This is the multi-page printable view of this section. Click here to print.

Return to the regular view of this page.

Play your handpan

The free handpan curriculum: roughly thirty video lessons taking a complete beginner to thirty continuous minutes of real music on a D Kurd. Currently in production.

    What “I can play” means here#

    Not “I know some patterns”. Not “I finished the course”.

    Thirty continuous minutes, without a video in front of you, moving between grooves and melodic passages, that a listener would call music.

    That is the second milestone. It is deliberately specific and deliberately unfakeable. You will know when you have crossed it, and so will anyone in the room.

    Thirty minutes is not an arbitrary number. It is roughly the point at which playing stops being an exercise and starts being a thing you do — long enough that you run out of prepared material and have to actually play.

    How the journey is built#

    It is finite. About thirty lessons, in order, ending at the milestone. Not an endless library you subscribe to. There is a last lesson and you will reach it.

    It is filmed on a standard 9 or 10 note D Kurd. What you see on screen is what is in your lap. Core lessons use only the shared nine notes, so nothing is missing if you own a 9. The tenth note (high C5) appears only in clearly marked bonus variations.

    It teaches rhythm early. Most handpan teaching online treats the instrument as a slow, ambient, meditative object, and rhythm arrives late if at all. I came to this from Middle Eastern percussion, where rhythm is the whole vocabulary, and I think it is the fastest route to sounding like a musician rather than someone touching a beautiful object. Grooves start in stage three.

    Nothing is held back. No premium tier, no locked lessons, no “join the programme to continue”. If it exists, it is on this page.

    The plan#

    Stage one — sitting down

    Getting a sound you like out of the instrument, and knowing where every note is without looking.

    1. How to sit, and where the pan goesLap, stand, height, and why your back matters more than your hands.
    2. Meet your D KurdThe ding, the eight fields, the gu. Naming every note by sight.
    3. Your first strikeThe relaxed fingertip. Why the bounce, not the hit, makes the sound.
    4. Finding notes without lookingBuilding the map in your hands instead of your eyes.
    5. Ten minutes a dayWhat a practice session actually looks like, and why short beats long.

    Stage two — the hands

    A real palette of sounds, and the control to choose between them.

    1. Fingertips, pads and thumbsThree strikes, three different voices from one note field.
    2. Loud, quiet, and everything betweenDynamic range is the single biggest difference between a beginner and a player.
    3. Damping and mutingStopping a note is as musical as starting one.
    4. The shoulder and the rimPercussive sounds that aren't notes.
    5. The guThe low breathy note that lives in the air, not the steel.
    6. Alternating handsLeft, right, left, right. Slowly, until it stops being a decision.

    Stage three — rhythm

    Grooves that hold up on their own. This is where my darbuka years earn their keep.

    1. Pulse, and playing on top of itBefore subdivision, before patterns. Just where the beat is.
    2. Your first grooveThree notes, one bar, repeatable forever.
    3. Ghost notesThe quiet strikes between the loud ones that make a groove breathe.
    4. Subdivision: fours and threesThe two feels almost all handpan music lives in.
    5. Accents and where they moveSame notes, same pulse, completely different music.
    6. Two grooves, and moving between themThe first real transition.
    7. Playing with a droneHow to practise alone without playing into a vacuum.

    Stage four — melody

    Real melodic playing over a groove you are keeping yourself.

    1. Phrases, not notesMusical sentences: where they breathe, where they end.
    2. The six chords in your D KurdD minor, F, B♭, C, A minor, G minor — and where each one lives on the shell.
    3. Holding a bass note under a melodyThe move that makes one instrument sound like two.
    4. Call and response with yourselfStructure without needing to know theory.
    5. Melody over grooveThe hardest thing so far, taken very slowly.
    6. The tenth noteBonus. Variations for 10 note owners, using the high C5.

    Stage five — thirty minutes

    The milestone itself: thirty continuous minutes, no video, that a listener would call music.

    1. Improvising without wanderingHaving somewhere to go, and knowing when you have arrived.
    2. Building tension and letting it goThe engine of musical interest, on nine notes.
    3. Transitions that don't collapseGetting from one idea to the next without a gap.
    4. Playing for thirty minutesStamina, pacing, and what to do when you run out of ideas at minute nineteen.
    5. Recording yourselfThe most useful and most uncomfortable practice tool there is.
    6. Where you go nowWhat the third milestone looks like, and how to get there.

    30 lessons planned, start to finish. That is the whole thing — there is no lesson 31 waiting behind a paywall.

    Every lesson will have#

    • The video, embedded, nothing to sign up for.
    • Written notes in the handbook, as a markdown file like every other page here — so they are searchable, correctable, and translatable.
    • Which notes it uses, listed at the top, so you can tell at a glance whether it fits your instrument.
    • Clear next and previous, and a visible sense of where you are in the journey.

    While you wait#

    If you have an instrument already, the single most useful thing you can do is sit with it for ten minutes a day and get comfortable. Not practising anything — just striking notes, listening to them decay, and learning where they are by feel.

    Everything in stage one builds on that, and it is the one part you can start without me.

    If you do not have an instrument yet, start here.