Okay...just catching up to this...Since I have been making Tongue drums longer than anybody in the market with the exception of Hapi-Tones let me put my 2 cents in here. For harmonic distortion and out of tune notes and such on mass produced drum...you may be able to bring it in tune with a hacksaw blade...but the distortion is usually caused by poor note spacing...poor quality steel or a combination of the 2. Tuning by bending tabs: DO NOT DO THIs!! especially on drums made from thin steel or drums made from old propane tanks. If your drum is made from an old propane tank and you are having troubles with it...it is usually because old propane tanks cannot be used for propane any more because they have failed their hydrostat test so the metal is brittle and usually riddled with stress cracks in addition it has thick and thin spots in it usually due to pitting and rust. Bending the tabs stresses and weakens the steel and may cause the note to go "Dead" or break off completely Tuning with magnets. This is a bit of a pain...if you use a regular magnet it is usually not strong enough and will move around and can even cause the note to make a buzzing sound. For regular low carbon steel (mass produced drums, propane tank drums, etc) use "Earth Magnets" as they are very strong and won't move...the downside to magnets is they are a bit of a pain and sliding them around the surface of the drum will scratch it all up over time. Tuning with a hacksaw blade: For the mass produced drums, propane tank drums or carbon steel drums any old blade will do just as long as it has 32 teeth per inch or more. My Vibedrums are made from 13 gauge (2.25 mm thick) Stainless Steel and you will need a special blade to cut due to its hardness and tensile strength. Warning: Tuning is a one way street...you can decrease the frequency but cannot increase it without screwing up the look of the drum...so if you cut too much...you have to take it to the next lower note and may have to end up cutting all the notes to reduce the entire scale to the next one down. There is also a risk of the blade slipping out while cutting resulting in a major scratch along the top of your drum. If you could care less how your drum looks then the best and easiest way to Increase the frequency is by drilling one or several holes in the note around the top outside edge and working your way down the sides TUNERS: okay so you want to bring your drum into tune. First tuners that attach to the drum are a "no go" due to the drum being a uni-body instrument. Second if you are using an app from an I-Phone there is not a single tuning app that accurately catches the frequency of a Steel tongue drums because you cannot adjust the microphone sensitivity on an i-phone so it picks up all the over-tones, distortions, background noises even the sound of an A/C unit in your house. For an Android phone I recommend the G-Strings or the Waves App but you need to play around with the settings to get it just right for your phone. You also need to find a way to quiet all the overtones from other notes (especially if there is poor note spacing) so that your tuner picks up the frequency of the note you are trying to tune and no other Bad Faith actors: Here at Vibedrums we have had a customer or two over the years that have tried to change the tuning on their drum...and ended up messing it up...then they tried to return it as an "Out of Tune" drum...however since we keep records of the frequency and cut length of each and every drum we send we know what happened. So in a word or two: Tune at your own risk. Alrighty then I think that covers most of it..hope it helps...vernon...vibedrums

Thanks for the great info. I tuned my cheap D major tongue drum into a D harmonic minor simply by cutting the F# further down into an F. Sounds great; a little spooky and eerie, which is what I wanted.

Duuuude, this was SUPER informative, THANK YOU!!! 🙏🏼

Thanks for this information! Professionell well done!

This is such a great video, thank you for linking to me! I don't know if you're on Facebook, but I have a group called Learning Steel Tongue Drum and I will post this there! I'm sure it will help a lot of people. I love your vibedrums btw, the shape on the tongues is so cool 😊

Wow!! that was great and i actually followed all the way through. I'm one step closer to getting my first drum 😃

I’m new at this tongue drum thing but you help me understand it and how to tune it I like your magnet idea👍🤠

Nice introduction. I wanted to add a few things I have done to help with the tuning One I have taken the bottom rubber thingy and I've pushed the tongue further out or further on. Also I have put the magnets inside the drum on the tongue much better than outside :) Great job !!

The best video I've seen on Tongue Drum Tuning. Thanks a lot bro! 👍🏽

Thank you very much for all the info. The excellent tuning and pentatonic options can be worth buying a handmade tongue drum!

Super helpful. Thanks!

Thank you for sharing all your helpful tips, we need more of this in the world! im going to use one for my class I think

Excellent info!

Thanks! Very helpful!

This video is so helpful! I recently obtained one and this information is definitely gonna help with moving on. The magnet idea is really cool but mine didn’t work with what I had.

What is your favorite steel tongue drum brand? Which has the richest sound? I agree with the 5 tongues. Thank you for this excellent and helpful video.

I've always wanted a steel tongue drum, and I knew about scales, but there were things I learned that made me realize.... I'll just start a whole collection with different drums and different scales with different sizes LOL Thanks for the info!

you have so many steel tongur drums!

Super useful! Do you know what type of saw blade and file to get? For the tuner I also learned from Ricky (ReWildYourSoul) that a spectral tuner should be used, not a guitar tuner that doesn’t show harmonic alignment. A strobe tuner I imagine should work as well.

I am harmonica player. This is the same as tuning harmonica reeds. Magnets only lower the pitch. My drum has several flat tongues. I'm going to try filing the bottom of the tongue ends so as to not mar it's appearance. Michael

Thank you for explaining this. I don't have the money to throw away. I want a good one on a budget.

Thanks so much just bought my first drum and love the sounds it makes but I don't have a number 4 tongue. It's a C I think as that's the number cut out in the bottom. Can you help at all? Thanks.

magnets are also brilyant killing the ear splitting ring off your anvle when your on the forge in your shed making stuff!! theres some usless information for you, found you vid verry helpfull as i fancy makeing one and was just wondering what to tune it to also will space them out a bit too. thank you!!

