Handpan Structure & Origins

Let’s introduce the handpan and get to know what it is. The handpan has several names, comes in different steels and sizes and has various parts. In this lesson, we will set the scene and get to know the instrument better.

This is the only theory lesson before we start playing, so it’s a little longer than the others. Don’t skip it. Knowing what the parts of your instrument are called, and what each one does, will make every lesson after this one easier.

The handpan #

The handpan is a steel instrument played with the hands. It is made from two hammered steel half shells glued together at the rim, which gives it its shape — people describe it as a flying saucer, or two woks joined at the edge. A typical handpan is around 50 to 55 cm across and weighs somewhere between 3.5 and 5 kg.

On the top of the instrument sits a dome in the centre, called the ding, and a ring of tuned notes around it, called tone fields. On the bottom there is a single round hole, called the gu.

Two things make the handpan sound the way it does.

First, every note is really three notes at once. A tuner hammers each tone field until it rings at its main pitch, an octave above that, and a fifth above the octave, all in the same patch of steel. That’s why a single note on a handpan sounds so full, almost like a small chord.

Second, a handpan is tuned to one scale, and one scale only. There are no sharps or flats to find, no keys to change and no notes that aren’t hammered into the shell. On our D Kurd, every note belongs with every other note. That’s why you can’t play a wrong note — and, as I said in the introduction, why good technique is something you have to choose rather than something the instrument forces on you.

Strictly speaking, the handpan isn’t a drum. A drum makes its sound with a stretched skin; a handpan has no skin, and the steel itself vibrates. That makes it an idiophone, in the same family as bells, gongs and the steelpan. In practice, though, its playing technique comes almost entirely from hand drumming, which is exactly why a percussionist feels at home on it.

Origins #

The handpan is a very young instrument. Its direct ancestor is the steelpan, invented in Trinidad in the 1930s and 1940s from discarded oil drums. The steelpan gave us the essential craft: hammering a sheet of steel so that one area of it rings at a pitch with its octave and fifth tuned in alongside.

The first instrument of the handpan type was the Hang, made by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer of PANArt in Bern, Switzerland. Both had spent decades building and tuning steelpans. In November 1999, a Swiss percussionist called Reto Weber visited their workshop, played them a ghatam — a South Indian clay pot played with the hands — and asked whether they could make something like it in steel, with a few notes he could play with his hands.

Their answer was to join two steel half shells into a closed body, with the notes on the outside of a dome. They presented the Hang at the Frankfurt Musikmesse in March 2001. PANArt made Hangs by hand, in small numbers, until December 2013.

For years PANArt were the only makers in the world, and waiting lists ran into years. From around 2007, other makers began building instruments of the same type, and today there are hundreds of handpan makers across the world.

Different names the handpan can take #

The handpan goes by a few names, and some of them mean quite different things. For simplicity, I consistently use the word “handpan” in this course. However, the list below should help you understand what other people mean when they use different names.

• Handpan – The general name for the whole type of instrument, from any maker. The word was coined around 2007 by Kyle Cox of Pantheon Steel, so that makers had a name that didn’t belong to anybody. “Pan” points back to the steelpan; “hand” is how you play it.
• Hang – One specific instrument, made only by PANArt between 2001 and 2013. “Hang” is PANArt’s registered trademark, and it means “hand” (and “hillside”) in Bernese German.
• Pantam – The everyday word for a handpan in Israel, and increasingly used elsewhere. It means exactly the same thing.
• Sound sculpture – PANArt’s own name for their instruments.
• Steel drum – The Trinidadian steelpan, which is a different instrument.
• Tongue drum – A different, cheaper instrument, with notes cut into the steel rather than hammered into it.

Different types of handpan available #

There are many types of handpan available today. They are made from different steels, come with different numbers of notes and in different sizes. Let’s explore some of these and see what’s what.

