Collection: Drums

Hand drums for elementary classrooms, drum circles, multicultural music programs and wellness work. Everything here is played with the hands or a mallet, which is what makes it workable in a room full of students who have never held a drum before.

The collection covers djembes in carved wood and composite, hand drums and frame drums, bongos and cajons, tubanos, congas and timpani, buffalo and gathering drums, tubolos, paddle drums, talking drums, ocean drums and steel tongue drums. Brands include REMO, Groove Masters Percussion, EMUS, MEINL, NINO and SUZUKI.

Two decisions shape most of what you buy. The first is tuning. A rope-tuned or lug-tuned drum can be brought back to pitch as the head loosens, which matters if the drum will be played hard or heard alongside pitched instruments. A fixed-head drum never needs adjusting, which matters more in a room where thirty students handle the instruments each week.

The second is the head. Natural skin gives a warmer, more complex tone and responds to the weather, going slack in damp air and tight in dry heat. Synthetic heads hold their pitch through humidity changes and take rougher handling, which is why most school sets are built around them.

Sizes run from six inch drums that sit in a child's lap to gathering drums a group stands around together. If you are starting a classroom set, a mix works better than a matched set. Different sizes give students different voices to play, and a circle sounds like an ensemble rather than one drum multiplied.