PEDAL HAT / LEFT FOOT TECHNIQUE | Drum lesson with Jay Postones (TESSERACT) 

Definitely underrated. There's so much you can do with "foot-hats" (Thomas Lang is a nice reference)

“This is me…I had hair once.” 🤣 Lmao I feel you man. I’m in the same boat.

Thanks Jay. I have peripheral neuropathy from nerve damage in my right leg, so I've been working hard on my left foot technique more to compensate. It's taking a while lol. Your music helps a ton! Nobody else seems to implement pedal hat into their playing anything like you. It somehow always sounds fresh and refreshing, even after hearing the same grooves for years.

The player in your website is freaking amazing for practice. Thank you for dividing it in sections and for the notation too, you rule good Sir.

What an awesome lesson, dude. Fantastic demo of this concept. The natural 8th pulse, letting gravity do the work, and focusing on economy of motion. Keep making these!

Thank you for a simple and practical answer! This is so often overlooked but absolutely critical! Thank you so much for this

great lesson. Pedal hat is something I've oft neglected in my years of playing because I'm so reliant on my left foot for balance so I never developed that "bouncing" 8th-note left foot. This is something I should work on, thanks.

Wow, interesting, Recently I started a work on a Tesseract song cover (almost done) deliberately to develop and improve my left foot technique. And only now I see this video)) So glad that you mentioned this topic. Everyone wants to play double-bass pedals(me too) but left hi-hat is a gold mine if you know how to use it

Just want to thank you Jay, these lessons are so so helpful for someone with a love for metal that still wants to be a well-rounded drummer. After watching this vid and practicing some today, I was able to play the first half of Dystopia with the pedal hat pulse!!

that stengah cover was pretty fire mate

Wish I had put more emphasis on this when I was first learning the drums. Very hard for me to pick it up now but that won’t stop me from trying 😂

Gold

Thanks for this video! I love the sound and density it creates in the background. I am struggling with pedal hat and playing more complex right foot grooves. Is it "just" muscle memory on the left foot side? Which exercises are useful to support to learn playing to complex grooves? I'm sure it is an iterative process and getting more complex over time will help, but maybe there are some exercises to help on the way? And to answer your questions: I prefer a nice mix between longer and short videos. It is always nice to have short instructional videos for specific content like pedal hat, but nice to have more detailed videos for stuff like odd time signature and the like.

the pedal hat is extremely important to me - I just love it as it's subtle but makes everything sound better but it's maybe almost subliminal due to the metronomic nature. Like John Bonham would sound completely different without it ..for example.

Mike from monuments is good with his foothats as well

Hmmm, I think I'm going to blame you and Tomas (but mostly you because of those awesome "NEEDS MORE PEDAL HAT" shirts) for what I did to a 9000 series stand ten or so years ago. Maybe it was just a manufacturing defect or maybe I was just really, really into Glints Collide at the time but I snapped the bar that connects to the chain and goes up the shaft. I was playing fast eighth notes at a gig and the pedal went straight to the floor. I reached out to DW about repairing it and they told me to reach out to shop I bought it at who told me to reach out to DW in an endless loop of runarounds which lasted several years until I just gave up and bought another one. That stand was less than two years old, otherwise in pristine condition and has been sitting in the basement of my parents' house ever since. Seriously though, adding in pedal hat when my left leg wouldn't be doing anything otherwise has changed my life. I love that both Tesseract's and Meshuggah's music have that little element there and how important it is to the groove when you really notice it.

Needs more pedal hat mate

Wish i havent played for 15 years without learning this technique. It soo hard to learn now. Damn double base has broke my brain

Is the intro song a TesseracT song? So groovy

Thanks, Jay, super interesting. I am struggling to coordinate my right foot and keep playing what it is supposed to play whenever i try playing 8s on my left foot. Any idea what might help to fix this?

What do you do with your left foot when you’re in 15/16 or some other 16th subdivision?