I don't know why they call it a drum - you don't call a xylophone a drum, right? Anyway, the tongues are the (in the case of the instrument I have) 15 cutout portions of the drum that you hit with fingers or mallets - each tongue has its own frequency, but the whole thing resonates every time you hit it, and when you do series of notes and chords like I did, when the thing gets busy, it sets up a kind of multi-frequency drone effect that's pleasant on its own, but which makes it *very* hard to mix when it's played against other instruments. Also, apparently I got lucky when I ordered it from Amazon, cuz they're often way out of tune. Mine cost a bit over 200 Canadian. And yes, very remindful of a steel drum, and you can EQ it even more in that direction to an extent. FWIW, I had two mics on it, but I had to mix them in mono because when I tried panning them I got ugly sound in some sections. Phase issues? Dunno.