Recording a handpan
REC-01What is the best way to record a handpan at home?#
beginner
Short answer. One decent condenser microphone, placed roughly 40 to 80 cm above and slightly to one side of the instrument, in the least reflective room you own, going into a basic audio interface. Room and playing matter far more than the price of the microphone.The signal chain is short and unglamorous: microphone, XLR cable, audio interface with phantom power, laptop, any DAW. A budget large diaphragm condenser and a two input interface will get you a usable recording. What separates a good home handpan recording from a bad one is almost never the converter quality.
Three things dominate the result, in this order. First, the room. A handpan sustains for several seconds, so every reflection in a small hard room stacks up on top of the note you are still hearing. Second, your playing. The instrument records every uneven slap, every accidental damp and every fingernail click, and none of it can be fixed later. Third, the microphone and its position.
Practical setup, in order. Kill the noise floor: fridge off, boiler off, phone in aeroplane mode, windows shut. Handpans are not loud, so you will be recording at reasonably high gain and the room’s hum comes with it. Put the instrument on a proper stand rather than your lap, so the height and angle stay constant across takes and so your legs are not damping the shell. Set gain so your loudest strike peaks around minus 12 to minus 6 dBFS, leaving headroom for the accidental hard hit that always happens on the good take.
Monitor on closed back headphones at low volume, or not at all. Handpan performances are often rubato, and hearing a click can flatten the feel, so consider recording free time and dealing with tempo later.
Record several complete passes rather than editing together fragments. The long decay makes edits audible: cutting into a ringing note leaves a step, and crossfades over a sustained metallic tone tend to produce a swirl you can hear.
REC-02Which microphones suit the handpan, and why?#
intermediate
Short answer. Small diaphragm condensers, ideally a matched pair, are the standard choice because the handpan is a fast transient instrument with a lot of detail above 5 kHz. Large diaphragm condensers give a warmer, more flattering single mic sound. Both work.The handpan puts out a sharp percussive attack followed by a long, harmonically rich decay. The fundamentals of most tone fields sit roughly between 200 Hz and 1 kHz, the gu resonance and the ding fundamental sit lower, and there is a great deal of energy in the upper harmonics and in the metallic shimmer above 8 kHz. A microphone that struggles with fast transients smears the attack; one with a harsh top end exaggerates the ring.
Small diaphragm condensers. The default for percussion and the usual recommendation for stereo handpan recording. They track transients accurately and have even off axis response, which matters because you are capturing a wide, curved sound source. Commonly used models include the Rode NT5, the Oktava MK-012 and the Neumann KM 184. Matched pairs are sold for exactly this purpose.
Large diaphragm condensers. A single LDC over the instrument is the simplest good sounding setup there is. They tend to sound fuller and slightly softer in the top, which flatters an instrument that can already be bright. The AKG C414 and the Neumann U 87 are the classic studio examples; the Rode NT1 and Audio-Technica AT4040 are common affordable ones. Multi-pattern models let you switch to omni, which often sounds more natural at close range and avoids proximity boost on the gu.
Ribbons. Coles 4038 and Royer R-121 are used on percussion for their smooth top end and figure of eight pattern, which rejects sound from the sides. Ribbons suit handpans well if you have one, but treat them carefully: some vintage and passive designs can be damaged by phantom power, so check the manual before switching 48 V on.
Dynamics. A Shure SM57 or Sennheiser MD 421 will not capture the shimmer, but they are useful when the room is bad, when there is bleed from other players, or when you are recording somewhere noisy. Dynamics need to be close, which changes the tonal balance.
Cardioid is the sensible starting pattern. Omni sounds more open but hands you the whole room, which is only a gift if the room is good.
REC-03Where should I place the microphones?#
intermediate
Short answer. Start with a single cardioid microphone about 50 cm above the ding, angled down and tilted slightly away from your hands, then move it before you reach for EQ. For stereo, a coincident XY or near coincident ORTF pair overhead is the safest choice.Distance. Close placement, under about 30 cm, gives you attack, hand noise and a strong sense of a single tone field rather than the whole instrument. Distant placement, over about 1.5 m, gives you the blended instrument plus a lot of room. Most home recordings land between 40 cm and 1 m. Because the handpan radiates from the whole shell, moving too close means you are effectively recording one part of it and the balance across notes becomes uneven.
Height and angle. Above and slightly behind the instrument, looking down across the tone fields, is the standard position. Directly over the ding tends to over-emphasise the ding. Placing the microphone on the player’s side captures what you hear; placing it opposite captures more of the far tone fields and less of your breathing and clothing.
Stereo techniques.
- XY. Two cardioids, capsules as close together as possible, angled around 90 degrees. Coincident, so it is completely mono compatible and has no phase problems. The stereo image is narrow but reliable. This is the recommended first stereo attempt.
- ORTF. Two cardioids 17 cm apart at 110 degrees. Wider and more spacious than XY, still well behaved in mono. A very good compromise for a solo instrument.
