Care for Your Drum
Why This Matters
- It's a musical instrument that needs to be tuned and can go out of tune.
How You Achieve Success
- Handle with care.
- Transport with care.
- Use care while tuning it.
What You Do
Handling and transporting
- Purchase a drum case with the appropriate amount of padding to protect the drum while transporting it.
- Use two hands to pick up and move the drum.
- Make sure that your hands are clean prior to handling it.
- Keep the drum in temperature and humidity controlled space; allowing it to get really cold and really hot can affect its tune and potentially even damage the drum and drum head.
Tuning
- Always warm up the drum head before tuning it; never tune a cold drum!
- As the saying goes "the drum head sounds best...right before it splits". Always give the drum head time to adjust to a new tension before tightening even more.
- Make sure to adjust the tension for the drum head very evenly. Super small adjustments.
Natural head drums
- Shea butter is an excellent conditioner for natural drum heads.
- Be aware that natural drum heads will transfer some of the moisture--the natural conditioning of the drum head--from your hand on every strike. In cold weather, that happens just a little faster, and this has the effect of drying out the skin of your fingers to the point where they can crack and bleed.
More In-Depth
These are some of the things to avoid:
- Avoid placing anything on top of the drum (using it as a table).
- Avoid leaving it in your vehicle in extreme, or even moderately extreme weather.
- Natural head drums react poorly to humidity, dew, and dampness.
