Free Tongue Drum Plans Pdf [TOP]
Nichol Sadlon
You can use the calculated lengths to help layout a pattern for your drum. This will also help you determine the dimensions for the top of your box (the part you will cut the tongues into). Once you have figured out how many tongues you need and their approximate lengths you can start designing the rest of your box.
Now that you have your top glued down to your box you can use a drill and a jigsaw to cut out your tongues. First trace or layout your tongue design on the top piece of your box and drill some holes so you can start the cuts with your jigsaw. When determining the length of each tongue remember that you will get the most accurate results with the length calculator if you cut your slits just to the edge of your inner most end piece. If you plan to add curves or changes of width try to adjust the length accordingly so that you stay close to your desired frequency (some fine tuning will still be required).
If all has gone to plan you should have a box without a bottom and some beautiful tongues cut into the top. Now it is time to take a listen to those tongues and see how close you are to your desired notes (frequencies). Hopefully you got lucky and you will require minimal tuning. However if you need to adjust this can be done relatively easily.
First write down the frequency of each tongue before tuning. This will help you determine if you need to raise or lower the pitch. Then take a look at your initial plan and raise/lower each tongue until you reach the desired frequency. If you need to raise the frequency remove material from the tip of each tongue. If you need to lower the frequency remove material from the base of each tongue.
Once you are happy with the tuning you can glue or screw (in case you need to fine tune) the bottom on to your drum. Remember if you glue on the bottom there is no turning back. After you attach the bottom I recommend putting some rubber feet on the drum as this really can improve the sound.
First of all I need to give credit where credit is due. The original hank drum is the creation of Dennis Havlena. Dennis is an awesome guy- he had a good idea and instead of starting a company, he started a movement. He shared his design freely and enabled a lot of folks to explore their creativity and make a little money if they choose.
So what's so different about this propane tank drum? There are already several designs floating around out there, like this one from Hermes or this one from -Moon (which isn't actually made from a propane tank, but it's an awesome example of the type of instrument I'll be making). Most of the tongue drums I've seen have the tongues cut in a way that they are attached near the outside of the top of the drum. This helps isolate the individual notes, as the sound waves are stopped somewhat by the bend in the metal at the edge. My drum is cut the other way around- the tongues are connected to the drum in the center of the top in an arrangement that resembles a flower. This does two things- it allows for sympathetic vibration in other tongues to create harmonics and more sustain and it allows for more tongues to be used. My drum has 7-11 different notes in a pentatonic blues scale. My drum is also cut down to an interesting UFO shape to make it a bit more portable and comfortable to play.
This drum is made from a discarded propane tank. I buy tanks from the local welding supply shop as scrap metal. Tanks have to be hydro-statically tested periodically. If a tank is found to be unsafe or to have too much rust and pitting, it is unfit for use. They drain the residual propane and remove the valves. When I buy scrap tanks, the first thing I do is fill them up with soapy water and let them sit overnight. This insures that there is no residual gas left in the tank and it reduces the sulfur smell from the gas adulterants.
After the tank is drained, rinsed and dried I can process it to make a drum. The first step is to remove the ring from the bottom and the handle from the top. The bottom ring is welded to the tank in three spots to create a stable base to sit on. It can be removed by gripping it with a pair of vice grips next to a weld and rocking the metal back and forth until it breaks. I did this for each weld to free the ring. This left some lumpy metal on the surface. I used an angle grinder to remove the rest of the weld and make the metal smooth.
I built this custom stand a few years ago. It used to be a big steel frame that held marine voltage inverters while they were being repaired. I got it from a shop that was going out of business. I decided to make it into a custom drum building jig. It allows a propane tank to be threaded onto a nipple and spun along its axis. It can also be locked in place with a pair of vice grips. This jig allows the tank to be spun while it's ground with the angle grinder. The spinning wheel of the grinder can be tilted to control the speed that the tank spins at. This removes all the paint from the tank and leaves a cool swirl pattern in the metal's surface.
If you don't have a custom drum building jig laying around (What- you don't? What kind of monster are you?) you can always use a drill mounted wire wheel or even sandpaper to remove the paint. you can also leave the paint on the tank and paint over it later, although this affects the sound a bit. I want a drum with a metal finish so I removed all the paint from the ends of the tank. I'll be cutting the ends off, discarding the middle piece and reattaching the ends into a UFO shape so I didn't remove the paint from the middle section. We'll use it for something else later on- there's always a use for scrap metal around my shop.
