Anyone ever seen a hum drum? or know where to get them? or if theyre called something else?>
it looks like a space ship and sounds like carribean drums.
so beautiful
it looks like a space ship and sounds like carribean drums.
so beautiful
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Washington, D.C.
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Re: HUM Drum
Tue, December 25, 2007 - 2:10 AMthose are called HANG drums and they are made in Switzerland I believe
(and are very pricey here in the US).
put Hang drum into youtube and you'll see several videos of people playing them in creative ways.
Each one is made with a different ethnic scale so you can play that scale and any mode of that scale
(by shifting a note over to begin your tonic)
Additionally, on the bottom of the drum there is a hole that can be played like an African UDU drum.
It's a beautiful instrument. I played one years ago when I was on tour with Martin Simpson in Seattle
(at Lark in the Morning). They are really easy to play and sound beautiful.
They are just a Carribbean steel drum intended to play by hand instead of with mallets.
If you've ever seen the small Carribean steel drums, you can take one, turn it upside down
and then the top surface will be concave instead of convex (did I get that order right?).
It is really easy to play , then with your fingers and thumbs, not unlike a HANG drum. -
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Re: HUM Drum
Sat, February 2, 2008 - 8:19 AMCertainly one of the most beautiful sounding instruments I've ever heard.
They are really pricey though. Each one is had made by that single Swiss company, its quite a long wait to even get your hands on one.
Here is a place that is copying them and selling them
www.tribalthunder.com/
There is also videos and a guy has plans on a website for making one out of a propane tank. Sounds pretty good too considering you only need an empty propane tank. -
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Re: HUM Drum
Sun, February 3, 2008 - 1:09 PM -
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Re: HUM Drum
Wed, February 6, 2008 - 2:53 PMYeah, Jana, when I was on tour with the british folk guitarist (and altered tuning master) Martin Simpson
I was able to play one for about an hour in the Lark in the Morning store in Seattle, Washington.
It's a beautiful sound for sure.
It's also just a steel drum...........there's not difference except that using your hands and fingers as mallets
really softens the sounds (and the fact that the notes are convex instead of concave slightly changes the timbre as well).
As I may have said already, if you take a small Trinidadian styled steel drum (one without a really deep body) and turn
it upside down , you can play it and make it sound very, very much like the Hang drum for a hell of a lot less money.
In fact, there is an amazing craftsperson whose name is Michael Perkins who lives in Portland , I believe, who will custom
make anyone a steel drum with a specific scale (as opposed to the Diatonic Major scales that are found typically in the non-
chromatic steel drums). You can determine the scale and he can make one for considerably less than a Hang drum.
They really are beautiful though and I wish I owned one. There only drawback is that whatever scale you get, is the scale you get, so
they are not harmonically or melodically very versatile.............but then, again, so is a Celtic harp or a blues harmonica........so that's cool.
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