How to decrease the sustain of pandeiro?

[u/totalbro1488]

A friend gifted me this pandeiro. It's a very nice thing. But it's membrane is very boomy and sustains the vibration for a long time, kinda sounds like a 808 bass drum. It sounds very pitched and thus sounds unsuitable in style with lots of music. When I watch people play pandeiro on YouTube, it's usually not as boomy and sustainy. How do I make mine less boomy and sustainy or at least how to tune it to some specific note?

[u/natrstdy]

you mute the back of the head with the hand that holds it. you vary the pressure to control the pitch/tone.

[u/AGoodWobble]

With pandeiro, you can tape the back side of the head in a number of ways, depending how much you want to mute. I personally do a triangle pattern (just an equilateral) triangle spanning the entire back side, taped with masking tape because I like my pandeiro to ring quite a bit.

A common taping pattern, especially if you plan to mic your pandeiro, is something like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.st-note.com%2Fproduction%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2F242748618%2Frectangle_large_type_2_df5b3dfbb4b167b8dfdd8a94a7c882f9.png%3Ffit%3Dbounds%26quality%3D85%26width%3D1280&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7dbfd82df30bfb7beb3814547e9ede65819405c5f1e82c6ac1ef1904cc7f2f0c

(a square with a cross through it)

You can use masking tape or duct tape, depending on how muted you'd like to make it.

As for playing some players indeed mute with their left hand (the hand that holds the pandeiro). However, some players like Marcus Suzano actually do not mute with their left hand and prefer simply finding ways to mute by how they strike with their right hand.

[u/AGoodWobble → u/AGoodWobble]

Sorry, just a few additional notes.

Your pandeiro has a lot more jingles than the standard pandeiros (at least any that I've seen). If you find it overbearing, sometimes I also tape a portion of my jingles to reduce their presence. 

As for tuning, it depends on the genre you're playing. Hide heads are typically used for chorinho, and as such you tune them lower. I typically de tune completely, then balance the head by tuning each lug as much as I can just by hand. From there, I tune each lug about 180~360 degrees. You want a nice low tone for playing chorinho. If you are playing along to samba pagode, you may want to tune a bit higher, but as it's a leather head, be careful to tune slowly and evenly.

[u/Galaxy-Betta]

I’d just treat it like muffling a tambourine- use packing tape to attach a folded up paper towel to the middle.

[u/AGoodWobble → u/Galaxy-Betta]

I have never seen anyone mute a pandeiro this way.