Groove Based Left Foot Strengthening Exercise

In this lesson you will be learning an incredibly simple idea for strengthening your left foot. It is more of an exercise at this point than an actual groove construction idea but it will be used later on to free up your right foot to play on other pedals if they are available. All you will be doing at this point is taking our list of Level 0 Grooves and switching the right foot bass drum to a left. It is as simple as that.

The idea of doing this is to build up your left foot to the point where it can be used in place of the right. This will make your double kick playing stronger as well as any time keeping with the hi hat. As well as this it can open up the option of using additional pedals for percussion instruments. There is also the very useful perk of having a strong left foot if anything happens to your right, for example if your main bass drum skin breaks when using a double kick, you will be able to switch to your left foot to finish the song.

The list of grooves below is a repeat of all basic level 0 grooves but the kick has been re written to the left foot. Practice all with as many different right hand parts as you can think of, I have included a variety in this collection. This is important to do as each right hand pattern presents it's own unique independence/co-ordination issues with different kick placements. In later lessons I will increase the difficulty around this idea but the aim here is to just get you started.

Bear in mind that because you are using the left foot on the second bass drum pedal nothing will be holding the hi hats down. If you don't have a drop clutch or similar this will result in the hi hats being open. That isn't a problem but is worth remembering. I have used the ride for all examples but feel free to move this around.