A is an Acoustic Tongue Drum

Hello! Today, and for quite a few up coming weeks, my writing will be a bit different than normal. I will be writing an alphabet post like my brothers. It looks fun! So after going through many “a” options I decided my first alphabet article would be A is Acoustic and it is about my new tongue drum.

First, I’d like to share the google definition of acoustic. It means:

a·cous·tic

adjective

relating to sound or the sense of hearing
(of music or musical instruments) not having electrical amplification.

The picture above is my Tongue Drum. Right about now you are probably asking “What is a tongue drum.” Well, it is a dome-like saucer that has slits or indentions cut or hammered into it. Each drum sounds different and it depends on the size of the slits or indentions. There are also two types of pan drums I know of, depending on whether they have indentions or slits. The drum with indentions is commonly known as a handpan while a drum with slits is commonly known as a tongue drum.

I was first introduced to a Pan drum when my mom showed me a video of a guy named Daniel Waples playing a handpan, The way he played it was amazing and the music was even better! After I saw that first video I started looking around to see how much they were. We were shocked to discovery that the handpan he was using was $2,000 or more! We started looking for alternatives and found the Tongue Drum. They were $400+ dollars. For my birthday my mom really wanted to surprise me with one! However, she was scared I would not like the one she picked out, so she asked me to look at it before my birthday to see if I really wanted that and only that for my birthday! The one she found was a beautiful nebula design and I loved its sound. Since it was on Ebay, she bid on it and we watched and waited. We ended up purchasing it for an extremely low price $220 dollars!!

I was surprised by how quickly I could play the instrument. I was literally playing it on the way home in the car. I am really enjoying this instrument and It has a wonderful sound. When I first started I was playing sequences of up to three notes, now I’m playing 3-4 notes at a time! Below is a video of me playing it!