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1. Anyone can produce noises by striking a percussion instrument, but only the expert touch can raise these noises to the rank of musical sounds.
2. Real music is not what we play and hear ourselves, but what reaches the ear of the listener.
3. Very often a grip, style or technique that has been created and used by a virtuoso player may be used by other players only after suitable correctives have been made.
4. You have to learn to "talk musically" by giving just the right stress to the various elements that make up the music. A forte is not just a violent, "wooden" sound, while a pianissimo should not be considered merely as a quieter sound.
5. Every musician needs to find inside himself or herself what the true rhythm is - the rhythm that allows you to breathe as you keep the pace, and leads to a human interpretation of music that no metronome can help you with.
6. Correct playing of an instrument such as the marimba is a question of geometry: if the shortest distance between two points is used (avoiding needless shifts and returns to notes that are to be replayed), good technique can be achieved even at speed.
7. Technique exercises must have a musical sense, and, as we have already written earlier on, should not just serve to loosen up articulation, but be pleasant, so as to train the ear musically, be rhythmic, so as to reinforce the sense of balance, and essential, so as to produce maximum results in the minimum time.
8. Relaxed playing doesn't mean playing in a totally laid-back manner because in that way you wouldn't hear the musical pulsations intensely enough. The right balance consists instead of a sort of vigilant and controlled relaxation, which can be obtained with a very slight contraction, limiting actual relaxation only to the articulations making the mallets move.
9. Like a violinist with his bow and a pianist with his fingers, so also a percussionist with his mallets can control movement, articulation and weight to achieve various expressive effects.
10. Any new technical innovation is like a new medicine: it has first to be tested thoroughly before it can become popular.
11. Start from the roots of the music, from its history and from its rules, if you want to have a solid basis for any cultural or instrumental revolution.
12. Don't just read what the composer has written. All musical models require a playing style that should be learnt at the source. Knowing the origins of the music, and its cultural context and message, is the only way to keep clear of any sort of humbug.
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