How to buy the best drum for shamanic drumming

I have been building frame drums for shamanic drumming since 1989 and I have learned a few tips for how to buy the best frame drum.  There are three things to look at when buying a frame or hoop drum: tension, balance and whole attention.  Here are examples of each from my newest drum.

A visibly even tension is perhaps the most important factor to consider.  Deer hide is like fabric--it has a bias. The skin from the sides of the animal is thinner and more stretchy than the skin along the backbone.  This means that if the hide is stretched the same amount over the hoop, the hoop will bow or warp when the skin dries because the different amounts of tension in the skin were not taken into account.

The first thing I want to do when a new drum is dry is this--to look across the drum's face and see a flat playing surface. In an odd way that is good advice for much of life, to obtain an even result sometimes one must at first be intentionally uneven.

Balance is the second critical factor.  When the back of the drum is uneven in its construction, it is likely that the voice of the drum will also be uneven. By this I mean the drum's playing surface will have dead spots and areas of reduced harmonics.

This tying technique, which results in a flower-like pattern, is a Passamaquoddy design I learned when I made my first drums while living in Nova Scotia.  It is easy to see that the entire drum is balanced if the flower petals are equal in size and shape.

The third factor I call whole attention.  Every part of the drum, and every part between the part, is whole.  Every part deserves the same level of attention.

When the knot work the wraps the hand hold in the back of the drum is even in tension and well balanced in the thickness of the doeskin thong used, then the finished result will be firm and durable.

Of course the best indicator of a good frame drum for shamanic drumming is the sound of the drum. The voice should be layered with a good range of overtones and bass tones. The drone of the drum voice is the tone that continues after each strike with the beater.  This tone  is called "the good horse" and its continuous sound is used to propel the drummer into the spirit world on a shamanic journey. The "finish" of the voice should be long and even so that a drone continues from one strike of the drumstick to the next.  If the voice "falls off" between strikes, creating a brief pause between beats, then the skin is too thick or the stretch is too tight.  

You can listen to my drums being played with a felt beater on my Journey Oracle website, and hear the subtle blending of tension, balance, size and stretch in the drum's voices.  This youtube movie of a new drum demonstrates one of the finest drones I have ever stretched in a frame drum.

The drum being played was made as a celebration of Death.  You can purchase this drum in my Etsy webstore. 

A Frame drum to celebrate Death

This is a drum to die for.

What an idea for our time.  To celebrate death as an opening to new beginnings.  And yet we each do this every day, every moment.  Nothing can be born without a dying.  Every death is a cause of something new to appear.

This new drum from the Journey Oracle is a celebration of death as a doorway. Death is the doorway.

This beautiful blacktail deer on Cortes Island died and so this drum could be born.  So our spiritual practice could have a voice.  This is not bad.  This is normal.  We all die.  We all have a voice that will become another voice. 

Like fractals in Nature—a nonlinear pattern that repeats itself—the handhold of this drum repeats the pattern of the opening in the deer’s hide.  This polished circle of Australian moonstone is a celebration of the space inside the stone. 

It is not the material that surrounds a hole that is so much important.  It is the space inside that is being outlined for us to see.  This opening.  Held in a spider’s web of possibility.  So fragile and yet strong enough to hold a new beginning that is worth the dying for.

This drum is available through my Etsy webstore.  Click on this link to enjoy more stories about how I became a drum maker,  You can hear this drum being played with a felted drumstick by clicking on this youtube link.  This is one of the finest shamanic journey drones I have ever stretched in a frame drum. 

A drum for the Wise Child

This new drum from the Journey Oracle comes with quite a story.  As I worked on the hide it became known to me as the "wise child" because the hide is very thin and small with only one deep scratch on the otherwise unblemished surface.

A young deer without physical scars or a thick skin from a long life. Yet the skin is deeply patterned and marked with shapes and shadows--like oracle cards of stories waiting to be told.

I tied the back with the interlacement pattern of the magic hexagram.

The hexagram was popular with medieval magicians.  However, its usual form consisted of two triangles that were interlaced but entirely separate from each other.

This version of the six-sided hexagram is tied in such a way that the thong makes an unbroken line, which means that no negative energies can stick because there are no knots, or "gates," through which spiritual dangers can enter.

 

Some drums do not ask to be painted because the surface of the skin is already so marked with flickering images.

To choose one would be to diminish all the others that are also speaking.  Like only letting one voice be heard in a story-telling circle of wise children.

To purchase this drum, go to my Etsy webstore.

Mother Bear drum from Journey Oracle

Who doesn't like winter comfort?  Keeping warm in the embrace of what loves us, while the snow feathers down and stars sparkle like ice chips in the winter sky.  This new drum from the Journey Oracle is painted with just a few strokes of black iron oxide, cobalt blue and titanium zircon silicate raw earth pigments.

 The mother bear's head was always in my view, even as the drum was drying.   Her eye seemed to watch me from the first stiffening of the Cortes Island blacktail deer hide.

