Advanced technique
PLA-26What advanced techniques are there beyond striking notes?#
advanced
Short answer. Rolls, isolated harmonics, pitch bending by pressing the shoulder, friction sounds produced by rubbing the steel, and glissandi across the tone fields. Several of these treat the handpan as a friction idiophone rather than a struck one, which opens a completely different sound world.Rolls. Rapid repeated notes. There are several distinct approaches. A single stroke roll alternates hands fast on one or two fields. A single hand roll uses successive fingers on one field, like a drum roll played with the fingers. Nadishana teaches a pinky and thumb roll, sometimes called the Nadishana roll, which alternates those two digits on a field and gives an even, fast tremolo, and a fingernail roll explicitly borrowed from flamenco guitar technique, where the nails of successive fingers sweep across the steel. He also teaches pelang, a snapping articulation drawn from Iranian percussion. Each roll has a different timbre, so they are colours rather than substitutes.
Harmonics. Each tone field is tuned so that its octave and compound fifth sit above the fundamental. By striking near the edge of the field, or by damping the field at a node while striking, you can favour those partials and produce a note higher than the field’s nominal pitch. This effectively extends your available range beyond the printed scale. It is fiddly, instrument dependent, and worth the effort: a handpan with nine notes has considerably more than nine available pitches.
Pitch bending. Strike the ding, then press a fingertip into the shoulder where the dome meets the flat, and move the pressure. The added stress changes the resonant frequency of the dome, so the ringing note bends. Rocking the pressure back and forth gives a vibrato or wobble. The same idea works to a lesser extent on tone fields, pressing at the edge of a ringing field. Use moderate pressure: this is deliberate loading of tuned steel, and leaning on it hard is not a good idea.
Friction sounds. Rubbing rather than striking. Dragging a fingertip, a knuckle, the edge of the hand or a dampened palm across the steel produces sustained, singing, ethereal tones with no attack at all. The best known version is “singing the ding”, where friction along the dome excites a sustained pitch; some players use violin rosin on the hand or on the steel to increase grip. Related effects include circular rubbing on the shoulder and dragging across the rim.
Glissando. Sweeping a finger or thumb across several tone fields in one motion. Because the scale is fixed, a gliss always lands harmonically, which makes it an easy and effective flourish. Nail glissandi are brighter, pad glissandi warmer.
Gu and Helmholtz effects. Covered in PLA-13, and firmly part of this family.
See also: PLA-13, Acoustics and physics
PLA-27How do I play two handpans at once?#
advanced
Short answer. Set them up so that both are within relaxed reach, treat them as one instrument with a bigger layout rather than two instruments, and expect the geography to take longer to learn than the technique.Two pans is common among performing players, usually to extend the range, to add a second scale for harmonic movement, or to combine a melodic instrument with a lower or more percussive one. Hang Massive built much of their sound on two players with complementary instruments; a solo player with two pans is chasing something similar alone.
Setup. Two stands, angled towards each other in a shallow V, at the same height, close enough that you are not reaching. If they are too far apart you will lean and twist, and your accuracy and your back will both suffer. Some players use a single dual stand. Sitting slightly higher than for a single pan helps you see both layouts. A very common mistake is placing them for how they look rather than for reach.
Scale pairing. This is the decision that matters most and it is more musical than technical. Options include two instruments in the same key with different registers (a low pan and a high pan, effectively one wide range instrument); two instruments a fifth or fourth apart, which gives you a chord change; and two instruments whose scales share most notes but differ in one or two, which lets you shift mode without changing key. Pairs that share no common notes are difficult to move between musically. Ask about this before buying a second pan, because a beautiful instrument that does not sit with your first one is an expensive ornament.
Technique. Mostly the same, with three additions. First, one hand per instrument as a starting point, which gives you an ostinato on one and melody on the other and is much easier than it looks because it is just hand independence with more space. Second, crossing over, which is the harder and more expressive move. Third, damping across instruments, since two ringing pans produce twice the wash and need twice the housekeeping.
Practise the geography separately. Learn to hit any note on either pan without looking. Most two pan mistakes are aiming mistakes, not musical ones.
See also: PLA-20, Buying, Scales and music theory
PLA-28How do I play fast without losing tone?#
advanced
Short answer. Speed comes from relaxation, rebound and efficient movement, not from moving faster. If your tone collapses when you speed up, you are almost certainly gripping and lifting rather than dropping and bouncing.The core problem is that most players’ fast technique is a different technique from their slow technique, rather than the same technique accelerated. At slow tempos you have time to place each note deliberately. At speed there is no time, so whatever your hands do by default is what you get, and if the default includes tension the tone hardens and the contact time lengthens.
