The Heel Toe Thread

Re: Heel Up & Down

Thanks spw, I'm generally pretty good at making good use of my time, I was just wondering whether or not practicing more heel down is more beneficial to my playing. Wavelength sort of cleared that up for me. Thanks a lot to both of you.
 
Re: Heel Up & Down

Practicing heel down will help your ankle motion and pedal control. Do that first. It develops the lower leg but not much of the hamstrings or hip flexors, however.

Heel up playing will develop those.

There are essentially 3 leg motions. Heel down, heel up from the leg ("running" on the kicks) and heel up from the ankle. You need to eventually be able to employ all of them.

The most practical order to learn this stuff is to start with heel down then heel up/leg and finally heel up/ankle.
 
Quick question on heel toe

hi, ive just started to learn heel toe and was just wondering how people play with the heel toe technique. is it usually heel toe heel toe or heel heel toe toe when playing 16th notes. sorry for the newbie question :p
Ryan
 
Question for the experts :

For "unburying the beater" reasons, I would rather consider a toe heel motion (close to constant release a la Steve Smith) instead of a heel toe one but I wonder if potentially one gives more speed than the other ?

Has anybody developped both at the same level ? Can somebody give insight about this ?

Thanks
 
Re: heel toe technique for bigfoot

oh well looks like im stuck. i can get some fast singles on my pedal by a twitching motion i started using.

Take your shoes off and you'll be fine. I got 12 feet too, and I got the cheapest pedals you can get (Basix); they're also the smallest pedals I've ever seen. I still pull off heel-toe easily. Just take off your shoes and you should be alright.
 
Question for the experts :

For "unburying the beater" reasons, I would rather consider a toe heel motion (close to constant release a la Steve Smith) instead of a heel toe one but I wonder if potentially one gives more speed than the other ?

Has anybody developped both at the same level ? Can somebody give insight about this ?

Thanks

Perhaps you have this already figured out, however I find it is good to keep in mind that playing closer to the hinge (regardless of what part of the foot you are using) will require less foot movement to make the beater move the same amount. This means that it should be easier to unbury the beater since less foot motion is required. I am not familiar with the constant release a la Steve Smith, but here are some things I have found.

When I play toe heel strokes I naturally incorporate some slide motion. This is so I can make the first hit real close to the pedals hinge. And then make the Heel hit (more using the whole foot) further up the board. I realize the foot does not have to slide, however I find the extra motion of the sliding allows you to kick the beater into the drum (here the pedal bounces off my foot) rather than keeping contact all the way. Once the beater makes the hit there is nothing to keep it buried into the head. I feel I can get a little more power by kicking the pedal like this as well.

I also play what I refer to as real heel toe where I make the first hit with my heel only (ball and toes are off the foot board) then rapidly rotate the toes downward as the heel comes up. I find this can make doubles so fast the 2 notes are almost indistinguishable due to the fact that the heel hit is so close to the hinge and can almost immediately unbury the beater, however I feel the reset time to get ready for the next double hit takes a bit longer since the foot is more stationary and the second hit is made with the ball/toe part of the foot which is toward the top of the foot board, thus taking more motion to remove the beater. With the Toe heel method I find time to reset for the next double seems faster and easier, however I still feel the actual double hit is a little slower. This may be b/c I have been doing toe heel about 1/10 as long as Heel toe. I hope this may give you some things to think about to help out.
 
Many thanks for your input SleepyDave

I gonna study it thoroughly

Maybe a video could definitely clarify this issue !
 
have you guys who are dieing to look for a video ever look on youtube? ive seen tons of em and im sure theres more and one more thing. For you guys with big feet, that shouldnt stop you from doing the heel toe. I have almost size 12 feet and I can do heel toe with half my off of the pedal. You're not ACTUALLY using the heel to literally push down the pedal.
 
i wish i could do virgil type of doubles :-s....heel-toe was very easy to pick up ... but using virgils style, i havent come up to speed ... still struggling at very low bpm. lots of work reqd there.
 
i wish i could do virgil type of doubles :-s....heel-toe was very easy to pick up ... but using virgils style, i havent come up to speed ... still struggling at very low bpm. lots of work reqd there.

