Marnie's Rain Drum
“My hands shake now. You can’t tune a drum with a shaking hand.” — Why a 66-year-old coppersmith on Vancouver Island is letting her last 240 hand-tuned rain drums go far below their worth.
Marnie Ruddick at her shop in Ucluelet, where she has tuned rain drums for the last seven years.
On the west coast of Vancouver Island, rain is just part of life. In Ucluelet it falls about two hundred days a year. For thirty-five years, Marnie Ruddick’s job was to get it off people’s roofs.
She made copper gutters, downspouts and rain chains. Half the houses in town still drain through her work. For the last seven years, she has made only one thing: small steel rain drums that the rain plays by itself.
There is one last batch on the shelf in her shop. After that, she stops.
The Mistake She Forgot Under the Downspout
The stump under her own downspout. The first drum is still sitting on it.
In November 2016, a lodge in Tofino ordered a splash plate from Marnie. It was a flat steel disc with cut tongues, meant to sit under a rain chain and break up the water. It didn’t work the way she wanted. She set it on the old stump under her own downspout to test it later. Then a roofing job came in, and she forgot about it.
In December, a big storm parked over the Island for four days. Out here they call it a Pineapple Express. Marnie was working with the stove going and the rain roaring on the roof.
Then she heard something in the roar that wasn’t the roof.
She went outside. The plate she had given up on was playing notes. Every drop that hit a tongue came off as a clear, clean tone.
“It rains here two hundred days a year. I’d never once heard it play a note.”
By February she had built a proper one, with nine tuned tongues. It sits on the same stump today. By 2019, her shop made nothing else.
“I spent thirty-five years making rain quiet. Then I made it sing.”
Nobody Believes It’s Just the Rain
One drop, one note. The tuning means no note can land wrong.
A rain drum doesn’t sound like a wind chime. Each drop makes one soft, clear note. All nine notes are tuned to fit together, so there is never a wrong one.
In a light drizzle, you hear a few notes a minute, with long gaps between them. In steady rain, it plays a slow, gentle tune. In a real storm, the weather sets the rhythm and the drum plays the notes.
Neighbours stop at the fence to ask where the music is coming from. Most of them don’t believe it’s the rain until they see it.
Turn Your Sound On and Listen
On a stump in the rain — tap to listen.
On a garden table — tap to listen.
What’s in the Old Cedar Box Above Her Bench
A few hundred letters, kept in an old cedar box on the shelf.
Marnie keeps the letters people send her in an old cedar smoked-salmon box. There are a few hundred of them now, from every part of the country. She pulled out three.
The first came from Joanne in Halifax. She put her drum on the railing of her back deck. A week later the first fall rain came in off the Atlantic. Her note said: “The fog rolled in and the deck started playing.”
The second came from Arnie in Saskatoon, who is seventy-one. He put his drum on a fence post at the edge of his garden. In July, a thunderstorm came across the prairie. He sat in the garage with the door open and listened for forty minutes.
“Forty years on the farm I watched storms for hail. This one I just listened to.”
The third was a postcard from Priya at her cottage near Peterborough. Her drum sits on the end of the dock. She has never moved it.
“Everybody runs inside when it rains. I go out.”
“That one I think about a lot,” Marnie said, and put the box back on the shelf.
Four Things the Cheap Ones Get Wrong
Nine tongues, each one tuned by hand and checked by ear.
The rain drums sold cheap online are stamped and tuned by a machine. No hand ever touches them. Marnie’s are different in four ways.
All nine notes come from the same five-note scale. Whatever tongue a drop lands on, it fits with the note before it. There is no wrong note.
Marnie tunes every drum a touch lower than the usual pitch. The notes come out softer and rounder, which suits a garden in the open air.
The steel is powder-coated and sealed against rust and salt air. Marnie’s own drum has sat on that stump through nine wet West Coast winters. It has never come inside.
In 1991 she made her very first copper rain-chain cup. It came out a little crooked, so she kept it. It hangs on a nail above her bench. Every drum gets its last check against the note that cup rings.
Why Her Files Are Going in the Drawer
The copper cup from 1991. Every drum gets its last check against it.
In 2022, Marnie noticed a small shake in her hands while she was holding a file. It didn’t go away. By last fall, she couldn’t hold a file still on a tongue for more than a few seconds.
She can still cut copper. She can still bend a gutter. But tuning a drum means taking off the tiniest bit of steel, again and again, until the note is right. That needs a steady hand.
“My hands shake now. You can’t tune a drum with a shaking hand.”
So she tuned one last batch, slowly, through last winter and this spring. There are 240 drums. When they are gone, there won’t be any more.
A hand-tuned steel drum from an instrument maker costs the better part of seven hundred dollars. Marnie is letting her last 240 go at cost. A gift-shop chain in Whistler wanted to buy every one of them. Two collectors in Vancouver asked too. She said no to all three.
“I don’t need the money. I want them out in the rain. A drum on a shelf is just a paperweight.”
While the last batch is still on the shelf:
Check AvailabilityHand-tuned by Marnie in Ucluelet, BC — one of the last 240
What People Wrote After Their First Rainy Day
★★★★★
“I put it on the deck railing the day it came. Two days later it rained all afternoon. My husband and I sat by the open door with our coffee and didn’t say a word for half an hour.”
★★★★★
“Bought one for my mother for her eightieth. She has it on a post by the kitchen window and calls me every time it rains. In Moncton, that’s a lot of calls.”
★★★★★
“The grandkids were sure I was playing it from inside with a remote. They stood in the rain for ten minutes trying to catch me out.”
Three Honest Questions Before You Order
Can it stay outside through a Canadian winter?
Yes. The steel is sealed against rust, and cold doesn’t hurt it. Snow sitting on top will mute it, though. On the coast, Marnie’s never comes in. Where winters bring real snow, many people bring theirs in after the first big snowfall and put it back out in spring.
How long will they be available?
Only while the last batch lasts. There are 240 drums, and Marnie won’t be tuning any more. They are only sold through this page, not in stores.
What if it arrives and I don’t love it?
You have 30 days to send it back for a full refund, no questions asked. One email to the support team is all it takes.
Storm season is back on the coast. The last batch is on the bench right now.
Check AvailabilityLimited stock — 240 hand-tuned drums from Marnie’s shop, while they last