Fundamentals
What a handpan is, what to call it, and how it differs from the instruments it gets confused with. Start here if you have just discovered the instrument.
Knowledge base
Everything known about the handpan, written down properly. Seventeen sections, sixty-four pages, several hundred numbered questions — history, acoustics, construction, scales, buying, technique, care, recording, community, making, myths and troubleshooting.
The three steps are a journey: one guided path, on one instrument, with everything not on that path deliberately left out.
This is the other thing. It is the reference layer — the long answers, the physics, the history, the arguments the community is still having. Nothing here is required reading. It is here for the evening you want to know why a nitrided shell sounds drier than a stainless one, or what actually happened to PANArt, or whether 432 Hz means anything.
Each page is a set of numbered questions with real answers. Where the evidence is thin, it says so. Where the community disagrees, it gives both sides. Where a number is a rule of thumb rather than a measurement, it is labelled as one.
How to use it#
- Search covers every page on this site, including the three steps.
- The sidebar is the full tree, and it stays with you as you read.
- Question codes like
BUY-08orANA-11are permanent. If someone in a forum sends you one, it will still work in five years. - Every page can be improved, and the link at the bottom of each one takes you straight to its source.
The seventeen sections#
History
Where the instrument came from: a Trinidadian craft carried to Bern, a percussionist’s request in 1999, twelve years of Hang, and the worldwide maker movement that followed.
Anatomy and construction
What a handpan is physically made of, what every part is called, and why it is built the way it is.
Acoustics and physics
Why a shaped sheet of steel makes that sound, what the three tuned partials are, and what “in tune” actually means here.
Scales and music theory
Everything about the fixed note set at the heart of the instrument: how layouts work, what the scale families sound like, how to choose one, and the small amount of theory that actually pays off.
Buying a handpan
How to choose a first instrument, what things cost in 2026 and why, how to deal with makers, and how not to lose your money to a scam.
Playing and technique
How to actually play the instrument: posture, touch, tone, rhythm, extended technique and practice.
Care and maintenance
Everything about keeping a handpan clean, rust free, in tune, safely stored and intact through travel.
Recording and amplification
How to capture a handpan on a recording, get it through a PA without feedback, and treat it sensibly with effects and in a mix.
Playing with others
Jamming, ensembles, busking and performance: how a fixed-scale, quiet, sustaining instrument fits alongside other musicians and in front of an audience.
Health and the body
What the instrument asks of your hands, your back and your ears, and what to do when any of them complain.
Community and culture
The people, the gatherings, the arguments, and the large amount of meaning that has attached itself to a metal shell.
Related instruments
Everything that sits near the handpan: the steel tongue drums it gets confused with, the steelpan it descends from, PANArt’s later work, the clay pot vessels that share its acoustics, and the marketplace products that borrow its name.
Making and tuning
How a handpan is actually built, what the tuner is doing with the hammer, and what it takes to become a maker yourself.
Business and legal
Trademarks, the copyright dispute over the Hang, selling and shipping safely, import charges, insurance, and making money with the instrument.
Myths and misconceptions
The claims about handpans that circulate hardest, sorted into the ones that are simply false, the ones that are ten years out of date, and the ones that are true in a much narrower sense than they are usually stated.
Troubleshooting
Symptom first diagnosis: what a dead note, a buzz, a wobble or a lost sustain usually means, and when to call the maker.