The wider family
REL-08What is the Caribbean steelpan, and how is the handpan related to it?#
beginner
Short answer. The steelpan is the tuned percussion instrument developed in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1930s and 1940s from discarded oil barrels. The handpan is a direct technical descendant: PANArt were steelpan builders first, and the note-in-a-sunken-steel-sheet principle comes straight from Trinidad.The steelpan story begins with the percussion bands of Trinidadian carnival, which moved from bamboo tubes to biscuit tins, paint cans and dustbin lids, and then to the 55 gallon oil drums that arrived in quantity with the oil industry and the wartime American bases. Elliott “Ellie” Mannette (1927 to 2018) is widely credited as the father of the modern steelpan, and two of his innovations matter directly here. He was the first to use the 55 gallon oil barrel, and he sank the drum head into a concave bowl rather than leaving it convex, which created room for more notes and separated them acoustically so that one note stopped exciting its neighbours. Mannette moved to the United States in the early 1960s, built steel bands in hundreds of American schools and universities, and from 1991 ran a tuning project at West Virginia University that trained a generation of pan builders.
The link to the handpan runs through Switzerland. Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer of PANArt in Bern were steelpan makers who had been developing their own sheet steel for pan building since the mid 1990s, including a nitrided deep-drawn steel they called Pang. When they built the Hang in 2000, they applied the steelpan’s note-making method to a completely different body: two hemispheres glued into a closed vessel with a tuned air cavity, played with the hands rather than with rubber tipped sticks.
So the family relationship is real but not superficial. Both instruments make a note by shaping and stressing a patch of sheet steel and tuning its partials with a hammer. Everything else differs: the steelpan is convex-notes-in-a-concave-bowl struck with sticks, usually in an ensemble of pans covering different registers, tuned chromatically and loud enough for carnival. The handpan is convex, hand played, closed, quiet and usually confined to a single scale.
Going deeper. Calling a handpan a “steel drum” is not simply wrong, it is imprecise in a way that erases a specific national instrument with a documented history and a living tradition. Most steelpan players find it grating.
REL-09What is the Gubal, and what else has PANArt built since the Hang?#
intermediate
Short answer. The Gubal is a hand played steel vessel PANArt introduced in summer 2013, for the company’s twentieth anniversary, with a large central resonance opening on the top that lets the player drive the air cavity directly for a strong bass. It is the flagship of the Pang family, the group of instruments PANArt turned to after ending Hang production in December 2013.The Gubal’s defining feature is its acoustics. Where a Hang has a central Ding note and a Gu port underneath, the Gubal has the resonance opening on the playing surface: a round hole with an inward-facing neck, surrounded by an elastic area PANArt call the Ringding. Striking or pressing that area excites the Helmholtz resonance of the enclosed air far more strongly than is possible on a Hang. A hemispherical extension on the underside, the Gugel, gives a bass pitch around 78 Hz (E flat 2), and the player alters that bass by changing hand position over the opening. Around the Ringding sits a ring of seven tone fields in the familiar arrangement. Practically, it means one player can produce both a bass line and a melody, which a Hang cannot.
The Gubal was conceived for ensemble play rather than as the intimate solo instrument the Hang had become. That created a balance problem, since it is loud, and PANArt responded by building companions: the Hang Gudu (2015), the Hang Urgu (2016), the Hang Bal, and a set of three Pang string instruments. Collectively PANArt call the resulting practice Pang music, an improvised ensemble form, and they present it as the point of the whole exercise rather than as a product line.
All of these are made from Pang, PANArt’s own nitrided deep-drawn sheet steel, originally developed in the mid 1990s for steelpan making.
The important context for buyers: PANArt no longer make the Hang, have not since the end of 2013, and are not going to resume. They have also consistently resisted being treated as a supplier to the handpan market. If you want a PANArt instrument today, you are buying into their current work, not a Hang.
REL-10What is the Halo, and why do early handpans have their own model names?#
intermediate
Short answer. The Halo is the instrument built by Pantheon Steel in Missouri, first delivered in summer 2009, and it is where the word “handpan” comes from. Early makers gave their instruments distinct names because PANArt had trademarked “Hang” and nobody could legally use it.Kyle Cox of Pantheon Steel appears to have coined “hand pan” between June and September 2007, on the company’s own website, to describe the Hang-like instrument he was developing. Internet Archive snapshots place the term’s first appearance in that window. It spread through the Hang-Music Forum from September 2007 and was cemented when handpan.org launched on 11 August 2009 as the community’s main forum. Within a few years it had become the generic English term for the whole instrument family, which is how a single maker’s product description became a category name.
