ABOUT HANDPANS

STEEL PAN

The history of handpans dates back to the early 20th century when instruments known as steel pans were first created on the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. In 1883, the government banned drumming and the possession of musical instruments, attempting to suppress the freedom movements among manual workers. In defiance of this, the first steel pans began to emerge in the 1930s. People proved that the need for artistic expression could find a way out under any circumstances. Oil was being extracted on these islands, so it was easy to find metal barrels. At some point, someone came up with the idea that by turning a barrel upside down, tapping the bottom inwards, dividing it into segments, and tuning them, they could produce sounds of specific frequencies when struck with a mallet.

Source: Baltimore Sun Media Group

The technology for creating steel pans continued to develop over several decades, during which the most important discovery was that one 'segment' of metal sheet could be tuned like a 2-dimensional string, producing vibrations at three different component frequencies simultaneously. Tuning these sounds in the right proportions to each other began to result in deeper tones, sounding less and less like the 'dull' sound of metal.

Since the 1960s, with the rise of the hippie movement, steel pans gained increasing popularity in the West. In many countries, steel pan bands could be found — colorfully dressed people producing beautiful vibrations from the bottoms of barrels that they wore draped around their necks.

HANG

Two of these people — Felix Rohner and Sabina Schårer from Switzerland — founded the company PANArt in the 1990s, specializing in the production of steel pans. Eleven years of their work and experiments resulted in the creation of a new version of the steel pan in 2001, which they called the 'Hang.' They made four key changes:

• they added a bottom shell to the instrument, which, when glued to the top shell, created a resonating body with a hole at the bottom called the 'gu.' The sound of the instrument was enhanced by the so-called Helmholtz frequency — the sound produced by a chamber connected to an open neck. As a result, the way of playing the instrument also changed — it could be held on the lap and played with the fingers, which significantly expanded the possibilities for artistic expression.
• inspired by the construction of gongs, they added dimples, which made the metal membranes more stable and allowed them to be tuned to lower frequencies.
• they tuned the 2-dimensional string of each note to 3 frequencies corresponding to the first three harmonics, which are in a 1:2:3 ratio. To put it simply: when you play a note on this instrument, you are actually producing 3 frequencies at once, harmonized in such a way that your ear perceives it as 'BEAUTIFUL' 🙂.
• the material used to make the Hang was nitrided steel, which, among other things, provided protection against corrosion.

The Hang was shrouded in mystery from the very beginning. I first encountered this instrument on the streets of Barcelona in 2009, when I saw a performance by the Minimal Acoustic Band. I was captivated. I immediately began searching for information on how to obtain one. Unfortunately, it turned out that the only way to get it was to write a handwritten letter to the PANArt company and wait for a response. If you were lucky, you would receive an invitation for a two-week visit to Felix and Sabina's workshop. During this stay, they would make the instrument for the customer according to their preferences. As far as I remember, a new Hang cost around 3500 EUR at that time. As a poor student, I quickly tucked that dream away in a drawer.

HANDPAN

After 13 years, in 2022, I encountered the instrument again, this time in Crete. I asked the musician where he got it from and found out that it was made by someone in the USA. I did a quick search online and discovered that over these 13 years, the art of making these instruments had developed and spread significantly. They began to be called handpans. The basic construction was essentially the same as the original Hangs, but over time, further changes were made:

• handpans made of stainless steel began to emerge, which resonate more and produce a 'brighter' sound, sometimes referred to as a 'ceramic' sound. Moreover, the use of this material offered many more possibilities for achieving various colors of the instrument;
• the technology for shaping the tonefields evolved in such a way that it became possible to tune increasingly lower frequencies — even down to E2.
• handpans began to be made with an increasing number of notes, including by adding them to the bottom shell (the current record is 32 notes).

Do you have any questions? Write to me:)