this is an unboxing and demonstration of the
harmonic star steel tongue drum or tank drum i want to thank christian and the people
at harmonic star for sending me this sample to bring to you and i'm also going to
tell you a way that you guys can win one of these and i'll tell you about that
at the end of the video let's get right to it i'm kalani welcome to world drum club so
this is the instrument box comes like this and it is made in china designed in australia
says right there let's open it up so i've done several videos on tank drums in the
past and i will do a comparison sound video in the future but for today this is the star comes in this nice padded bag there's a pocket
with a little snap on the back uh zipper padded bag shoulder strap you can see everything
here so let's get it open and see what we have all right wow oh look at that so unlike a lot
of other tank drums you can see that it's got this really aesthetic design they've left or they
leave nothing to be desired all right i'll try not to crack too many corny jokes but you know dad
jokes are my specialty you guys um on the bottom let's look at the bottom because oh hello uh
you can see that there's some rubber feet and they're pretty thick they're actually yeah look
at that pretty beefy feet beefy feet and inside is a package let's get to the package but
um that's what the instrument looks like but what comes in the package is
going to be of great help to you so you get some mallets a
couple and these are rubber and it looks like you also get a stand for
your mallet so look at that isn't that nice designed kind of a design little mallet stance
so you can put those there so they're ready that actually is nice because they don't roll
around you get a what looks like a cleaning cloth i guess that's a cleaning cloth of some kind if
you get if you uh play really hard i guess you can wipe the sweat off your brow if you're working
that hard now what are these these seem to be okay so this is interesting these are little uh i guess
they're like finger mallets right so you could attach these right and then so you get four of those i guess you could
do chords put two on each or just use them on your index and then you've got replacements
if you lose them what else is in the the bag you get a quite a thick book um all right
so there's what looks like this is like a registration sheet or information so you can read
that fill that out and then you have a manual and song book and i'm just going to go through
this quickly obviously you can't read all of this but you've got information about the
instrument about the notes how to arrange it how you should start it says right here
so here's a few things you should know then there's a whole section it looks like on
you know notation how to read music note names they've got a section right here on note values so
if you don't know how to read music this would be a a beginning guide you know to get you up
to speed this is called tongue drum notation so you can go through all this and be familiar
familiarize yourself with the notation with the instrument with the pitches we've got a number
system here which corresponds to the numbers i know it's a little hard to see but there are
numbers you can see six here six here one seven three etc so here is a color coded guide and the
red is right hand blue is left so just remember red on the right when i was taking sailing lessons
they said red on the right returning so red on the right blue on the left in general so let's do the
first scale down here and see if we can do that so these are color coded i know it's hard to see
but we've got red blue red blue red blue red blue so let's go through that really quick
and we're going to start on the one kind of like where you play rhythms right start on
the one and we're gonna alternate back and forth let's put this over here so you can sort
of see it i know it's a little blurry that's five and then we want so there's our octave and these are octave
d's so it's in the key of d major or b minor now look at this really quick just
as i just played this i noticed that it is called harmonic star and
if you start here if you start here one two three four five so you have a
star shape right so you can play up and down right that makes it really easy i think so you can keep going up and
you you kind of shift over and then this note is our b that's the octave here let's try it with fingers i like to play these drums with my
fingertips a lot of the time maybe thumb now look at this if we play generally
speaking if we play to one side we could get one chord over here
one three five and then other side two four six all right so it's got an open sound it's got
a sound that i would say is it has harmonics uh it's got a i would say it's a more open spread
out sound uh rather you know rather than a focused tone so i don't know why that is
if it's if it's uh because of the shape or whatever the manufacturing but it
is a fairly i would say just like an open soft sound gentle sound let's go back to
the book and look through this a little bit more because there are some other things
you get in here so you get exercises exercise set and this is all to familiarize yourself
with the instrument and the pattern you get yeah chords so we just talked about that here's
some chords built on major triads and minor triads then you go to twinkle twinkle little
star which uses six notes pretty easy and then a lot of other classic songs mary had a
little lamb michael roy your bow to shore oh dejoy row row your boat amazing grace another
ode to joy uh and then some original songs albatross soft breeze clouds etc etc you
can go through and learn specific songs from the manual one of the things i like to
do with these of course is improvise so if you'd like to improvise and which means just play
anything that sounds good to you you can certainly you can explore sounds and
then maybe you'll find patterns we are pattern seeking creatures humans love
to see to find patterns and so i would invite you to just explore and find your own music find
your own patterns in addition to learning scales and reading some music and learning songs you
can certainly do that so we've covered the main layout of the instrument we know that it's in d
major or b minor so if you have other instruments in d major or b minor or something that works with
that basically you're looking at a scale that has d e f sharp g a b c sharp and d the octave
and then also the b below the d this note the center note and that's pretty typical on a lot
of these tank drums the center note would be the the bass or the low note even if it's a minor
third below the um root of the major scale that sounds technical i know that's a little bit
of music theory but um the the takeaway if in case you're not familiar with music theory
the takeaway is you can play in a major sound you can also play in what we would call a minor
sound so you have some options there you can play other instruments with this instrument as
long as they're matching the keys of d major or b minor and i think depending on the surface
you put this on it would change the resonance a little bit this is on a metal music stand
so it would be you know a hard surface you could experiment with closing off the
bottom or putting it on different types of surfaces and that would probably
give you a little bit different tone all right so again what you get in the box the
drum the manuals and instructions the mallets the lovely mallet uh holder and this is this is
plastic mallet stand reminds me of a hashi holder a chopstick holder you get these if you want to
use for your fingers you can use those and then you get the cloth with it and that is everything
so for those of you as i mentioned earlier for for people who would love to have a chance to win uh
one of these we're going to be giving away several and i again i want to thank christian and the
people at harmonic star for making them available to world drum club patrons you can go to
patreon.com kalani any patron will have a chance to win one of these so join now after the
as soon as this video comes out make sure you join us over there become a patron of the channel you
can do that for some pocket change and then you'll have a chance to win one of these instruments
alright so this again is the harmonic star steel tank drum or tongue drum i will leave a link below
this video directly to that product um we are not getting paid to do this video but i want if you
you know if you want to have information i'll just leave you the link below i'm kalani this is world
drum club thanks for watching and make sure you like subscribe hit the bell before you leave i'll
see you all in another video thanks for watching