That naming pressure explains the odd variety of model names from the first wave of makers. Because “Hang” was off limits, each builder had to invent something: Pantheon Steel’s Halo, Metal Sounds’ Spacedrum in France, Bill Brown’s Caisa in Germany (a steel top over a wooden horn base, played with the hands but distinctly its own thing), Bali Steel Pan in Indonesia, and later Ayasa in the Netherlands and many others. Some of those names have stuck as brand names for what everyone now calls a handpan. A few, like the Caisa, describe an instrument different enough that the separate name still earns its keep.
The word “pantam” arose from the same problem in a different language community. Israeli players and makers, working in a scene that grew quickly in the 2010s, use pantam as the standard term. It is a handpan by any technical definition. If you see a maker or a shop using pantam, it is a regional naming convention, not a claim about a different instrument.
Going deeper. The naming history is worth knowing because it is the main reason online searches are so confusing. “Hang drum” is what PANArt asked people not to say, “handpan” is a competitor’s marketing term that became the standard, “pantam” is the Hebrew-language equivalent, and half a dozen model names are brands rather than categories.
See also: MYT-01, History section
REL-11What are the udu and the ghatam, and are they handpan ancestors?#
beginner
Short answer. They are clay pot drums, the udu from the Igbo people of Nigeria and the ghatam from South India. They are not ancestors of the handpan in any lineage sense, but they are the closest older relatives in acoustic principle: a struck vessel whose enclosed air is part of the instrument.The udu. Ùdù means vessel or pot in Igbo, and the instrument began as a water jug with an extra hole cut in its side. It is classified as both an idiophone and a plosive aerophone, because two quite different sounds come out of it. Striking the clay body with fingers gives dry, pitched taps in the manner of any pot drum. Striking or slapping across the side hole displaces a slug of air and excites the Helmholtz resonance of the vessel, producing the deep, swooping “whoop” the udu is known for; the pitch of that bass bends as the player opens and closes the mouth of the pot with the other hand. Traditionally it was played by Igbo women in ceremonial contexts. Modern udus are made in clay, and also in fibreglass and other materials.
The ghatam. A clay pot from the Indian subcontinent, central to Carnatic percussion and one of the oldest instruments in the region. The name comes from the Sanskrit ghaṭa, pot. The clay is mixed with brass or copper filings and a little iron, which is why a good ghatam rings rather than thuds; the Manamadurai variety from Tamil Nadu is thick and heavy with brass shards in the body and is prized for a sharp metallic ring. The player sits cross legged with the mouth of the pot against the abdomen and strikes the outside with fingers, thumbs, palms and heels; pressing the mouth against the belly and releasing it produces the bass, again by controlling the air cavity.
The handpan connection. A handpan is also a closed vessel with a tuned air cavity, and its Gu port on the underside is doing the same acoustic job as the udu’s side hole. What the handpan does not inherit is any of the tuning method, the playing tradition or the repertoire. The Helmholtz resonator is a piece of physics that many cultures found independently, not a chain of transmission. Claiming otherwise is where a lot of the “ancient instrument” mythology starts.
See also: MYT-06, Acoustics section
REL-12Where do the cheap “hang drums” on Amazon and AliExpress fit?#
beginner
Short answer. Almost all of them are budget steel tongue drums listed under the wrong name for search traffic. A smaller number are genuinely handpan-shaped instruments of poor quality, sometimes outright copies of a named maker’s design.Search “hang drum” on a large marketplace and the results are dominated by 10 to 14 inch coloured steel domes at 30 to 120 euros, usually sold with two rubber mallets and a padded bag. Look at the photographs: if the notes are visible as cut slots radiating from the centre, it is a tongue drum, whatever the listing says. The listings use “hang drum”, “handpan”, “hand pan drum” and “tank drum” more or less interchangeably because those are the terms buyers type, and marketplace search rewards whoever stuffs the most of them into a title.
The second category is more of a problem. There are workshops producing convex, unbroken-shell instruments at a few hundred euros that are genuinely handpans by construction, and which are usually poorly tuned, harmonically thin, and unstable. Some are sold under invented brand names, some are direct visual clones of established makers’ work down to the logo. The community term for these is “pandrums” or simply fakes, and they are the main reason experienced players tell beginners to buy from a maker or an authorised dealer.
How to tell what you are actually looking at, from a listing:
- Cut slots visible on the surface. Tongue drum. Fine as a tongue drum, judge it on tongue drum terms.
