Happy Drum Muti Coloured OM - 18cm

• The tones are soft and calming, and they arrive the moment you touch a tongue, with no technique to learn first.
• Eight tones sit together on one scale, so you can play them in any order and still land somewhere pleasing.
• The surface is covered edge to edge in a dense, saturated paisley of orange, red, green, blue and violet, with fine dotwork and small details tucked into every curve.
• Two wooden mallets with rounded black rubber heads rest across the top, ready to play.
• It is a pleasure to look at when it isn't being played, a splash of colour on a shelf or a low table.

This is a tongue drum, not a handpan. A handpan is a convex, hand-struck instrument; a tongue drum has tongues cut into the steel, each one vibrating at its own pitch. Strike a tongue and you hear its note along with a faint halo of overtones, which gives the sound its singing quality. The tones are arranged as an eight-note scale, so the notes sit well together. That is why a tongue drum feels so forgiving to a beginner: you can wander across the tongues and the result stays musical.

The body is made of iron, finished in a glossy, printed pattern. The cuts that form the tongues run through the design, so you can see where each note sits, and the colour does the work of drawing the eye in. The Om symbol is part of the decoration. In Hindu and Buddhist practice, Om is the sound traditionally chanted at the start and close of meditation, which makes it a fitting mark on an instrument made for quiet, unhurried playing.

Rest the drum on your lap or on a stable surface and strike a tongue with a mallet, using a light touch and letting each note ring before the next. Slow, spaced notes give the calmest result; quicker, overlapping ones make a brighter, more playful pattern. There is no set order to follow. Play by ear and let the scale do the work.

Tongue drums are often played in meditation, mindfulness practice and sound-bath settings, where the soft, sustained tone gives the room a gentle focus. It also suits a child's first instrument, a corner of the living room, or a few quiet minutes at the end of the day.

The drum measures 18 cm across and is made of iron. It comes with two wooden mallets with rounded rubber tips.

It makes an easy gift for someone who has always wanted to play something but never had the training. There is nothing to learn before the first satisfying note, and the bright design makes it a keepsake as much as an instrument.