Mvikred or someone else, could you please give me some insight to the Virgil Doubles or at least a link. I looked on some of the previous links to Virgil videos, but didn't notice anything obvious there. Could someone please help me out and give a little more explanation or a link? I'm getting the impression he is doing something different from toe-heel or heel-toe but can't seem to find out what it is. Thanks in advance.
 
Mvikred or someone else, could you please give me some insight to the Virgil Doubles or at least a link. I looked on some of the previous links to Virgil videos, but didn't notice anything obvious there. Could someone please help me out and give a little more explanation or a link? I'm getting the impression he is doing something different from toe-heel or heel-toe but can't seem to find out what it is. Thanks in advance.

From what I have observed VIRGIL does what is called constant release at slower speeds....
BUT at higher speeds you'll see his feet slide ....and you'll you'll see on some vids his heels almost touch the footboard...
you play the first note heel down and the 2nd heel up except he starts LRR LL RR and so on you can learn these by letting your heel come down but eventually you just raise your heells of the footboard..sometimes STEVE SMITH explains the constant release the best on his DVD
start slow as this takes time and patience to develope.
Good luck
Tim
 
My drum teacher has been a bit opaque on heel-toe. Primarily because he doesn't do it! Instead he has this rather curious "hop" motion where he starts with the ball of his foot quite low on the board, taps the pedal to get a beat, and catches it with his foot which moves a bit up whilst the spring returns the board for the second beat. It certainly works well enough for him to sound better than me (a humble beginner of 2.25 of your Earth years). It must surely be mechanically less efficient though?

I ignored him because I'd sort of seen a few videos and have been slowly nurturing the Steve Smith stylee technique. It seems very similar to other techniques talked about here, the main difference I can see being some start with heel down and others with heel up. Both have the "rocking bounce". Meh, I'm a bit iffy whatever the position. Practice, practice, practice, so much to practice, so little time...
 
Thanks for the clarification Tim,
Doesn't seem like you coud get a lot of power that way, but I'm sure you and Virgil have much more experience with this.

A few posts ago I mentioned making a Pearl Longboard. Well, it is done now and here is a link to the pic. It also includes beater mounts from the Iron Cobras so I can adjust the beater to cam angle (anyone should be able to make this mod if desired).
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4949/1000818rh4.jpg

I find with the smooth surface on the footboard I can do a real quick toe heel toe triplet.
I have not heard much about doing single footed triplets on here, but I do hear a lot about practicing both heel-toe as well as toe-heel. From what I can tell the triplet lets me practice both heel toe and toe heel since it combines both motions. Anyone else practicing this way. Just wondering if there may be a drawback I am missing?
 
Thanks for the clarification Tim,
Doesn't seem like you coud get a lot of power that way, but I'm sure you and Virgil have much more experience with this.

A few posts ago I mentioned making a Pearl Longboard. Well, it is done now and here is a link to the pic. It also includes beater mounts from the Iron Cobras so I can adjust the beater to cam angle (anyone should be able to make this mod if desired).
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4949/1000818rh4.jpg

I find with the smooth surface on the footboard I can do a real quick toe heel toe triplet.
I have not heard much about doing single footed triplets on here, but I do hear a lot about practicing both heel-toe as well as toe-heel. From what I can tell the triplet lets me practice both heel toe and toe heel since it combines both motions. Anyone else practicing this way. Just wondering if there may be a drawback I am missing?

the doubles virgil does are consistent , even and powerful. its takes a good amount of time to get that type done. check for some of virgil;s clinic vids on youtube. u will find it there. or u can search for derek roddy 's explanation of the same on youtube too.

about single leg triplets, i think jojo mayer does that to perfection, even single foot quadruplets. jojo does it heel-toe-heel i think ... i rarely do it, but wen i do its heel-toe-toe.
 
Heel toe is a good method, check out Derrick Pope he does a good explanation. I think the steve smith constant release is a beast at getting fast straight pedals, triplets and is a good way of building up your ankle mucles but it takes a long while to get right lol I've tried for about 3 months now and cant get the bloody thing past 200bpm :( but heel toe I find is a bit orquard for me, doesnt feel as natural as the constant release.
 
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