How To Play & Develop The Heel-Toe Bass Drum Technique

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in this video lesson we’re going to talk about the heel toe technique so before we get into the actual technique as it’s played on the pedal I first wanted to break it down for you on the carpet and

I you want to go one step further and I want to take off our shoes all right okay so you can do this with me this might be good to do with me right now take off your right shoe or whatever

your dominant foot shoe is okay so now we got our foot on the ground just set like that now I want to show you the motion that the heel toe technique is and this is it okay so let’s just break

down exactly what is happening here like I’m always going to say and I’m continuing to always reiterate over and over again is with the heel toe technique there’s a starting position

and this is so important when you first learn it I’ll critique so many people people send me their videos or they’ll come for a lesson like what am I doing wrong and I’ll look at what they’re

doing like yeah you’re not starting right you’re starting the technique from here and if you try and start the technique from here without actually knowing the feeling and what actually

has to happen to perform the double stroke you won’t be able to do it you won’t be able to learn it so it’s really going to hinder your learning so what I always say is start the technique in the

toe position we’ll call it a toe position and this is with the heel in the air okay and then what happens is basically come up drop down and then come back up so that’s the motion

rocking motion it’s not this is so many people will will try and do this and why is it not working why is not working well you have to do the rocking motion now another thing I want to talk about

is what you’re here you’re hearing two strokes you’re hearing one when my heel hits and you’re hearing another when my toe goes back to the starting position now when we get to the pedal later

you’re going to see that it’s actually more of a toe toe stroke when you slow down and look at the motion when I hit my heel I actually will hit the heel on the footboard and not actually on the

pedal the first he’ll hit won’t actually create any stroke but it is the start of the motion and it is necessary to perform the heel toe technique double stroke and then when I come up there’s

my first double and when I finished there’s my second double and it works like that like I know it’s hard to see now but I really wanted to break it down without the pedal so if you didn’t

necessarily have a pedal right now or you know if you’re sitting on a bus later if you’re watching a movie whatever it you could literally just sit there and practice this technique

because it’s all about your muscles memorizing this motion all right now let’s bring the bass drum pedal back in and I’m going to show you how it looks on the pedal

all right so now we’re back here with the pedal and I want to show you how the heel toe technique looks when playing on the pedal so here we go okay so you’re going to notice some differences and

differences in the feeling obviously because we’re not on a completely flat carpet now the pedal is slightly angled so you can see here so now when your foot sits up it’s just different that’s

why when first starting because we’re going from the carpet let’s flatten that out and let’s just leave the beater on the drum head so beaters on the drum head my foot is in the starting position

here I do it slowly I’ll come down my heel hits I come start climbing back up there’s the first stroke my heel is still coming up there’s a second stroke back in the starting position I’m doing

it as slow as I possibly can you’ll never ever actually play it that slow that’s actually ridiculous but that’s how it actually looks let me do it again for you guys

alright now I’m going to play it at normal speed for you and then we can slow it down for you in the in video and show you exactly how it sounds it looks super slow-motion

okay now that you’ve learned the heel-toe technique and you can play a quick double what I want you to work on is playing it continuously so just doing like kind of a gallop does it pick a

tempo you’re comfortable with no need to use a metronome right now if just go really slow if that’s the way it’s working for you or with some people I know it’s easier for them to learn this

technique a little bit faster speed just because the motion with the foot and then they actually will learn how to control it and bring the tempo down later which is there’s nothing wrong

with that I wonder first learning this as long as you learn it at a variety of tempos I think that’s what’s most important so let’s just work on it and let’s try and

get that gallop going okay so you’ll notice when I’m doing that gallop I don’t actually come up and sit there in the starting position every time but when it’s slowed down you’ll see that

every time I do the double I end up back here and it’s just for a split second when you have to do it over and over again so now I want to talk about a couple of misconceptions about the

heel-toe technique the first one is foot size and footwear so let me put my shoe back on and I’ll be back with you in a second I am a size 11 and a half foot so if you

can see here on the pedal when my foot is right at the top okay here’s the pedal stop my foot is right at the top a little bit is hanging up the back and so a lot of people think that in order to

do the heel toe technique you need to hit the heel and do this so you have to have longboard pedals I purposely didn’t use long word pedals for this demonstration because I wanted you guys

to see that that’s not the case you don’t need longboard pedals and I have a size eleven and a half foot which is probably pretty average for guys or maybe above-average but it doesn’t

matter I can still perform the heel toe technique here we go now even if I move my foot down now watch this I’m only using I’m on being using this much of the pedal okay my foot now I’m going to

still play the technique okay so foot size doesn’t matter even if you have size 15 feet there and your foot was hanging way off the back of the foot board it wouldn’t really matter the next

I want to talk about I’m going to do a little bit of unique demonstration here is I want to talk about Footwear and kind of we’re going to meld in some of the foot size stuff in here basically

I’m going to rotate between a bunch of different types of footwear I’m gonna rotate between snowboard boots work boots like big cat heavy work boots a pair of size 13 these 13 velcro shoes

too huge and golf shoes and any shoes as well just to kind of give you guys a demo have a little fun and show you that it doesn’t really matter what type of footwear you have you guys can play this

technique so here we go we’re going to start off with just regular shoes next we have golf shoes now we’re going to jump through real ugly pair of shoes that I have five next we have a pair of

cat work boots and finally we’re going to jump to a pair of snowboard boots all right so I hope I proved my point there Footwear doesn’t really make a big difference you can play in gum boots if

you want