Steel Tongue Drum Lessons

Steel Tongue Drum Lessons

A while back I had a percussion student’s mother confide to me that they had seen a steel drummer performing while on vacation, and that her 5 year old child had been completely captivated by the instrument ever since. They had looked around online to purchase a steel drum or find some lessons but were unable to find any inexpensive instruments or teachers who would accept a pupil that young. No wanting to lose this boys obvious burst of enthusiasm, I poked around and found the HAPI drum company which produces small, low cost, steel tongue drums which are the perfect size for small hands and easy to purchase on an equally tiny budget! The drum is incredibly simple to learn, and a breeze to play (either with bare hands or with the included rubber mallets) and its straightforward pentatonic tuning is easily adapted to a wide variety of melodies and rhythmic harmonic patterns. I’ve used the instrument in many of my lessons to illustrate the versatility and nearly universal appeal of the pentatonic scale, and many of my other students have bought them just for the sheer fun of playing the thing! I’m proud to say that Nassau Bay Music Lessons now offers Steel Tongue Drum Lessons in Clear Lake Texas.

Originally fashioned inexpensively from a disused propane tank, the steel tongue drum, tank drum or hank drum is a round steel musical percussion instrument from the slit/tongue drum family. When the tank is flipped over, the base cut/knocked off; and seven to ten tongues are cut radially into the bottom of the tank, forming the top of the instrument, the drum produces a beautiful bell like chiming tone. The tongues can be tuned by the player by varying the size of the cuts, with larger tone panels producing a lower note. The steel tongue drum is often tuned to pentatonic scales but can be tuned to the diatonic scale, the chromatic scale, or in the case of the HAPI drum the Japanese Akebono, Pygmy or Integral Scale are also available. The instrument is played with the fingers or with mallets, and its small size makes it easy to transport or hold in the lap. For any more information, or to schedule some Steel Tongue Drum Lessons in Clear Lake Texas, just shoot us a call or email any time and we’d be happy to answer your questions!