Nitrided steel handpans are the original #

Nitriding is a heat treatment that hardens the surface of the steel, and it is how PANArt made the Hang. Nitrided handpans are usually dark grey to blue-black. They have a clear, defined attack and a slightly shorter ring than stainless, which keeps notes out of each other’s way — great for rhythmic playing, which is exactly what we’ll be doing in this course.

The catch is care. Nitriding protects the surface, but it isn’t rustproof. Sweat left on the steel, salty air or a scratch through the surface can let rust start, so a nitrided handpan needs wiping down after you play and oiling from time to time.

Stainless steel handpans ring longer and don’t rust #

Stainless handpans are usually a lighter, more silvery grey. They tend to ring longer and brighter, with a softer attack, which is beautiful for slow playing. That long ring has a cost: in fast rhythms the notes pile up on top of each other. The big advantage is that stainless is effectively rustproof in normal use. You’ll also hear the name Ember steel, a stainless steel first developed by the maker Ayasa, now used loosely by other makers too.

Raw steel handpans are rare #

Raw steel is untreated. It’s soft and warm-sounding, but it rusts very easily, so very few makers sell raw handpans as a normal product.

A note on extra notes #

Most handpans have a ding and eight or nine notes around it, like ours. Some have extra notes squeezed in between the ding and the ring (called mutants), or notes hammered into the bottom shell (called bottom notes). More notes isn’t automatically better — every extra note takes steel away from the others. For learning, a well made 9 note handpan is ideal.

The handpan used in this course #

In this course, I use a 9 note D Kurd for all illustrations and teaching. I bought it secondhand, off Facebook Marketplace — so if yours didn’t cost a fortune either, you’re in good company.

I teach on one scale only, and that scale is D Kurd, because it is the most common handpan scale in the world. It is complete, full of chords, forgiving and easy to learn. If you have a D Kurd, everything on these pages is exactly what’s in your lap.

Differentiation from similar musical instruments #

A few instruments get confused with the handpan. Here’s how to tell them apart.

The steelpan. The handpan’s ancestor. A steelpan is a single open drum, sunk inwards into a bowl, played with rubber-tipped sticks, loud and bright, and built for orchestras. A handpan is two closed shells domed outwards, played with the hands, quiet and warm, and built for playing on your own. If you’re ever around Trinidadian musicians, call it a pan or a steelpan, not a steel drum.

The steel tongue drum. On a tongue drum, each note is a tongue of steel cut out of the shell. On a handpan, each note is hammered and tuned into unbroken steel. Tongue drums are much cheaper, hold their tuning almost forever and ring very long and pure. Handpans are richer, more expressive and more responsive to your touch — and much better for rhythm.

The RAV Vast. A tongue drum with several pitches tuned into each tongue, which makes it the tongue drum that comes closest to sounding like a handpan. It’s still a tongue drum.

Typical structure #

A handpan is made from two thin sheets of steel, each around a millimetre thick, pressed into a half shell. The top shell carries all of the notes. The bottom shell carries the gu.

The two shells are glued together at the rim rather than welded. The tuning of every note lives in carefully hammered stress in the steel, and the heat of a weld would undo it. This is also why you should never leave a handpan in a hot car — the glue at the rim is one of the least heat-tolerant parts of the instrument.

The gu turns the inside of the handpan into a resonator, just like blowing across the top of a bottle. The air inside has a deep note of its own, well below any of the tone fields, and it adds a low warmth underneath everything you play. That’s why the gu must always be able to breathe — which we’ll come back to in the next lesson.

Handpan diagram #

The parts of a handpan, from the top down:

• Ding – The dome in the centre, and the lowest note. On our D Kurd it is D3.
• Tone fields – The oval notes in a ring around the ding. They climb in a zigzag, from side to side, from the lowest note nearest you to the highest at the far side.
• Dimple – The small bump or dip in the middle of each tone field.
• Shoulder – The flat band of plain steel around the base of the ding, between the ding and the tone fields. This is where we play the Tek.
• Rim – The edge where the two shells are glued together, often covered with a rubber ring.
• Bottom shell – The underside of the instrument.
• Gu – The round hole in the middle of the bottom shell.