I’ve started writing Double Bass Drumming Training Manual. This is a companion to Bobby Rondinelli and Michael Lauren’s well-regarded book The Encyclopedia of Double Bass Drumming. The manual will work equally well as a companion to either the Original or Revised edition of the book since the content of the first fourteen chapters of the two editions is identical.

The book is often cited as a valuable resource for aspiring double bass drummers. Indeed, it is a really good book. In my opinion, however, it doesn’t offer enough structure and step-by-step guidance for a beginner to know how to consume it effectively. If you have a teacher, then that isn’t a problem: they can advise you on how to read it. I don’t currently have a real teacher, so I decided to write this companion instead. It is intended to encapsulate my approach to using the book in sufficient detail for a beginner to follow along at a sustainable pace. The manual describes its pedagogical approach at some length for those who are interested. In short, the overarching principle of the manual is the best training regimen is the one you actually follow. The manual is not intended to be optimal—my hope is that it will be doable.

Bear in mind that it could naturally take a lifetime to “master” double bass drumming and that there’s enough material in the book to last said lifetime. Since my plan is to write the manual as I progress through the book, it’s likely that it’ll take years to finish. To give you an idea of the current pace of writing, I started working through the book and working on it in late July 2026. So far—early September 2026—I’ve completed Chapter 1. This chapter is ready for anyone else to work through. I’ve since graduated to Chapter 2. This is now mostly complete too. It’s likely that it’ll take about another month to complete Chapter 2. Note that I’ll revise older chapters of the manual as the pedagogical approach evolves and to fix errors but I don’t expect Chapter 1 or Chapter 2 to change drastically in spirit or structure. I consider both these chapters to be ready for consumption by other students.

Even though it won’t be complete for a long time, I still believe there’s value in sharing it with the world, particularly for anybody who’s just starting out like I am. The manual is deliberately very prescriptive. Assuming I can maintain the current rate of working through the (lifelong) process, a student—even an already-advanced double-bass drummer—who follows the manual as written should never catch up with me. If anybody does, it strongly suggests that they’re not following the approach properly (and skipping ahead) or that my progress has slowed significantly. Or that I’m bored of the whole thing!

The source code for the manual is available on GitHub and released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International licence. I invite anyone who’s interested to follow along, open issues as they find them and contribute if they have ideas. Contributions will be considered if they follow the prescribed pedagogical approach. If you don’t like that constraint but find some value in the content anyway, then you’re welcome to fork the project and repurpose it for your own ends subject, of course, to the terms of the licence.

Note that you will need to own a copy of either the Original or Revised Edition of the book as the manual intentionally doesn’t include the book itself.

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