Keeping in mind I'm just a novice, this is my take on the drumming technique:

Base: (B) Whole hand (including base below thumb) hits center of drum parallel with drum but bounces off right away
Base Mute: (BM) As with base, but hand remains touching the drum head
Tone: (T) Fingers together, hit side of drum with only the fingers hitting edge of drum
Tone Mute: (TM) As with tone, but fingers remains touching drum head
Slap: (most difficult) (S) Fingers open, palm hits side edge of drum (hard) and fingers follow through onto drum head
Slap Mute: (SM) As with slap, but fingers remains touching drum head

The idea behind these different techniques is to get a variety of pitches, base being the lowest and slap mute being the highest. It is fairly easy to teach the base and mute tones. You can do a lot of rote echo drumming with these tones.