Native Drum Tuning

If your drums tone sounds flat and dull, then it needs tuning, before moving on to the “How to tune” part, let’s discuss the factors that affect rawhide. Rawhide by its nature shrinks or expands depending on certain conditions. In cold, wet, and humid climates or in these types of environments, rawhide expands. In hot, dry weather or when exposed to a heat source, rawhide shrinks.

Now, armed with this knowledge about rawhide, we can use it to our advantage to tune our drum to the perfect pitch we want. When your drums tone is flat and dull and the rawhide seems to be loose, then you need to tighten the rawhide. We now know that exposing our drum to a heat source shrinks rawhide.

Caveat! Excessive exposure of your drum to heat can cause permanent damage. Please read that again, because whatever heat source you use, this is important to know. Therefore, do not place your drum in front of or next to a heat source and move away and forget about it. Ok, now that we’ve got that figured out, let’s look at a few different methods we can use to heat our drum, which causes the rawhide to shrink and gives us a better melody/tone from our drum.

Methods to tune your drums

• hair dryer – the fastest and easiest way to tune a drum. Start in the center of the drum and work your way to the edges. It should only take a few minutes.
• heat lamp – Place the drum in front of the heat lamp, again, it should only take a few minutes. Periodically beat your drum to test the pitch.
• Heater or fireplace– When using this method, it is important not to place the drum too close to the heat. If it’s too hot for your hand, you should move the drum away.
• wood fire – The preferred method of native Indians to tune their drums. Most of us have seen the image of the native Indians dancing around the fire beating their drums. Just be sure not to place your drum too close to naked flames.

Each of the above methods works fine, just make sure you don’t overdo it. By that I mean leaving the drum in front of or too close to the heat source for too long. If you do, over time the rawhide will stretch too much and eventually lose its natural springy quality.

Also, if you overdo it, the rawhide can shrink too much and damage the wooden frame of the drum. Whichever method you use, try out the drum melody as you go through the process by drumming until you’re happy with the tone. As long as it’s done correctly, you can use these methods repeatedly without affecting the life of the drum.

So far we’ve talked about ways to tune your drum if it sounds flat and dull. What if you have the opposite problem? On a hot, dry day, the drum can sound very high-pitched; in this case the best way to get the leather to loosen is by sprinkling or sprinkling small amounts of water on the leather.

Start from the edges of the drum and work your way to the middle. Let it sit for a few minutes and then test the pitch of the drum. Keep repeating until you have the desired shade. Avoid getting the wooden frame of the drum wet and, like the heating method, don’t do it excessively. In fact, use this method if you overheat your drum to loosen rawhide.

Other factors that affect the melody and pitch of Native American drums.

In addition to environmental conditions, there are other factors that affect the pitch and tone of native Indian drums. They are:

• Drum size. In general, the larger the size of the drum, which includes the rawhide surface area, width and depth of the wooden frame, the deeper the tone and the more resinous the tone. Small drums tend to have a higher, sharper pitch. Although other factors come into effect that can affect tuning, pitch and tone, regardless of size.
• Raw leather thickness. In my experience, the thickness of the rawhide has the greatest effect on the tone of the drums, particularly Hoop Drums. The thicker the skin, the deeper the tone and tone. Thinner skins have a higher pitched tone. So you can have a large drum with a thin skin that produces a high, pitched melody or a smaller drum with a thick skin that produces a long, deep melody.

These are all important factors to consider when selecting your drum.