I thought I was going to paint a strong male bear striding across the frame drum surface.  As soon as I made out the bear's head I spent some time researching Ursa Major, the Great Beat constellation that contains the Big Dipper, one of the most recognized patterns in the night sky.

It was in honor of the great bear that I tied a double Pentacle into the back of the drum, thinking this was a drum for the stars.  This complicated pattern of over and under weaving became even more intricate when the hitching was added with smoke tanned leather.

Imagine my surprise when the little cub appeared.

The bear is the Oracle of winter in our Canadian north.  Heralding its onset by withdrawing into warm darkness to bring forth new life.  Appearing in the first spring thaw with new energy to nurture and protect.

As we approach the heart of Winter on February 2nd, may we all be warm and safe as we nurture new energy and projects for the coming spring.

You can listen to this 17" frame drum being played with a felted drumstick by clicking on this youtube link: https://youtu.be/642ywYgyIWI.  

If this is your drum please go to my webstore for purchase and shipping information.

Painted drum with animal spirits

First there was a drum with a pipe shape in the newly dried hide.

And for many months as I worked with my Journey Oracle cards and went on hiking holidays, the drum stayed clear and smooth without my effort but for the stabilizing of the bullet hole in the rim,

And the wrapping of the eight pointed interlacement pattern of transformation woven into the back cedar ring of the drum. 

The drum transformed, as all beings do, and this was the first creature to be seen floating above the bowl.

Then the bird appeared, an odd but sturdy perch upon which the little bear could sit.

But the bird was not the last but only the next, as it in turn leans against a cat.

A strange fox made mostly of smoke with eyes that see to the spirit side balanced at the apex,

While a snake looped itself along the stem of the dreampipe.

Who are all these creatures? 

And why are they perched on a dreaming shaman drum? 

Each of these animals holds a place in the heart of my spiritual growth.  The fox of my personality is held by my bear and bird teachers.  The cat and the snake are the closest to the good work that comes through the stem of intention and out from the bowl into action.  So I guess you could say this is a family portrait.  What creatures are part of your family portrait?

Listen to the voices in this drum by clicking on this youtube link.  This 14" frame drum of Cortes Island blacktail deer hide and BC spruce wood is available in my webstore.

A drum for dreaming

This new drum from the Journey Oracle is called “dreampipe” and how it got its name is a good story.

A friend called to tell me that a beautiful sailboat was in her bay that looked like our Bristol 29.9.  She thought the make was a dream pipe. While I was talking to her, I was also putting the final leather thongs on the reverse of this drum.

I turned it over and was surprised to see a pipe in the patterning of the blacktail deer skin.

I went on line and discovered the sailboat is a Pipe Dream 36’ which does indeed look like a bigger version of our Pearl.  But by now the drum was showing me images in the white streaks of smoke rising from the bowl of dreams.

This 14” frame of British Columbia Spruce wood also has a special task: stabilizing the drum skin around the bullet hole that is positioned on the rim.   When a thin, clear skin has the bullet hole as part of the drum, I consider this a doorway.  For this drum a path to the dreamtime.

This drum for dreaming also has a beautiful teaching in the Octagram tied into the cedar withy ring for the hand-hold of the drum.  This is the sign of regeneration.  The two squares that make the central motif can be seen as a square and a diamond.  That which is hard and clear from the past combined with that which is solid and grounded in the present.  

I will paint this drum, but first I like to offer a drum with its own face, just in case you want to see your own dreams in the patterns of light and shadow.

DREAM PIPE

14" Spruce wood hoop

Cortes Island Blacktail deer hide

Octagram interlacement pattern in cedar withy 

visit my webstore for price and shipping details

or contact Kristen at 

journeyoracle@gmail.com 

Cougar spirit shaman drum

I’ve just finished painting this new native style frame drum with a spruce wood hoop and blacktail deer hide. The hoop is 12" in diameter but the voice is deep and strong.  A perfect drum to play outside because the smaller drum head size will not easily slacken in humidity or warp in heat.

This drum was first called "rain" because spirits always come in the rain, and our drought here in British Columbia was ended (briefly) with two days of rain just before I painted this great cat touching a pool of rainwater.  It has been so dry and the fire danger extreme, and I kept wondering, "What do the animals do?  How do they find water to survive?" 

The painting itself was inspired in the brief moment I drew a faint black line across the light area in the drum head which at first I thought was entirely the cat’s paw.  Suddenly the lower half of the shape became a reflection, and the faint squiggles in the deer skin’s surface resolved themselves into lines in rock and edges formed by water. 

The cedar ring is fitted with an interlacement pattern of the 7-pointed Mystic Star, which is considered effective protection against evil influences and rival magicians.

The star design is repeated twice, with the outer pattern wrapped in a decorative hitching of sailor’s knotwork made of doeskin.   In the Tarot, 14 is the number of Temperance—the quality of being moderate; to restrain from extremes. 

Perhaps the life-saving rain came in that world as well as this world, and the spirit of cougar is showing me that for this moment, the extreme has been moderated and all is well. 

For more information about this drum please visit my web store.