- Smooth dimples, no cuts, price under about 500 euros. Treat with real scepticism. Ask for a recording of the actual instrument, not a stock video.
- No named maker, no workshop location, no scale specified beyond “D minor”. Walk away.
- Stock photography reused across many “brands”. Common. Reverse image search the listing photo.
None of this makes the cheap tongue drums bad objects. A 60 euro drum can be a genuinely enjoyable thing to have on a coffee table, and some are tuned adequately. The failure mode is expectation: someone buys a 60 euro “hang drum”, finds it sounds nothing like the video that made them want one, and concludes the instrument is overrated.
REL-13What is the difference between a handpan, a hank drum and a propane tank drum?#
beginner
Short answer. A hank drum is a specific thing: the homemade steel tongue drum Dennis Havlena made from an empty propane tank in February 2007, and the design he published for free. “Tank drum” is the looser term for the same idea. A handpan is a different instrument entirely, with hammered notes and no cuts.Havlena’s build is one of the genuinely important moments in this whole story. He took a 20 pound propane tank, burned off the paint, cut seven to ten radial tongues into the tank’s base, and tuned them by filing. He borrowed the physical form from Felle Vega’s Tambiro and the note arrangement from the Hang, and he named the result by fusing “Hang” and “tank” into hank drum. Crucially, he published the plans openly. Jim Doble’s Whale Drum (1990) had explored similar territory earlier, and wooden slit drums go back to many independent traditions, but Havlena’s free plans are what turned the idea into a worldwide DIY movement and then into a commercial category.
The terminology as people actually use it:
- Hank drum. Strictly, Havlena’s propane tank design or a homemade drum following it. Loosely, any homemade steel tongue drum.
- Tank drum. Any tongue drum made from or resembling a repurposed gas tank. Often used as a general synonym for a budget steel tongue drum, especially in European shop listings.
- Steel tongue drum. The neutral umbrella term covering all of them, homemade or commercial. This is the term to use if you want to be understood.
- Handpan. Not in this family. Hammered tone fields in an unbroken shell, two glued half shells, no cuts.
The DIY route is still viable and still cheap. A used propane tank, an angle grinder with a thin cutting disc, a chromatic tuner and patience will get you a playable instrument in a weekend, and the results range from charming to genuinely good. Purging the tank properly before cutting is not optional; residual propane and a cutting disc is a serious hazard, and the standard practice is to fill with water before any cutting begins. Nobody builds a handpan this way. Handpan shells require deep drawing or extensive hammer forming, heat treatment, and hundreds of hours of tuning skill.
See also: REL-01, Making and tuning section
REL-14Which instruments get confused with the handpan?#
beginner
Short answer. Singing bowls, gongs, kalimbas and the glass harp turn up constantly in the same playlists, the same sound bath sessions and the same search results, but none of them shares the handpan’s construction or playing technique. They are grouped by mood, not by family.Singing bowls. Standing bowls, usually bronze alloy, played by striking with a mallet or by running a wooden puja stick around the rim to sustain a tone by friction. Acoustically they are quite unlike a handpan: their partials are strongly inharmonic and they are usually not tuned to a scale in any exact sense, despite widespread marketing claims about specific frequencies and chakras. Handpans and bowls do share a market and often share a stage, which is most of why they are conflated.
Gongs. Large flat or bossed metal discs, struck with a soft beater, characterised by a slow rising wash and a huge spectrum of inharmonic partials. There is a small genuine relationship, in that gong makers and handpan makers both work sheet metal and both care about hammer-controlled tension, but the sound and the playing are unrelated.
Kalimba (mbira, thumb piano). African lamellophone: tuned metal tines mounted on a board or a resonating box, plucked with the thumbs. The interesting point is that a kalimba tine and a steel tongue drum tongue are the same physical object, a cantilever bar fixed at one end. So the kalimba is genuinely close to a tongue drum, and genuinely far from a handpan.
Glass harp and glass harmonica. Tuned glass vessels or spinning glass bowls sounded by a wet finger. Near-pure tones with very little attack, hence the overlap in atmosphere with a handpan playing softly. No construction or technique in common at all.
Why the confusion persists. All of these are melodic, resonant, sustaining, played without a keyboard or frets, and heavily used in ambient, meditative and sound therapy contexts. Streaming playlists and shop categories group by listening context, so the algorithms keep them adjacent. If you came to the handpan through one of these, it is worth listening to some of the more rhythmic, percussive handpan playing before you buy, because that side of the instrument is the part the ambient playlists hide.