Drones in Action
So what can you do with a drone? First, tune to it. Sloane advocates a “too low, too high, just right” tuning technique. Here, you play back a recorded drone (or get a partner to play one that’s on pitch) and, using your fine tuners, deliberately go a little flat, then quickly go sharp, then settle onto the correct pitch. “You can hear the pitch change, moving into and out of alignment, and it’s easy to feel the string’s right vibrational alignment with the drone,” she says.

“This is a way of training the ear, rather than just sitting there and wondering if you’re in tune or not.”

You can also use drones to work on playing arpeggios in tunes. With the drone, start with the tonic in octaves, then add the fifth, then the third—the notes in closest vibrational alignment with the tonic. “We can develop a sense of hearing with our body relating to the vibrations of the strings with the drone,” Sloane says. Once you’ve established a skeletal scale this way, you can fill in the rest of the scale’s notes.

Keep the drone running while you practice passagework, or start playing actual compositions. “You can have a single drone going if the music doesn’t modulate beyond the fifth,” Sloane advises. “It’s interesting to hear whatever dissonances occur with the drone, and have a sense of returning to the home key. The drone teaches about harmonic movement, the sense of going somewhere and returning.”

Complexity
Playing pieces that are more complex harmonically means changing drones in midstream. If you’re playing to a drone recording, it’s a matter of switching to a drone in the new key. But there are other ways to do it.

“Sometimes it turns out that your neighbor string sounds good,” Sloane says. “It could be the tonic of the scale of the melody, or the root of a chord or other chord tones in a sequence of chords, or a pedal tone in the music. A lot of notes can be used as drones. Changing the drone serves as a cue, shifting our inner sense of scale and chord structure and reorienting our ears to the new key area. It gives students a structure with which they can break a piece down so they’re zeroing in on areas they need to listen to and work on a bit.”

Sloane also advocates improvising against a drone. “It provides a wonderful foundation for exploring a scale or creating melody,” she says.

Talking Drones
Here’s something you can do on your own, although it’s more fun if you have other people to play with. It’s free rhythm improvisation using a drone and the rhythm of speech.

“Ask each player to think of a sentence and then play on their instrument the rhythm of that sentence, of fragments of that sentence, and whatever other rhythmic variations may develop,” Sloane advises. “Introduce melodic material; the group sustains the drone on the tonic of the scale and each player takes a turn improvising, returning to the drone to signal the end of the improvisation.

“People can improvise for as long as they want, with as few or as many pitches as they feel comfortable with. Many skill levels can play together. Retuning to the drone is a nonverbal musical cue that directs the movement around the circle. There is a sense of supporting others, and being supported.”

Sloane emphasizes that a drone is not just a mindless hum.

“A drone leads us into the world of tone and invites melody,” she says. “Listen to one note long enough and you want to go somewhere, to hear something new. A drone asks us to explore all intervals; it begs for augmented fourths, minor seconds. It is a mirror of melodic shape; it reflects tension and resolution; it creates harmony. And when we finish our explorations, returning home to the drone creates a melodic whole.”

Drone Your Own
Some resources to facilitate your own personal study of drones:

Acoustic Drones
Cello Droning for Tuning and Improvisation, www.NavarroRiverMusic.com. Six-minute drones on all 12 chromatic pitches; each drone contains three octaves of the tonic and two octaves of the fifth.

Chromatic Cello: Cello Drones for Improving Intonation, www.ApprenticeMusic.com. Five-minute drones on all 12 chromatic pitches; each drone is one cello note in the octave below middle C.

Rhythmic Drones
www.jazzbooks.com provides rhythmic drones performed by a jazz rhythm section vamping on major and minor chords in bossa nova, swing, shuffle, and Latin rhythms.

Electronic Drones
Crate your own tonal and/or rhythmic loop with any electronic keyboard that has a sequencer or recording feature.