What to work on:
Rebound as the engine. At speed you cannot afford to lift the hand actively for each stroke. The bounce off the steel has to carry the hand back up. This is the same mechanic as a drummer using stick rebound, and it is the difference between a technique that gets easier as it gets faster and one that gets harder.
Reduce movement height. Fast passages need small strokes. If your hand travels ten centimetres for each note, you have a tempo ceiling set by physics. Practise the same passage at three heights and notice that the low one is both easier and quieter (see PLA-16 for getting volume back).
Alternate strictly. Hand to hand alternation, or finger to finger within a hand, distributes the work. Passages played with one hand doing most of the strokes will always be slower and less even.
Practise slowly with a metronome, then increase in small steps. The standard method exists because it works: play the passage at a tempo where your tone is perfect, then increase by a small increment, and drop back the instant the tone degrades. The tempo at which your tone breaks is your real current speed, not the tempo at which you can approximately hit the notes.
Use ghost notes to keep the hands moving. Continuous motion at the subdivision, with only some strokes accented, is far easier to sustain than starting and stopping.
Check your weak hand. Speed is capped by the slower hand. Practise it alone.
Adrian Portia, an Australian drummer turned handpan player nicknamed “the hummingbird” for his velocity, is the obvious study for this. Note what a player like that is not doing: no visible tension, no large movements, and a tone that stays warm at tempos where most players’ playing turns into clatter.
See also: PLA-10, PLA-16, PLA-29
PLA-29Which players should I study for technique, and what should I take from each?#
intermediate
Short answer. Study a handful of players deliberately for one specific quality each, rather than trying to absorb everyone. Below is a short list of widely known players and what each is genuinely known for. Steal the quality, not the licks.Manu Delago (Austria). The most prominent handpan musician in a conventional concert and studio context, and among the earliest serious adopters of the Hang. Trained in percussion with a background across drums, tabla, piano and marimba, and has worked extensively as a composer and collaborator outside handpan circles. Take from him: compositional thinking, arrangement, and the idea that the handpan is an instrument in an ensemble rather than a genre of its own. His teaching emphasises composition and structure over drills.
Daniel Waples, performing as Hang in Balance (England). One of the most widely heard solo players, known for contemplative, spacious playing that blends melodic and rhythmic elements, and for extensive workshop teaching and TEDx appearances. Take from him: space, patience, and the confidence to let a single idea breathe.
Kabeção (Portugal). A self taught multi instrumentalist known for combining serious percussive technique with a melodic, storytelling approach, and for collaborating on instrument layouts with a maker. Take from him: the fusion of percussion and melody in the same hands, and rhythmic drive.
Sam Maher (Australia and New York). Best known for a long improvised piece filmed in the New York subway that reached an enormous audience, and for a percussive, groove led style. Take from him: arpeggiated motion, hand independence and groove variation with ghost notes and fills.
Malte Marten (Germany). A very widely streamed contemporary player and educator, formerly of the duo Yatao, now running a large teaching operation. Take from him: accessible, emotionally direct writing and clear pedagogy.
Hang Massive, Danny Cudd and Markus Offbeat. The duo whose 2011 video “Once Again” introduced millions of people to the instrument. Take from them: two instruments interlocking, and how much can be built from very simple repeating material.
Nadishana (Russia). Multi instrumentalist with a deep world percussion and wind instrument background, and the most systematic teacher of genuinely advanced handpan technique: the pinky and thumb roll, the flamenco derived fingernail roll, pelang, and muting as a groove tool. Take from him: extended technique, and rigour.
David Kuckhermann (Germany). A world percussionist (frame drums, riq, udu, cajon, tonbak) who also plays handpan, and a careful, analytical teacher. Take from him: rhythmic vocabulary imported from other traditions, and how to break a technique down.
Adrian Portia (Australia). A professional drummer before the handpan, known for velocity and technical command. Take from him: speed built on relaxation.
A caveat: reputations circulate faster than facts in this community, and biographical details online are often thin or repeated between sites. Where a claim above is specific, it comes from the player’s own material or a reference source; where it is general, that is deliberate.
See also: PLA-30, Community and culture