Left Foot Independence

Multitasking With Your Left Foot

For many of us set players, our left foot serves as little more than a common time keeper. It’s the limb that is often over-shadowed by all the others; limited to holding down the fort while all the others go off on another adventure. More appropriately considered, it is hardly ever allowed to go out on a limb itself.

Well, I’ve given it some thought and concluded that on most occasions, reducing the left foot to keeping the time solid and consistent is the RIGHT thing to do. Unless you are involved in a more progressive style of music, plan on hosting drum clinics, or just plain uninterested, it may not be necessary to give your left foot more responsibility. However, if you’re like me, very interested in further developing the left foot for some purpose or another, then this new series of articles should be very helpful and inspiring.

I want these first couple of lessons on the subject of our left foot to offer the basic building blocks for advanced left foot independence. The ultimate goal is to create a road map and point you in the right direction for increasing the facility of your left foot on your own. I’ve been working on these polyrhythmic concepts for over four years, and I still haven’t reached a level that I am satisfied with. To sum it up, I don’t believe there is a limit to how far you can take these ideas I want to share.

Be sure to play each left foot system with each practice pattern at a slow tempo until it feels comfortable. And of course, feel free to experiment and make up your own practice patterns to use with the left foot systems. I’ll be increasing the difficulty with future installments of this topic. Have fun.

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