8-Note Tongue Drum

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The 8-note tongue drum lets you play real melodies without learning to read music. You’ll quickly remember where its eight tongues are. Tuned to a major scale, it gives you a full octave for playing nursery rhymes. With a pentatonic scale, almost any combination sounds good, giving you complete freedom to improvise. Our selection includes steel and wooden instruments so you can enjoy their sounds at home or in the office.

Compact steel tongue drum
Smart choice

Compact Steel Tongue Drum

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£59
Acoustic tongue drum
Bestseller

Acoustic Tongue Drum

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£59
Pentatonic tongue drum

Pentatonic Tongue Drum

15 cm 440 Hz Stainless Steel

£69
Tongue drum relaxation

Relaxation Tongue Drum

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£69
8 inch steel tongue drum
Special offer

8 Inch Steel Tongue Drum

C Major 20 cm 432 Hz

£179

£159
Affordable zen drum

Affordable Zen Drum

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£69
Tongue drum 10-inch

10-Inch Tongue Drum

Pentatonic 25 cm 440 Hz

£179
Steel tongue drum 8 notes

8-Note Steel Tongue Drum

C Minor 15 cm 440 Hz

£79
Stainless steel tongue drum

Stainless Steel Tongue Drum

Pentatonic 15 cm 440 Hz

£89
Tongue drum mandala blue

Tongue Drum Mandala

C Major 13 cm 440 Hz

£69
Metal tongue drum

Metal Tongue Drum

Pentatonic 30 cm 440 Hz

£179
Tongue drum musical instrument

Tongue Drum Musical Instrument

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£79
Steel tongue drum instrument

Steel tongue drum instrument

C Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£109
Tank drum with 8 notes

8-Note Tank Drum

C Major 20 cm 440 Hz

£109
Affordable tongue drum

Affordable tongue drum

G Major 15 cm 440 Hz

£59
Log drum

Log Drum

Wood

£279
Wooden tongue drum

Wooden Tongue Drum

£339

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Which songs fit within an 8-note tongue drum’s octave?

A seated woman playing an 8-note tongue drum

Many familiar tunes can be adapted for an 8-note tongue drum tuned to a major scale. On a C major model, you can play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” entirely with notes numbered 1 through 6. Songbooks for 8-note diatonic instruments also include “Ode to Joy,” Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”—all songs that fit within a single octave.

This format lets you play simple melodies with limited chords. Because it lacks low notes, try varying how hard you strike the tongues. In “Amazing Grace,” for example, you can play the first note softly, then gradually play louder up to the phrase’s highest note. On a C major instrument, the repeated 3-3-3 pattern in “Jingle Bells” lets you practise bouncing your mallet so the sound can ring out.

Pentatonic or diatonic: How does the eight-note layout affect what you can play?

With a pentatonic scale, a tongue drum leaves out the clashing semitones, so you can improvise without fear of making a mistake: almost anything you play will sound good, with a simple, deeply relaxing sound. This layout does, however, prevent you from faithfully playing some music written in major keys and makes some songbooks unusable.

A major scale across eight tongues lets you play every piece in a songbook for 8-note diatonic instruments, whose repertoire fits within one octave. If you want to play familiar songs, we recommend this major tuning. A pentatonic scale is ideal if relaxing is your first priority.

Close-up of a white 8-note tongue drum

The most common eight-tongue tongue drum layout provides a full octave of a major scale: its seven notes plus the tonic an octave higher. On an instrument tuned to C major, for example, you’ll have C through B, followed by a higher C. On a 15.24 cm (6 in) model tuned this way, the range runs from C4 to C5 in French octave numbering, corresponding to C5 through C6 in English notation. Another layout uses a pentatonic scale, spreading its five notes across eight tongues to create octave doublings. In C pentatonic, you get C, D, E, G, and A, followed by C, D, and E an octave higher. The tonic is not necessarily the lowest tongue: some C pentatonic tongue drums start on G and range from G2 to C4 in French octave numbering.

A tongue drum tuned to diatonic D major has all seven notes of that scale, starting on D: D, E, F-sharp, G, A, B, C-sharp, and D. Those sharps come from the key, not the number of tongues.

In numbered notation for an 8-note diatonic tongue drum, the tongues are labelled 1 through 7, followed by 1 in the next octave. The 1 always marks the tonic. Every instrument in this collection has eight tongues. If you’d like to choose your tuning, one model is available in both C major pentatonic and D major diatonic versions.

No, not always. Depending on their scales and keys, two 8-note tongue drums may have different notes and octave ranges. Check that every number in the sheet music corresponds to a note on your instrument. For example, a piece written for a diatonic tongue drum in C may call for F and B, which are absent from a C pentatonic model.

However, numbered notation follows scale degrees rather than fixed pitches. You can play a numbered piece on an instrument in another key with the same scale; it will simply sound higher in D than in C because the score’s 1 still corresponds to tongue 1.

You can play simple chords on eight tongues, beginning with occasional pairs of notes struck together, such as 1 and 5. You can then tackle a melody built around three three-note chords played one note at a time.

Compared with a 6-note model, an 8-note tongue drum offers a more complete scale and more chord possibilities while remaining compact and suited to simple tunes. More varied chords and fuller arrangements call for more tongues, such as those on a 13-note tongue drum or a 15-note model.

Start by playing the scale ascending and descending, moving from the largest tongue to the smallest in a criss-cross pattern from left to right. Then practise short patterns such as 1-2-3-2 and 1-3-5-3, followed by 1-2-3-4 ascending and 4-3-2-1 descending.

For a 15-minute practice session, spend 5 minutes slowly playing the scale with mallets, 5 minutes playing 1-3-5-3 with your fingers, and 5 minutes on a simple song. Short daily sessions of 10 to 20 minutes will help you make more progress than longer, less frequent sessions.

The sound is the first difference: a player describes an eight-tongue wooden tongue drum with a padauk soundboard as having a warm tone somewhere between a marimba and a steel drum. This instrument is tuned to F pentatonic, with F, G, A, C, D, F, G, and A.

Some wooden models have tongues arranged in two rows. The left hand starts on the lowest tongue at the bottom left. The next tongue is in the upper row on the right, and you continue alternating left and right up to the highest tongue.

An 8-note tongue drum is primarily for beginners who want to practise rhythm, alternate between their right and left hands, and make their striking technique second nature.