- Spaced pair. Two mics a metre or so apart, often omnis. The widest, most open sound and the most phase risk. Follow the 3:1 guideline, keeping the mics at least three times further from each other than from the source, and check the result in mono.
Capturing the gu. A separate microphone pointed at the gu port, from underneath or from the side at roughly 15 to 30 cm, picks up the port’s low resonance and the breathy air movement. It is a colour, not a foundation. Bring it up in the mix until you feel it, then back it off.
Always check polarity when using more than one microphone. Flip the polarity switch on one channel: if the low end suddenly gets fuller, leave it flipped.
See also: REC-07
REC-04How do I record in a normal room without it sounding boxy?#
intermediate
Short answer. Boxiness is early reflections and room modes, mostly between about 150 and 500 Hz. Move the instrument and the microphone away from walls and corners, put something soft behind and beside the mic, and get closer.The word “boxy” describes what a small rectangular room does to a sustaining instrument. Parallel walls create standing waves that reinforce some frequencies and cancel others, and hard surfaces close by send reflections back into the microphone a few milliseconds after the direct sound, which the ear reads as a small hard container.
What actually helps, roughly in order of how much difference it makes for how little effort:
Move away from boundaries. Do not record in a corner, and do not put the instrument tight against a wall. A metre or more of clearance on the sides is worth more than most treatment you could buy. Avoid dead centre of a small square room, which is where modal cancellation is strongest.
Break the symmetry. Turn the instrument and the microphone at an angle to the walls rather than square on. It shifts the reflection pattern and often removes an obvious flutter.
Absorb the first reflections. Hang a thick duvet, a heavy curtain or a couple of blankets on the wall behind the microphone and on the nearest side wall. A full, disordered bookcase makes a decent diffuser. A clothes rail hung with coats placed behind the mic is genuinely effective and costs nothing.
Get closer and use cardioids. Halving the distance roughly doubles the direct sound relative to the room. A cardioid pointed away from the worst surface rejects a useful amount of it.
Choose a better room. Bedrooms with a carpet, a bed and full wardrobes usually beat living rooms with wooden floors. A larger room with hard surfaces can be fine because the reflections arrive late enough to read as reverb rather than boxiness. Stairwells, churches, underpasses and barns are worth trying if you can get access.
What does not help: adding reverb afterwards to mask it, or cutting hard at 300 Hz. A broad, gentle dip of 2 to 3 dB somewhere between 200 and 400 Hz can tidy a recording, but it cannot undo a comb filtered room.
See also: REC-05
REC-05Do I need an acoustically treated room?#
beginner
Short answer. No. Plenty of well liked handpan recordings were made in ordinary rooms and outdoors. Treatment helps, but controlling early reflections with soft furnishings gets you most of the benefit for none of the money.There is a difference between a treated room and a good sounding room, and the handpan community sometimes conflates them. Treatment is about predictability: absorbers at reflection points and bass traps in corners so that what you record resembles what the instrument actually sounds like. That matters enormously for mixing and mastering. For capturing a solo acoustic instrument, all you strictly need is enough direct sound relative to reflected sound, and a room whose reflections are pleasant rather than metallic.
If you do want to spend something, the order of return is fairly clear. Broadband absorption at the first reflection points beside and behind the microphone helps most. Corner bass trapping helps with the low modes that make the gu inconsistent from take to take. Foam tiles scattered thinly across a wall are the least useful thing you can buy: thin foam absorbs above roughly 1 kHz and leaves the boxy midrange untouched, which produces a dull room that is still boxy.
A cheap and surprisingly effective option is a portable vocal shield or a duvet tent behind the microphone. It kills the reflections arriving at the capsule while leaving the rest of the room alive.
Be careful not to overdo it. A completely dead room makes a handpan sound small and sterile, because so much of the instrument’s appeal is the way the sustain blooms. Many people record in a moderately live space deliberately and add little or no artificial reverb.
Outdoors deserves a mention. Field recordings in a forest, on a beach or in a stone courtyard can be beautiful, and the practical problems are wind, distant traffic and aircraft rather than acoustics. A basic windshield and a quiet hour early in the morning solve most of it.
See also: REC-04
REC-06Can I get a good recording with just a phone or a handheld recorder?#
beginner
Short answer. Yes for sharing and for video. A modern phone at about a metre away in a decent room produces something perfectly listenable. A handheld stereo recorder is a big step up and the cheapest real upgrade there is.Phones do well on handpan for one lucky reason: the instrument’s level suits their built in microphones, and the sound is broadband and not especially loud. What lets phones down is threefold. Automatic gain control pumps the level during long decays, so the tail swells oddly. The low end is limited, so the gu and the ding fundamental are thin. And the microphones are close together in a small body, so the stereo image is narrow.
Practical phone tips that genuinely change the result:
- Sit the phone about 0.8 to 1.2 m away, above the instrument if you can prop it, not on the same table or floor as the instrument.
