How to Change the Tone of the Djembe Drum

Video Transcript

" Hello there my name is Aaron Moon and I’m here today on behalf of expertvillage.com. I’ve been discussing the hand drum or the Djembe today, right now I’d like to describe and perform a simple way to change the tone of the sound you’re getting from Djembe. Now as you play your Djembe straight up like this you getting the same tone, you’re getting the same pitch if you hit it consistently. Now I’ve described how to change that pitch applying pressure to the drumhead itself, like so… Now another way you can change the pitch is placing the Djembe on your lap now as you hit it, it still has the consistent pitch to it and now a simple way to change the pitch to lower it is just by taking your hand and sticking it in the end of the drum and as your hand gets closer to the top of the drum is to stick it through and it’s going to lower the pitch and as you bring it out it brings it back to the original pitch. So I’ll demonstrate this and so you can hear for yourself and you can see me do it, my hand is going in it’s almost a dead now I’m completely blocking it, now it gets lower and then back to higher. So that’s fairly simple and you know it’s not the first thing you’d think to do but if you’re looking to get that type of variation in pitch all you got to do is flip the Djembe on the side and stick your hand in the end of it and adjust it accordingly and that’s how to change the pitch of your Djembe."