Here's kind of a funny video by Alvin Atkinson that was shared by a forum user asking about about feathering the bass drum in jazz— the technique for playing jazz time that includes running quarter notes played barely-audibly on the bass drum. It's a Jazz At Lincoln Center video, so this is officially approved doctrine, now that Mr. Marsalis has forced the existence of such a thing:
Describing the technique: he proposes “feathering” by tapping quarter notes with your heel, with the bass drum beater buried against the head, rather than activating the beater and hitting the drum. The sound aspect comes from your heel hitting the foot plate, and probably causing some resonance from the stage floor.
It's basically: “What if we didn't feather, but we called it feathering?”
This is funny to me because, as basically* a non-feathering guy, I've been doing that this whole time with my left foot— there's no good reason this technique has to be done on the bass drum— to the exact same effect. We had to pass it through the feathering filter and give it a name, and suddenly it's an approved technique.
* - I feather the bass drum— actually playing it— more than I used to, deliberately, for a specific reason. I still don't play it as part of my time feel routinely. I really don't do anything routinely, but that's another topic...
I don't think I know any players who even think this way, with this focus on labeled, required techniques. The actual art form we're involved with is conducted on a different set of terms altogether. And that's another other topic...
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