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Rochuslast Friday at 9:39 PM2 repliesview on HN

The relevant issue is independent or coordinated control of concurrent musical parts, not whether those parts happen to use different instruments. Piano, Organ (with bass pedal) and drum-kit playing are canonical examples of the same underlying challenge. Skilled performance can require separately controlled fingers, hands, and feet, while the player experiences them as an integrated whole.

I started to play the drums with my feed on a bass pedal sixteen years ago and do the bass with my left hand. This worked naturally from day one (though I got better with more exercise). There is just not enough time to think about it, as the author suggests. Here is a recording where you can see it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJV0I7KgsJc, left guy). And here is a more recent solo recording: https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1317, just one guy, all live, no overdupps.


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jefftklast Saturday at 1:57 AM

[author]

This is fantastic! Do you have more videos of your foot-drumming? Or could you say more about how you do it? Are the pedals velocity-sensitive?

This is my setup: https://www.jefftk.com/p/making-a-pedalboard Four beaterless kick drum pedals. Another example in use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQLBfuaNqs

Not having tried it, I'd guess your setup is much more flexible, but requires much more work to provide a really steady beat on? And so would be a bit less well-suited to playing dance music (the main thing I do)?

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moabtoday at 7:44 PM

Rochus, a huge thanks for the comment and discovering your fascinating site. I was blown away by how musical the recent Suno covers of your funk songs are. I would not have been able to guess that they were AI generated. Please post more videos in the future---I am convinced there is a large audience that would be interested in learning more about your setup and seeing you improvise.

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