I made this template a few years ago. It's based on some stuff I learned from Bart Hopkin's book. The numbered tongues 1-8 are tuned to a blues scale and I, II and III are the bass notes. In the key of C, 1-8 would be C, D#, F, G, A# C, D# and F and I, II and III would be C, F and G an octave lower than tongue 1. Also, these can be tuned as bass resonators that vibrate sympathetically with the smaller tongues. It's a bit trickier to tune, but it sounds really cool. To transpose the key you just have to make the tongues shorter or longer. We'll cover that later when we tune the drum.
The template has a hole in it's center. This is used to align the template with the center of the swirl pattern on the top of the tank. When the template was aligned and centered I taped it down firmly and traced each tongue. I labeled each tongue with its corresponding number to avoid confusion later.
The tongue marked 'I' has a 1" square marked so you can print it out and make your own template if you want. It's too big to do as a single print so you'll have to do multiples and paste them together. The easiest thing would be to use a digital projector to project it to the right size and trace it on a single sheet of poster board.
Before the tongues can be cut I needed to make plunge cut for each side of each tongue. I used my Gesswein jeweler's drill motor. It's like a Dremel tool with a flexible shaft on steroids. I used heavy duty cut-off wheels and made two cuts on each tongue. This allows the jig saw blade to slide in and complete the cut.
When all the plunge cuts where done I used a jig saw to complete the initial tongue cuts. I modified the jigsaw blade by grinding the back side of the blade at an angle. This allows the blade to cut a tighter radius without too much friction. It reduces the life of the blade a bit as less metal means less heat dissipation, but it's a good trade-off. I inserted the jigsaw and cut each tongue towards the point where the cuts meet. I do this cut first. If I do it last the blade tends to bind when it finally breaks through and it bends the tongue. After the points were cut I cut each tongue in the other direction. I cut until just past the curve where the cut starts to straighten out. I'll cut them the rest of the way when it's time to tune the drum.
There are many factors in play to determine the sound produced by the tongue. Think of a xylophone. Each piece is a different width and length, and sometimes even the thickness varies. Each tongue on my template is a different size to handle the general width to length ratio. I've cut the tongues just enough to clear the curves with enough room to insert a hacksaw blade.
To begin pre-tuning the drum I started with tongue number 8, the highest pitch on the instrument. The bigger the tongue the more it will vibrate. This means that the smallest, highest pitched tongues will ring less than the bigger, lower ones. I start with the highest tongue because it's the most finicky- if I can get it to ring, the rest will be easy.
As I said before, there are many factors that affect the way the metal vibrates and what sound it makes. There is no set length dimension for the tongues because thickness, degree of pitting and metal composition all have an affect.
I started by making gradual cuts on each side of the tongue with a hacksaw blade. I continued to cut, making the tongue longer, until it made a sustained ringing sound when I struck it. I used a guitar tuner to see what note it was producing and made a note of it.
This drum tunes to a pentatonic blues scale. If it was tuned to the key of C, the 8 smaller tongues would be C, D#, F, G, A#, C, D#, F. Now I have a choice to make. The three bass tongues can be tuned to C, F and G for a nice bass accent. They could also be cut long as resonators. Resonators are not 'played'. They vibrate at sympathetic frequencies to enhance the resonance and harmonic richness of the smaller tongues. Tuning resonators is a bit trickier than simply tuning three bass notes, but it makes for a really nice sound. I decided to tune these bass tongues as resonators, but for now I just tuned them as if they were bass notes. There are at least two more tunings, so we'll address the resonators later.
In this case the smallest tongue just started ringing at around F#, so a few cuts brought it down close to F. I worked backwards tuning each tongue close to it's note value in the key of C. As the lower pitched tongues got bigger they began to cause sympathetic vibrations in the other tongues. All this harmonic noise can make reading the pitch of an individual tongue kind of tricky. I use bamboo skewers sharpened like a wedge to dampen tongues I'm not currently tuning to make it easier. When it was kind of close to the scale and pitch I wanted I went back and retuned it even lower to G. By tuning it in steps things don't get out of hand and any problems become evident before they become disasters.
dd2b598166