Music has always been about spreading love and joy to me. I have faith and hope that someday there will be a group of fish drummers and people playing these along with their friends and family, together with their instruments.

Why fish drums-

As I entered a new season in life, I felt unfulfilled, so I thought deeply about my direction and saw something special. I saw myself as a young kid who connected with his first red 1/4 scale electric guitar and played on his incredibly tiny amplifier outside on the sidewalk

Musical instruments are what that child always stuck with and loved, and he’s been playing and sharing ever since.

I appreciate instruments that can be played without a musical background or can be learnt with little effort. They are gifts and allow anyone to make music.

My inner child is still here, wanting to share with everyone what he loved so much.

Creating the drum-

I created the Goofy Fish Mouth Drum one day, experimenting with materials for other instruments I was making. Why’d I put that piece of metal up to my mouth? I enjoy experimenting with sounds. I thought “hmm.. this is cool. I wonder what I could do with this.” I made a lot of prototypes and tried 6 different tone woods. It went from a rectangular piece of wood with a handle and a separate mallet to going to my scroll saw and working on a shape before laser cutting. It just so happens that I love fish, so it’s no wonder I made it look fishy :)

Future Plans- Nobody asked for it, but I do plan on making a drum with a built-in pickup. I am working with some other materials and have some cool ideas to make this into a portable drumset, as crazy as that sounds, as well as creating drums of this shape that you don’t play with your mouth. I really am doing this for fun, and the sky is the limit!

What about the name?

I originally wanted to use fish drums, but that was taken. So was mouth drums because the term is related to jaw harps. My niece was saying the word goofy for a little while, and it turns out goofy, followed by fish drums, wasn’t taken!

I kept that name and decided to brand this entire instrument under the name Fish Percussion. I have more fishy instruments related to this one coming in the future.

My little helper-

My 2.5-year-old niece at the time helped me with the length of the shape and implementing a type of googly eye mallet. She thought it looked silly. She helped pick out buzzer bead colors, too.

Conclusion-

Kids love silly, and it turns out I'm very much silly myself. I’m proud of this instrument and happy I found what I always wanted to share with others, and to do it in a way that is true to me. It’s been a fun journey to take something in life not seriously and have a great time doing it.

I feel blessed. Thank you for reading, and feel free to reach out to me at any time with questions!

Your fellow Goofy Fish Drummer,

Cory