I meant to add the harmonic distortion I'm getting on the last two notes is on a mass-produced one, if I can figure how to fix that it will sound ace! I also need to ask, what is the letter ‘i’ for there are 7 tongues of notes 1-7 and the 8th says ‘i ‘ rather than 8 any ideas why? And finally my booklet says I need to flatten the drum, is this right and by how much? I'd be grateful for any advice, thank you! Beccy

How do I resolve harmonic distortion I have on my last 2 tongues?

2:41 the tune is known as Mr Sandman, Bring me a Dream..... and the other one after cant remember it at all :( but Mr Sandman Im now singing in the back of my head.

I've been experimenting on my own with one I found at the flea Market I work at and I've noticed myself I prefer to use less of the notes personally so I'm excited to look into the 5 tone ones!

Tuning by cutting or by magnets - both only lower the pitch. There are hardly any mentions of raising the pitch. If they're off because of poor quality control, it would seem that some would be higher and some would be lower than they should be. Someone mentioned cutting or filing the length of the tongue down to raise the pitch. Is it the length or mass that determines the pitch? If it's the mass, I'd rather remove material evenly around a tongue or drill holes in the tongue. I'd love to hear comments on this topic.

I have a C and a D drum planning to lower the D into Db to make a chromatic pair. I'm also wanting to drop the range of each drum and add two tongues to the C. Which leaves me with 2 questions: 1. Can you make a shoulder cut in a tongue to incorporate more of the "dead space" into mass to lower the pitch, and 2. Do you know of a formula to calculate the area needed for a tongue by frequency, material type and thickness? I would appreciate any advice you can provide. 🪘

I use glued magnets.Pitch perfect on the cheep.

what are your thoughts on what might be some causes of tongue(s) to go out of tune? This last Sunday n Monday I took my steel tongue tank drum out with me to play in nature in the sunshine and I noticed within playing that throughout the drum the sounds were becoming duller. Later when I returned home to play on the drum where I was no longer in the sun/temp of approx 74 degrees faren- the quality/level of sound returned but then my ears slowly caught onto a high pitched backlash especially more noticeable on the second side of the drum that's tuned in D major.This peculiar sound is slowly fading away but now on both sides of the drum I feel there is multiple tongues that are giving off a different sound which is much different than what I've experienced. I downloaded the Carltone app but Iam not seeing yet how to navigate this app to check each tongue sound etc ( I do have notations from the maker KOMOSKY of the scales of each tongues tuning)

i just bought my first handpan 2 days ago, and one of the magnets from the inside came off and now the 6b tongue is all out of tune and i dont know what to do. there are 3 magnets on it and and cant figure out what i need to do to get that note back to normal. thanks for any help

Advice? I was given a toungue drum, i love it! It's obv. mass produced but every note rang like a perfect chime! I'm a musician, i could just hear the F was a little off. Per instructions, it said push down on the toungue or push up fr. the inside & it will tune. I wasn't planning on playing w/anyone else i just wanted it in tune itself. Now, that F toungue is giving off a dissonant, vibration that's just unpleasant, everything else is still perfect. How do I fix this, or did I just ruin my drum?

Where can I purchase the Red 9 tongue 5 note drum?

I recently purchased a large steel tongue drum with a diameter of 13 ½". It does something I can't explain. When I strike a tongue, and let the tone ring, as the vibrations begin to slow, the note goes sharp and will actually finish as much as ½ step higher than it should be. I can't find an explanation for that or a cure. But, I have noticed that each tongue has rounded corners at the top to the extent that it is semi circular. And, that the width of the tongue at that point, the diameter of that semicircle, is greater than the width of the tongue at the bottom. Could that be the problem? Every tongue on the drum is narrower at the "bottom" than it is at the "top". If I play a string of notes, each one of the starts to go sharp as the ringing diminishes and the sound is ... well, ... very sloppy, to be kind. Did I buy a lifetime of problems?

Fkn Ricky Bobby over here..."I don't know what to do with my hands"...jeezus...

Whatt if I need to yune the tongue UP, make it higher? What would I do then?

Tune by temperature, by candle

do you have some tutorial videos or can recommend a channel that does pls?

How can I fix two tongues that are dead sounding? I hit them all I get is a "thunk" sound and no tones.

FYI - vibedrum.com only has snare/bass/tom drums now. No tongue drums, unless they're really well hidden.

I need that red guitar and that shirt. Is the raffle still going on? Lol jk this was cool just got a drum I can't stop

i dont understand why if more tounge spaceing makes the tone cleaner then why would they add redundant toungs, 7tones 7toungs seames to me the ideal design unless you went up to 12 so you could have 1 cromatic octave.

Are we playing bass clef yes it is important

I have a new tongue drum, mass produced… it’s untuned and since I’m a violinist, and a drummer…. I don’t even want to play /: It sounds out of tune 😩

No, different magnets do not stick to different metals.

All magnets stick to iron. If the drum is made of brass or aluminum or some other non-iron metal no magnet will stick to it. LOL 😂

This instrument was INVENTED here in the USA (California in fact) NOT China or India or Jamaica, and the INVENTOR Called it the TANK DRUM, NOT A "Tongue" Drum, because he made them from 2 opposite ends of a Propaine Tank!! STOP CALLING IT A "Tongue Drum" !!!!

You talk way too much. You repeat yourself way too much. You talk too much You repeat yourself way too much.

5 minutes in and still haven't spoken a word about how the tuning works... terrible.