Sculpted Tongue Drum

A while back a viewer commented that they wished I would make a musical instrument. I replied that I'm not a musician so while it would be really cool to, for example, make a guitar and be playing the guitar during the build video, I don't have the background in music to be able to make the instrument sound good. They responded that guitars aren't the only instrument and that I could find something to put my own spin on. I couldn't argue with that, and it got me thinking about tongue drums.
I was introduced to tongue drums through other makers' videos. It seemed like it was relatively straight forward from the music side of things but that the design of them was really simple and thus ripe for taking them in a new direction. When I look at most acoustic instruments I see an organic shape. The shape is probably the way that it is almost entirely because it needs to be that shape to produce the sound in the way that it does. But still these are instruments that have to be played by humans and the design has to fit the person playing it. Maybe it's just cultural, but when I see a guitar it has a shape that almost asks you to pick it up and play it. Tongue drums on the other hand, are generally just boxes.
So I got to thinking about what shape would a tongue drum be that told you it was meant to be picked up and fit the person playing it. The shape I came up with swoops down in the center which creates handles at either end. These handles also support the drum in your lap. This puts the top of the drum lower than a box with an equivalent volume, making it more comfortable to play.
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