Mini African Drum

For the past 3 months I have been visiting Chad, Africa. The family that I am staying with has a small African drum kicking around. It is made with a gourd and goat skin and I have enjoyed playing with it during my stay.

One of my goals, has been to sample an instrument and this drum seemed like the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to my mics, so I made do with a phone. I placed it on some books to get the right height and played a variety of hits on the drum. I then compiled them into a Decent Sampler instrument. Which took a bit, because I have never coded with Decent Sampler before.

I do want to give a shout to Roberg for advising me to use my samples as round robins. I kept my original mapping of the individual hits to one key apiece. However, I added another range of 5 notes that have 4 round robins. This arrangement seems to give the instrument a more playable layout. I’m really happy with how that worked out.

As my first instrument, it isn’t perfect. But I did my best to make a quality sample library that will give a unique, African flavor to your score. Hope you enjoy it!