LOL! I just noticed earlier that the skin on my legs above my knees have gone dry and red as a result of using them as practice pads earlier today...

I practice with hot wet linguini on cracked sand...

What is the moeller technique?

Must be a mistake.  Buddy never practiced (or so he said).  In any case it's hardly an original idea.  It could easily have come from any one of a million sources.

also .  a practice pad needs some adjustment to mimic a true  drum head.

you need to put  a folded  bath towel over the pad , two to 3 layers will do it .

this mimics the natural loss of energy that a real drum tends to "suck" out of your stroke each time you hit the drum.


if you try playing the pad this way , you will soon find your technique vastly expanding ,   try  stick control exercises , and one handed rolling   ,  .

Most all surfaces have rebound regardless of how little it may be noticeable -- unless we're talking about something like water or air which wouldn't be practical to practice on.  What happens when we practice on the so called "non-responsive" surface such as a pillow is that we are essentially forcing ourselves to relax our hand right after the push downward so that we can gain the most energy upward from the rebound off the surface.  If the hand is even slightly tensed after the stroke, then the rebound will be stifled and the energy will be lost.  Playing on non-responsive surfaces teaches us how to control the energy of the stick by using efficient stick control and technique.  By constantly forcing ourselves to utilize the small amount of rebound energy from a pillow to it's fullest advantage, we are gaining a deep kinesthetic understanding of our to efficiently control that energy.  Once the switch is made back to a responsive surface after hours of practice on a non-responsive surface, the benefit gained is quite obvious.  But don't take my word for it.  Try it yourself.      

I was searching on MD DVD archive for George Lawrence Stone and i found this concerning pillow :
"George always went with the idea that
you should develop your hands, reading,
and the ability to get around the set, and
then apply that to whatever you want to
apply it to, whether it be rock 'n' roll or
country & western. He'd have you practice
paradiddles and rudiments on a pillow that
didn't have any bounce. He'd have you
practice tight, squeezing the heck out of
those sticks. Sometimes in the course of a
lesson, he'd make a grab for your stick. If
he could pull that stick out of your hand
while you were playing, he'd really lay into
you because you were supposed to be hold-
ing those sticks tight enough so that, at any
moment, he couldn't pull them out of your
hand. His motto was, 'Practice tight, so
that you can play loose.' It really
worked."

Thought it's intersting to know Stone used pillow .

I think the main initial lesson is 'relax!' It's much harder to correct this down the line. As you develop a good, RELAXED grip, the sticks will stop flying around as you hands learn how to manage things. Uncontrolled tightness is always the enemy.