- Use an app that lets you lock the gain rather than the default camera app, if one is available for your device.
- Do not record indoors near a corner, and do not record in a bathroom no matter how good it sounds in the room.
- Keep hands, sleeves and jewellery away from the phone body, which transmits handling noise straight into the capsule.
- Film in landscape if you plan to post the video anywhere other than a phone-first platform.
A dedicated handheld recorder is the sensible next step. The Zoom H series and the Tascam DR series are the familiar ones. They have a proper stereo pair, manual gain, and a low noise floor. Placed on a small tripod a metre from the instrument, one of these gets remarkably close to a modest microphone and interface setup, with none of the cabling.
An intermediate option is a small external microphone that plugs into the phone. There are lapel and shotgun designs made for phone video, and while a shotgun is not ideal for a wide instrument, almost any of them beats the internal capsules on low end and handling noise.
None of this changes the ranking from REC-01: a phone in a good room, played well, beats an expensive rig in a bad room played badly.
See also: REC-01
REC-07How do I capture the low gu without the recording turning to mud?#
advanced
Short answer. Separate the two low sources. The gu port resonance and the ding fundamental live in different places, and mud usually comes from room build up and proximity effect between roughly 150 and 350 Hz rather than from real low end.The bottom of a handpan has more than one contributor. The ding has a low fundamental with its octave and duodecime above it. The shell as a whole has body modes. And the gu port behaves as a Helmholtz resonator, the same mechanism as blowing across a bottle, producing a low breathy resonance whose pitch depends on the cavity volume and the port dimensions. That gu resonance is felt as much as heard, and it is easily overwhelmed by room modes at similar frequencies.
Things that create mud, and their fixes:
Proximity effect. Cardioid microphones boost low frequencies as they get closer. A mic 20 cm from the ding will exaggerate 150 to 300 Hz noticeably. Back off, or switch the mic to omni, which has no proximity effect.
Room modes. Small rooms have strong modes in exactly this range. Moving the instrument half a metre often changes the low end more than any EQ. Record a quick test in two or three positions and compare.
Structure borne coupling. An instrument resting on a table, a resonant wooden floor or a hollow stand couples into that surface and adds an uncontrolled boom. Use a proper stand with a soft ring, and if the floor is suspended timber, put the stand on a rug or a slab of dense foam.
The gu mic itself. If you spot mic the port, expect it to sound wrong on its own: boomy, breathy, full of air noise. That is correct. It is a support layer. Roll off everything above roughly 200 to 300 Hz on that channel, high-pass it below about 40 Hz to remove rumble, and mix it under the main pair until the low end firms up. Check polarity against the overheads.
Cleaning up afterwards. A high-pass filter at 30 to 50 Hz removes traffic rumble and handling noise without touching anything musical. A broad cut of 2 to 4 dB centred somewhere between 200 and 350 Hz, found by sweeping a narrow boost until the boxiness jumps out and then cutting there gently, is usually all the corrective EQ a handpan needs. Resist scooping deeply: the warmth people love in the instrument lives just above that region.
REC-08How should I approach multitracking and overdubbing a handpan?#
advanced
Short answer. Plan around the sustain. Handpan notes ring for seconds, so stacked parts accumulate into a wash very quickly, and the fix is arrangement discipline rather than mixing.The instrument’s decay is its blessing and its problem in a multitrack context. Two handpan parts playing comfortable middle register lines will overlap constantly, and by the third layer you have a permanent chord bed with no space in it. Professional-sounding handpan productions almost always allocate registers deliberately: one part carries the low pulse on the ding and low tone fields, another carries a sparse mid ostinato, and only one part at a time takes the melody in the upper fields.
Tempo and timing. Decide early whether the piece is metric or rubato. Solo handpan playing is often elastic, and forcing a click onto a rubato performance kills it. If you need overdubs on a rubato take, record the master performance first, then map the tempo in your DAW to that performance rather than the other way round. Most DAWs will let you tap a tempo map to an existing take.
Consistency between passes. Overdubs only glue if the captured tone matches. Mark the stand position and the microphone positions with tape before you start, do not change gain between passes, and do not move the instrument. Any change in mic distance changes the low end and will show up as a mismatch you cannot fix.
Doubling. Recording the same part twice and panning left and right works, but less well than on guitar. The metallic partials of two nearly identical performances beat against each other and produce a slightly seasick chorus. Try it, but be prepared to keep one take.
Two instruments. If you have two handpans, check them against each other before recording rather than assuming they match. Instruments from different makers, or the same instrument at different temperatures, drift enough to sound sour when layered. Handpans go sharp as they warm up, so let both sit in the room for an hour first.
Editing. Comping is harder than on most instruments. A cut in the middle of a ringing note is audible. Prefer whole-phrase punches placed at natural attack points, and if you must crossfade, do it under a struck note where the transient masks the join.
Bleed and hand noise. Overdubbing means the hand noise stacks too. Trimming and gently fading the silences on secondary layers cleans up more than compression will.