All About feeltone

This month we're highlighting the feeltone Company.

(And no, that's not a typo — feeltone is always written with a lowercase f! :)

We're making a joyful noise with feeltone as the company celebrates its 40th anniversary! That's 40 years of honing the craft of fine instrument building.

Learn all about these gorgeous wooden drone and percussive instruments, crafted from the highest quality materials in Northern Germany — and how We Play Well Together has brought them to the American market for music and sound therapists, composers, and performers. We're now building an interconnected international network around players of conscious soundscapes so that anyone can experience what it means to "feel the tone."

What's a Monochord?

A contemporary monochord is a drone instrument in which many strings are tuned to the same note, creating a mesmerizing cascade of harmonics that entrains the body's inner rhythms into deep states of relaxation. This is why monochords are beloved tools for music and sound therapists, meditation facilitators, and yoga teachers.

Technically, it's actually a "polychord" with many strings — and more precisely might be called "monotone," a word that connotes boredom. But if you've heard the melodious overtones of a feeltone monochord, you know you experience quite the opposite: the sound transports the listener into a blissful, imaginative state — experienced both through hearing and through physical sensation when the instrument is played on or near the body. With feeltone instruments, you truly do feel the tone.

The feeltone Monolina is the most popular monochord model for sound practitioners. It contains the drone, an octave, and a major fifth (reminiscent of the Indian Tanpura), plus five tunable melody notes for lilting accents. It's large enough to cover much of the body, yet lightweight and portable enough for travel in its fitted padded companion bag. More and more facilitators are now including the Monolina in their setups for sound baths, sound meditation, sound therapy, massage, wellness, hospice care, music education for children, and more.

What's a Tongue Drum?

A tongue drum is a pitched percussion instrument created by cutting "tongue" shapes into a resonating body. Tongue drums can be made from a variety of materials — many modern versions are made of metal — but the oldest form is carved from wood, and versions of this instrument can be found in ancient cultures around the world, including Mexico and Mesoamerica, aboriginal Australia, Native American tribes, ancient European cultures, and East Asia.

feeltone handcrafts a diverse line of wooden tongue drums, ranging from the small hand-held Tinka Tong to XXL Sound Furniture pieces.

What Is Sound Furniture?

Sound Furniture are body-sized sound instruments in which one person sits or lies (in chair or table form) while a sound practitioner or partner plays the instrument to relax and soothe them through sound.

feeltone specializes in large furniture pieces utilizing both monochords (as in the Monchair and Sound Table) and tongue drums — as well as combining both in their signature SoundWave. These instruments are especially effective in music therapy clinics, offering a deeply positive experience of being in the physical body for those with severe disabilities.

Fine Instruments Made at the Baltic Sea: An Origin Story

Ingo Böhme is the founder and CEO of feeltone: a self-taught musician, researcher, instrument maker, and entrepreneur.

As a child, Ingo longed to play music but was frustrated by early piano lessons in his native Germany, where he was criticized for playing the "wrong notes." This caused him to abandon music for many years — until a trip to Idaho in 1982 brought him to a festival in the wilderness where he experienced intuitive music-making for the first time. Without training or musical knowledge, he describes being carried by the group, playing without thinking, invisibly guided. This became his vision, which he passes on with great enthusiasm through his work to this day: intuitive music-making.

After reconnecting to music, Ingo embarked on a journey of personal discovery and research into instrument building across the USA, Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada. Initially producing wooden tongue drums and selling at craft markets, eco fairs, and music festivals, Böhme Music began distributing a collection of intuitive instruments from around the world — including djembes, didgeridoos, gongs, and singing bowls. Following the popularity of feeltone tongue drums with music therapists, feeltone began producing its first monochords in 1997.

By the early 2000s, the beautiful Sound Furniture pieces came into being — coinciding with Ingo's collaboration with body therapist Martina Gläser, who began developing practitioner trainings for feeltone instruments in the art of sound massage and sound as bodywork.

This partnership grew into a personal relationship, and Ingo and Martina married in 2005. The more portable Monolina and Monolini monochords were introduced around 2010 and have since become some of the most popular monochords distributed worldwide.

We Play Well Together's founder Gabriele Schwibach began importing feeltone instruments into the USA in 2000. She and Ingo go way back as both personal friends and business partners who have witnessed the exciting emergence of sound therapy into the mainstream in North America.

Ingo now oversees a skilled staff and production house in Northern Germany, while Martina has developed nuanced trainings using the instruments. feeltone continues to produce its own gorgeous line of sound therapy instruments while also distributing other artisan instruments in Germany.

For 40 years, Ingo's vision has been to develop instruments that every person — musician or non-musician — can play from the very first moment: instruments through which they can express themselves and connect with others. No reading of music, no copying — only opening up, getting involved, and experiencing without judgment. It's deeply healing. And it can only happen in this moment: the here and now.

"The most beautiful thing is to see the glow in the eyes when an instrument touches the heart with its sound." — Ingo Böhme

The feeltone Woodshop & Production

feeltone's high quality in the construction of Tongue Drums and Monochords is built on decades of experience. They've been building tongue drums since 1982 and have continued to develop them over the decades — from the large Bass Tongue Drum to the small Tinka Tong. Each drum is individually made and tuned by hand.

feeltone has been building and refining their monochords since 1997. Today, thanks to continued development, they offer a full range of models: from the lightweight Monolini and Monolina, to solid Sound Furniture pieces such as the Singing Chair, the Monchair, the SoundWave, and the Monochord Table.

In 2015, feeltone expanded their woodshop — building the frame, floors, and paneling of the hall entirely from wood, creating a warm and resonant atmosphere. The large hall now includes a machine room, workbench, and oil room, with the string workshop also housed in the same building.

Raw planks arrive at one end of the hall, are air-dried for years in some cases, and go through many steps of processing, refining, and finishing. The wood is cut, planed, and milled in the machine room, then glued, sanded, drilled, and — for the slotted drums — tuned. Each instrument is then oiled and, depending on the model, strung.

All of feeltone's strings are specially made for their monochords by a professional string maker — ensuring the sound volume, vibration, and feel of the strings work perfectly with each design.

feeltone works in a resource-conscious way: smaller pieces of wood are used across different instrument sizes, surfaces are finished with organic oils, materials are sustainably sourced, and packaging is largely plastic-free. Much of their wood comes from FSC-certified suppliers. The company is constantly evolving — developing existing instruments and researching new models, accessories, and applications in close collaboration with therapists and musicians.

We Play Well Together with feeltone!

We're proud to be the exclusive North American distributor for feeltone — not only because of the exceptional craftsmanship and beautiful tones, but because of the international musical community that has gathered around these instruments and the deep, meaningful, long-term relationships that have grown from the simple invitation to gather, play whatever feels right, and feel the tone. From a friendship between We Play Well Together's Gabriele Schwibach and feeltone's Ingo Böhme, a great partnership was born — one that has placed these transformational sound tools in the hands of so many. We share a love of sound: a great guiding force in times of challenge and change.