this drum is made from a cardboard tube, of the type used for molding poured concrete. the head is goatskin, from a bodhran that split during a particularly dry winter. the design is from Bart Hopkin's wonderful book "Making Simple Musical Instruments", which is sadly out of print. however, Bart's equally wonderful "Musical Instrument Design" is available from ExMI, and includes similar designs. this book is without doubt the best work available on building unusual and inexpensive musical instruments.

the most interesting thing about this drum is Bart's tuning mechanism: a set of ropes looped through metal rings at the bottom, that can be twisted to raise or lower the pitch. the ropes can also be squeezed between the drummer's legs to get small, "talking-drum" style pitch changes.

my attempts to build the wooden rings from scrap wood were not very successul, particularly since this was before i owned a bandsaw. as a result, the upper ring split; the split is not very convincingly hidden by some rope trim.

examples:

samples:
samples, loops, and Reason/Mach5 banks coming soon...