A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched over one or both of the open ends of a drum. The drumhead is struck with sticks, mallets, or hands, so that it vibrates and the sound resonates through the drum.
Additionally outside of percussion instruments, drumheads are also used on some string instruments, most notably the banjo.
The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head. Tambourines are often used with regular percussion sets. They can be mounted, for example on a stand as part of a drum kit (and played with drum sticks), or they can be held in the hand and played by tapping, hitting, or shaking the instrument.
Tambourines come in many shapes with the most common being circular. It is found in many forms of music: Albanian folk music, Arabic folk music, Balkan folk music, Israeli folk music, Turkish folk music, Greek folk music, Italian folk music, French folk music, classical music, Spanish folk music, Persian music, samba, gospel music, pop music, country music, and rock music.
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a percussion mallet, to produce sound. There is usually a resonant head on the underside of the drum. Other techniques have been used to cause drums to make sound, such as the thumb roll. Drums are the world's oldest and most ubiquitous musical instruments, and the basic design has remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years.
Drums may be played individually, with the player using a single drum, and some drums such as the djembe are almost always played in this way. Others are normally played in a set of two or more, all played by one player, such as bongo drums and timpani. A number of different drums together with cymbals form the basic modern drum kit. Many drums are played together with other instruments.
The timpani (/ˈtɪmpəni/; Italian pronunciation: [ˈtimpani]) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. Thus timpani are an example of kettledrums, also known as vessel drums and semispherical drums, whose body is similar to a section of a sphere whose cut conforms the head. Most modern timpani are pedal timpani and can be tuned quickly and accurately to specific pitches by skilled players through the use of a movable foot-pedal. They are played by striking the head with a specialized beater called a timpani stick or timpani mallet. Timpani evolved from military drums to become a staple of the classical orchestra by the last third of the 18th century. Today, they are used in many types of ensembles, including concert bands, marching bands, orchestras, and even in some rock bands.
Timpani is an Italian plural, the singular of which is timpano, though the singular may also be referred to as a timpanum. In English the term timpano is only widely in use by practitioners: a single drum is often referred to as a timpani, leading many to incorrectly pluralize the word as timpanis. A musician who plays timpani is a timpanist.
A frame drum is a drum that has a drumhead width greater than its depth. It is one of the most ancient musical instruments, and perhaps the first drum to be invented. It has a single drumhead that is usually made of rawhide, but man-made materials may also be used. Some frame drums have mechanical tuning, while on many others the drumhead is tacked in place. The drumhead is stretched over a round, wooden frame called a shell. The shell is traditionally constructed of rosewood, oak, ash etc. that has been bent and then scarf jointed together; though some are also made of plywood or man-made materials. Metal rings or jingles may also be attached to the frame. In many cultures, larger frame drums are played mainly by men in spiritual ceremonies, while medium-size drums are played mainly by women.
The talking drum is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, which can be used as a form of speech surrogacy by regulating its pitch and rhythm to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech. It has two drumheads connected by leather tension cords, which allow the player to change the pitch of the drum by scraping the cords between their arm and body.
Originating from the 18th century, talking drum players used tones to disseminate messages, such as news of ceremonies and commands, over 4-5 mile distances.
A djembe or jembe (/ˈdʒɛmbeɪ/ JEM-bay; from Malinke jembe [dʲẽbe], N'Ko: ߖߋ߲߰ߓߋ) is a rope-tuned, skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa.According to the Bambara people in Mali, the name "djembe" comes from the saying "Anke djé, anke bé," which translates to "everyone gather together in peace" and defines the drum's purpose. In the Bambara language, "djé" is the verb for "gather" and "bé" translates as "peace."
The djembe has a body (or shell) carved of hardwood and a drumhead made of untreated (not limed) rawhide, most commonly made from goatskin. Excluding rings, djembes have an exterior diameter of 30–38 cm (12–15 in) and a height of 58–63 cm (23–25 in). The majority have a diameter in the 13 to 14 inch range. The weight of a djembe ranges from 5 kg to 13 kg (11–29 lbs.) and depends on size and shell material. A medium-size djembe carved from one of the traditional woods (including skin, rings, and rope) weighs around 9 kg (20 lbs.).
A two-dimensional elastic membrane under tension can support transverse vibrations. The properties of an idealized drumhead can be modeled by the vibrations of a circular membrane of uniform thickness, attached to a rigid frame. Based on the applied boundary condition, at certain vibration frequencies, its natural frequencies, the surface moves in a characteristic pattern of standing waves. This is called a normal mode. A membrane has an infinite number of these normal modes, starting with a lowest frequency one called the fundamental frequency.
There exist infinitely many ways in which a membrane can vibrate, each depending on the shape of the membrane at some initial time, and the transverse velocity of each point on the membrane at that time. The vibrations of the membrane are given by the solutions of the two-dimensional wave equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions which represent the constraint of the frame. It can be shown that any arbitrarily complex vibration of the membrane can be decomposed into a possibly infinite series of the membrane's normal modes. This is analogous to the decomposition of a time signal into a Fourier series.
Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components.
Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact, and for mooring lines and other underwater applications.