in the center of the drum you get a really big impact if you need more articulation the bd3 is a great option it's a smaller head and the felt is more tightly wrapped so you can hear more articulation with each note that you [Music] play if you need to roll in the bass drum make sure that you've got two mallets of the same size the bd7 is a great option because they're slightly smaller slightly lighter in weight so you can move them quickly to get to the roll speed that you need when you're rolling on the bass drum play a little bit closer to the edge this way you get the resonant sound of the head without all the attack that you get when you're closer to the center of the [Music] head rolling on a bassum is a lot like rolling on a Tony you're using a a hand toand single stroke roll not a buzz roll or double stroke roll like you would use on a snare drum the most important thing is to listen and make sure that you're getting a sustained sound so you want your hands to be nice and relaxed and at a low Dynamic level you don't have to be rolling very fast at all just make sure that your roll stays even and that as the dynamic level goes up your hands speed up [Music] if you need a drier sound on the drum another option besides your knee and your hand to muffle is a towel one thing I like to do is put the towel up here and use a clip to keep it in place then you can play longer articulated passages without having to worry about having your knee in [Music] place [Music] so the most important thing to remember about the concert bass drum is the sound you're looking for that sound is low and sustained remember the bass drum is the lowest sound in the band or the orchestra that you're playing in so you want to make sure that it's the right kind of sound you're not looking for the sound of a drum set based drum or a marching base drum it's a much more resonant and open sound so remember to always think about the sounds that you're making listen to the sounds that you're making and make sure that the right sounds for the music that you're playing