I have just competed my freshman year as a music education major with a main instrument of percussion at Montclair State University. Now that I am home, I have all the time in the world to practice, and would really like to focus on my first love: marimba.

I realized towards the end of the semester that I have been so focused the entire year (really the last couple years) on *what* I play that I haven't been paying enough attention to *how* I play. So now I would like to rectify that. It seems to me that the really good marimba players I have encountered get such a warm, beautiful sound out of the marimba, and I, well, don't. My technique is fundamentally sound, and I know where on the keys to play, etc. I just feel like I don't have a good quality of sound.

Any tips on how to improve that?

Any advice, also, on how to improve my playing in general? I purchased Gordon Stout's "Ideokinetics" awhile back, and am going be working from that. I'm also going to reacquaint myself with Stevens' "Method of Movement", but beyond that I don't have any ideas of where to turn.

first and foremost... relax your hands... think about the upstroke as too many players "hit" the marimba instead of making everything one fluid motion while drawing out the sound. pull the sound out instead of hitting it in. simply touch the bars with your mallets and the instrument will sing as a cello does. each upstroke becomes the downstroke for the next note. they should suppoet one another and should not be thought of as separate. and again... relax your hands until you feel the mallets vibrate in your palms.
jsb