This book is the first level of Time For 4. I started writing these marimba books because I was looking for material to create videos for my online tutorial channel. After finishing many exercises based on my daily work, I compiled them into two books. These books reflect my life as a professional percussionist, switching from classical to contemporary, urban, and other styles. I believe that music has no borders, and therefore I am always eager to learn about as many musical styles as I can. I hope this book can help young musicians explore what kind of musician they want to be and learn how to talk about music with others. How do you time this groove? What does this mean to you musically? Also, I hope that you can upgrade your technique with these short exercises.

This book has six chapters, each one focusing on a different technique. You jump from style to style in short musical exercises within that chapter. Sometimes you can play together, sometimes alone, or even write short exercises yourself. I hope this book leads to a lot of creativity for both teacher and student, and I would like to invite you to improvise with the material, talk about the styles, learn about classical harmony, jazzy timing, and different ways of making a sound.

I want to send a huge special thank-you to my dear friend Xi Rachel Zhang for helping me edit this book. Thanks also to Elim for listening to all my ideas and the first versions for many hours, and a big thank-you to Scherry Shi for the beautiful design of the cover and symbols. And finally, thank you to all the people who read, tested, and gave feedback during the creation of this book.