The Heel Toe Thread

I've been working on heel toe for about 2-3 month, and today I finally had a breakthrough with it. What I did was set the tempo to 230 and just tried to get my feet to work at that tempo, my left foot wants to do something in between 8ths and 16ths, while my right foot does 16ths. Something just clicked and I was able to figure out the leg/ankle motions and my feet locked into 16ths. I then worked backwards to use that leg ankle motion with slower tempos. I was able to keep consistent 16ths down to 185.
I did notice that if I lean forward, ever so slightly, it helped for some reason. Keep in mind the forward lean was not a drastic lean, just a slight lean.
Another thing that helped me was changing the pitch of the trigger for my left foot so I could track where potential issues were coming from. This isn't an option for those that don't trigger their kicks, or have two bass drums.
I'm sure that there is still a long road ahead for me to get this to a usable point, but I feel that I took a large step in this journey today.
A big thanks goes to beyondbetrayal for one of his videos, where he went over the settings on the TM-2. I didn't even think about the retrigger setting which helped considerably. Who knew that I was hammering the notes out only to have my module not track them because my retrigger setting was too high. Thank you.
Now I just need to get everything working together as a team.
 
SYMBOLIC DEATH said:
A big thanks goes to beyondbetrayal for one of his videos, where he went over the settings on the TM-2. I didn't even think about the retrigger setting which helped considerably. Who knew that I was hammering the notes out only to have my module not track them because my retrigger setting was too high. Thank you.
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When it comes to double bass (and triggering them), beyondbetrayal is the man to go to on this forum for sure
 
dawwwww, thanks guys. :) Bands haven't been jamming due to the pandemic and restrictions here. Going to start posting new stuff to YouTube soon though. Got some fun new mesh heads to try and trigger stuff on and a few other fun toys. Lately it's been slow grooves and lots of linear fills for me.. need to get my heel toe back in shape lol.
 
Started working on this last night. It's hard! I've just now in the last few minutes figured out the motion I need to do, but danged if I can control it.
 
toddmc said:
Stick with it, once you get it it's like riding a bike 👍
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LOL...it's more like extreme biking and I always think I'm going to flip over the handlebars and die! I can do the motion with the right foot now pretty well, but I still have no consistency or speed. That said, I figured out how to play Good Times Bad Times with double pedals today...but that's cheating. I know it has other benefits but that's the driving force...one footed Bonham BD. That's really the only reason I want to learn it...I'm all about efficiency to make it seem like you're better than you are!
 
Just updating my heel-toe progress...

Watched one of @beyondbetrayal 's vids, and that learned me to use the board to my advantage and not necessarily stick in one spot. It's not automatic yet, and I've got a really long way to go to catch up to that kind of foot speed that he possesses. But I was able to play the intro to "We're An American Band" for the first time since I was 23 (more toe-toe instead of heel-toe), and I can almost do "Good Times Bad Times" with legit heel-toe, and I expect I'll have it in another couple weeks. And between those two songs, I think that's about as much foot speed that anyone's going to ask out of me, though I'm still going to work the double bass just in case someone requests "Hot For Teacher."
 
I worked extensively with heel-toe (among other foot techniques) to see if it works for me. It does, but I'm not sure it's my thing when it comes to fast doubles. I'll keep practicing anyway.
 
Just thought I'd chip in to this rather old thread. DW make the 5000 XF (XF standing for Extended Footboard) that would work fine. I personally am size 11 and I have a Yamaha 9500 pedal that has quite a short board and I can do heal toe quite easily on this, admittedly just with socks on, never tried it with shoes. But its worth remembering that with heel toe technique you don't have to have your heal on the heal rest, it can be on the floor two inches behind the heal rest and the heel can hit the floor for the first hit as it's not actually the heel that is making the first kick, it's the ball of the foot, kind of an illusion with my technique at least, then the two does the second kick. Yamaha FP9C has a nice long board with heel rest also, as does the Tama Speed Cobra 910LN, all nice long boards that a size 12 won't have any issue with, even with dress shoes on.
 
Hi there. Does anyone have any 'go to' exercises that they use for improving their weaker foot heel-toe technique? I'm happy enough for now with the right foot and have my pedals set up well for the technique but my left foot just does not have the attack/ fluency that the right has when doing doubles. Understandable, I suppose, as I could say the same about my left hand compared with my right but I'm finding it hard to make progress with my left. I'm not exactly looking to do constant rolling doubles with both feet or anything but I want to have more confidence in my left that I will be able to throw in the odd left footed double on the 'off beat' with consistency rather than it being a weak, strained, farty roll! Any good exercises you folks have used?
 
Fun joining the forum and seeing history of 2005-2020 and where we are now in 2023 on this topic.
Too bad I can't be a teen again now with all the progress and information we have! But then I'd be distracted too much with all the other information overload and gaming to ever learn how to play to the level I did.

\m/
 
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