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The Hang (German pronunciation: [haŋ]; [1] plural form: Hanghang) [2] is a type of musical instrument called a handpan, fitting into the idiophone class and based on the Trinidad & Tobago steelpan instrument. It was created by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer in Bern, Switzerland. The name of their company is PANArt Hangbau AG. [3]
- What Is A Hand Pan, Hang Drum, and Pantam?
- History of The Hand Pan, Hang Drum, and Pantam
- Before The Panart Hang
- Where Did The Names “Handpan”, “Pantam”, UFO Drum originate?
- Is The Hand Pan, Hang and Pantam A “Drum”?
- End of The Panart Hang
- Exponential Explosion of Hand Pan Builders
- The Saraz Hand Pan, One of The Earliest Builders
- The Changing Hand Pan Market
- A Word of Caution
The “handpan”, “Hang Drum”, “pantam”, and “UFO Drum” are different names for a closely related family of relatively young musical instruments. The instrument is made of two convex sheets of steel glued together. They have tuned notes on the top and sometimes bottom half that can be played with the hands. Each instrument is tuned to a single scale s...
When and where was it invented?
The path of this instrument’s development has traveled the globe and is intimately related to other musical instruments some of which are also very young and some of which are centuries old. Most people agree that the founders of the handpan are Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer of PANArt Hangbau AG in Bern, Switzerland. The two were career steel pan builders as well as inventors of multiple other musical instruments. Felix started building steel pans in Switzerland in 1976 and supplied many of...
PANart Hang Production
Felix and Sabina stopped steel pan production and in 2001, they started fabricating the First Generation Hang Hang. One can be seen in the photo above in the top right. In the same year, they presented the instrument at Musikmesse Frankfurt. From 2001 to 2005, they offered the instrument in approximately 45 different sound models, which were focused mostly on ethnic musical scales like Ake bono, Hijaz, Pygmy, Melog and Zhi Diao. The instruments all had 8 notes in a circle around a center note...
Is the Hang a Handpan?
PANart has said many times that the Hang is not a handpan or a steel pan. They explain that the Hang is tuned in ways that are not used in the tuning of handpans or steel pans particularly in regards to note structure and architecture. This has been directly challenged however by one of the top authorities on the steel pan, Anthony Achong, author of “Secrets of the Steel Pan, Unlocking the Secrets of the Science, Technology, Tuning and Operation of the Steel Pan”. Achong bluntly states at the...
Early History of the Steel Pan
The Hang was far from being a completely new creation. In Achong’s words quoted above, it is actually a modified steel pan. So it is important that we also consider the significant steps that lead to the development of the steel pan when talking about the history of the Hang, handpan or pantam. First and foremost, we must consider Trinidad and Tobago, the birth place of the steel pan. On these islands, musical instruments were outlawed during the early 1900’s. In rebellion, the locals began f...
On a side note
Before the first Saraz had been birthed in 2012, Mark Garner traveled the world to seek out and watch some of the finest handpan and Steel Pan builders he could find including Ellie Mannette. Mark was deeply honored to spend some time with Ellie and watch over his shoulder while he tuned a lead steel pan. Even at the age of 84, he was an absolute fire ball that was still endlessly passionate about singing steel. In the following photo, Mark is introducing Ellie to the Halo Handpan, crafted by...
The Steel Pan Matures
After years of refinement by not only Ellie but also Winston Spree Simon, Anthony Achong, and many many others, the instrument continued to develop. From what we have heard, it was in the 1960’s that the first person started tuning an octave harmonic along with the fundamental frequencies on each note. After another 10-15 years, it became more common that the highest quality steel pan builders were also tuning another frequency on what developed as a shorter axis perpendicular to the octave a...
“Handpan”
Not long after the Hang was being distributed, other people started trying to build them. We have heard that Marco Della Ratta was the first person to try building a similar instrument as early as 2002 or 2003. Around 2007, Kyle Cox and Jim Dusin of Pantheon Steel, Luis Martin Eguiguren Garrido of Bellart, and Philippe Maignaut of Spacedrum were each trying to build similar instruments. When more people started building these modified steel pans, PANart publicly stated that they did not want...
“Pantam”
The term “pantam” was originally used by an Israeli PANart Hang Distributor to describe the Hang. The term is a mix of steel pan and ghatam, the later of which is a clay pot drum from Southern India. The term “pantam” found a resurgence of popularity when Victor Levinson, the creator of the SPB, started using it in 2014 to describe his own instruments. Many builders and players have since followed while the terms “Handpan” and “Hang Drum” are still considerably more popular.
“UFO Drum”
This term seemed to be a result of people trying to figure out what the instrument was called while searching online for the name. The shape of the instrument no doubt looks similar to preconceived ideas of a unidentified flying object with aliens inside. Even today, we very commonly hear people say “it looks like a UFO” when we introduce them to the instrument for the first time. Very rarely do we hear people actually use this name for the family of instruments however.
Technically speaking, no, it is not specifically a drum in the proper acoustic physics usage of the word. The handpan, Hang, and pantam are considered technically part of the idiophone classof musical instruments. Most percussion instruments that are not drums, are actually idiophones, which produce sound by the entire instrument as a whole vibrati...
In 2014, PANart discontinued the production of the Hang in order to focus on new instruments including the Gubal, Gudu, HangBal, Pang Strings and other instrumentsfrom their Pang Material.
While many people miss the Hang and were disappointed by the end of production, it has inspired a new generation of builders to dive into the latest chapter of tuned steel. Some of them have picked up where PANart and steel pan builders have left off while others are exploring new possibilities. This new generation of builders have continued to dev...
When the Saraz Handpan was born in 2012, there were 4 other builders crafting medium to high quality instruments and about 10 people world wide making anything resembling a handpan however poor of quality it may have been. We have watched and helped grow the art form exponentially since that time. Mark Garner, the founder of Saraz, was one of the f...
When Saraz started production in 2012, there was an absolutely insatiable demand for anything even close to a handpan. Completely out of tune junk regularly sold for over $2000 USD on ebay. Even tongue drums were in high demand in those days and often had waiting lists. We turned down thousands of people in the first 3 years of production simply be...
While there are more and more people creating instruments, one must still be careful and do their research before purchasing an instrument. We have seen over and over again when someone purchases a cheap instrument from ebay or amazon only to contact us afterward and ask if we can tune it (or finish building it) because it is a poorly tuned unstabl...
Oct 6, 2023 · In this guide, we’ll take a look at the best handpans and hang drums for performing enchanting melodies. I’ve compared performance, build quality, sound quality and cost to give you my top recommendations.
Jun 3, 2022 · Temukan semua tentang handpan & skala Hijaz. Skala oriental dan orisinal. Penjelasan, video suara, di mana membeli hang drum dalam akord ini. 🎶
Hang, pantam, UFO drum—these names all belong to the handpan, a relatively new family of percussive instruments that share a unique, hypnotic sound. Coming in numerous shapes, sizes, and tunings, these domed metallic drums produce smooth ambient tones when played with both hands.
Several handpan makers and brands have emerged in recent years, resulting from a growing worldwide interest in the Hang, which is an instrument developed by the company PANArt that is based on the physical properties of the Trinidadian steelpan, Indian ghatam, Thai gong, and Indonesian Gamelan.
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Made in Bali, Indonesia, the Bali Steel Pan, is a non-nitrided HandPan, constructed in the manner of traditional ‘Steel Pan’, from 55 gallon steel oil drums. Originally available in only three scales, the Bali Steel Pan is now (at time of writing) available in around twelve scales, with popular scales including the ‘Shang Diao’, and the ...
