Getting the most out of your Cooperman frame drum

By definitions, frame drums seem to have a beautiful simplicity - a hoop with drum head, a diameter larger than its depth.  But...of course it's way more complicated than it is simple.   Leaving aside the nuanced specifications (bearing edges, shell materials, head materials, diameter, depth, etc.), and all the possible accessorizing (jingles, bells, snare strings),the names for similar drums played cross-culturally can be a quite confusing and slippery thing. Daf, Daff, Duff, Deff, Tar, Bendir, Bodhran, Dayre, Daire, Doyrah, Riq, Riqq, Reqq, Rik.... Tar(Arabic) (Bahraini)/(Ma)Tari or (Ma)Twari (Swahili). It's so easy to make a "mistake." Early on, Cooperman started using the arabic...

In the early 1990's we worked closely with Randy Crafton to develop our line of frame drums. Randy was a close friend of Layne Redmond, and soon enough the Layne Redmond Ancient Image Series was created. A "Windwand" was also made here at the Cooperman shop. We travelled over to the Widow Jane Mine (1996 I  think) to hear Layne and The Mob Angels perform with the Windwands.  There was a table and we sold the drums and windwands.   The drums were a single thin ply of Ash with the image screen printed on a goatskin drum head.  There were...

The first Cooperman frame drums ( circa 1976) were 18” bodhrans, mounted  with goatskin drumheads.  Pat Cooperman Sr. had a friend, Tom Callinan, who had purchased a bodhran during a visit to Ireland, but the drum head had torn from shell during the flight back ( likely due to plane cabin's the low humidity).   Tom asked Pat, who had just recently opened a rope drum building workshop in Centerbrook Connecticut, to replace the drum head.  Pat was certain there was a better way to secure the head to the shell than simply tacking it with upholstery nails,  so he rebuilt the...

The weight of a drum shell can, over time and especially when suspended from a single point (like a nail or peg in a wall),  cause the shell to distort. So, ideally, a frame drum should not be suspended, nor hung on the wall.    That said, we recognize that it is both convenient and attractive to do so – and, sure, we do it from time to time.    With the above caveats in mind, here are some suggestions to mitigate the potential problems: Use a larger peg rather than a small finish nail to better distribute the weight...