Whale Drum

Click Here for MP3 Demos   [split] About Contents Kontakt Format Specifications   The Whale Drum is a modern example of one of the world’s oldest known instrument families: the tongue or slit drum. These progenitors of the “idiophone” family were originally developed in Africa thousands of years ago. They were originally carved from hollow logs or wooden blocks and struck to produce percussive musical tones. It is one of the few instruments considered to possibly predate language itself. Modern slit drums have been substantially refined and typically feature 6 or more wooden tongues, offering a marimba-like warmth, with a dreamy tone, gentle softly-rounded note attack and subtly undulating ring. The lower notes have an especially deep richness to them. We recorded our 14” 8-tongued vermilion tongue drum in a dry studio environment with mallets, wooden sticks and brushes. We recorded each mallet struck note at both tongue center and edge positions, with an average of 10 dynami