Tongue Drum Terra

The second instrument I decide to make in my Mud Meditation journey was a tongue drum. I have seen these instruments called by many names, such as petal drum, hapi drum, tongue drum, etc. They are usually made from metal. The history of the instrument is rather interesting. Like many percussion instruments, there are several ancestors of this instrument going back a long way in history, but the instrument as we know it today is very new. To my knowledge, it was created in 2007 by a man named Dennis Havlena who found a propane tank and cut ‘tongues’ into them. He called it a “hank drum.” I use tongue drums often in my sound naps and thought a clay version would be a good addition to the project.

So far, I have made two different tongue drums, which look and sound very different from each other.

Making the tongue drums was a bit of a head scratcher, but with the help of my teacher at the Fairmount Center for the Arts, we did it!

As with the udu (see blog post unearthing the udu), the first ‘petal’ or ‘tongue’ drum was also hand built with the coiling technique and not thrown on the wheel. This time though, a bowl was used to help mold the shape and coils were built around it. You can see the process below:

A stand, which you see on the right, was also being built to support the tongue drum.

This next part was really tricky. Some clay was rolled out with a rolling pin and the ‘tongues’ were cut out. Then they were attached to a large coil.

Next some paddling needed to be completed to help define the shape.

Another tricky part was adding the tongues and letting the clay harden upside down so the tongues wouldn’t cave in.

The drum and stand ready to go for firing!

Unfortunately, the stand exploded in the kiln and did not survive, but the drum came out with no major cracks!

Interestingly enough, not all the tongues turned out the way I was expecting in terms of pitch. I assumed that the larger tongues would be lower and the smaller ones higher in pitch. The two smallest tongues came out to be the lowest in pitch and the size did not seem to correlate with a higher or lower pitch. I had my father, who has made some instruments himself, look a it. He hypothesizes that the pitch of the tongue is also determined by the thickness of its attachment to the resonating chamber. I did notice that the lower pitched tongues did seem to have a thicker attachment to the bowl.

Some more research needs to be carried out to determine the exact cause of this.

Check out the audio below to see how the tongue drum sounds in bisque.

Stay tuned for the next blog post for the second tongue drum!