Tone is one of the most important aspects of music-making, and it refers to the quality of your sound. No matter what instrument you are playing, you can think of examples where someone playing it just sounded “bad.” Maybe they played all of the correct notes, and even used shaping and dynamics… but the experience of listening to them play was just not enjoyable.
We use lots of words to describe tone: warm, dry, rich, thin, full, big, dark, and bright to name a few. In general, we should endeavor as musicians to create rich, full, dark, and warm sounds as a default. There are definitely times where some other keywords might come into play, but these four terms are a great starting point for most playing.
Now the question is, how do we achieve rich, full, dark, and warm sounds? To play with good tone, you need to study the mechanics of your instrument. For percussionists, this means you need to understand how your arms, wrists, and fingers are working together to control the sticks/mallets and produce sound. Eliminating tension is the number one way to improve tone, whether in the field of percussion or beyond. Train yourself to stop squeezing the sticks! Another focal point should be to move as naturally and organically as possible. This just means to try to replicate hand and arm motions that are natural to how you move outside of music. Examples of this include playing rebounded strokes similar to how you would dribble a basketball, or rotating your single independent strokes like how you would turn a doorknob. Making these connections to your life outside of music leads to more relaxation and less tension, which produces better tone.
A discussion of tone would be incomplete without addressing the area of tuning as well. This topic could be expanded into an entirely separate post, so for now we will just say: tune your instrument to itself, to the room/venue, and to your own ears. Listen to the sounds your instrument produces, and adjust the tuning as necessary to fit your ideal concept of tone. When in doubt, listen to other respected musicians and steal their tuning ideas shamelessly. As you start to find your own sound, you will realize it is a mashup of all of the sounds your mentors and heroes have produced, but it will be unique because of how your individual experiences also shape the sound.
