What is a Handpan and why they don’t need you to call it a Cling Drum
The handpan or "cling" is a convex steel drum performed with the hands and tuned with multiple notes. Each handpan is tuned to a specific scale such as main, natural minor, harmonic minor, hijaz, mixolydian, etc. Sonically the handpan is an overtone-emitting instrument that has the capability to create many layers of sound and ethereal results and works very effectively with drone instruments. Initially called the cling (pronounced "hah-ng") the handpan was invented in 2001 by just a little company in Switzerland. We’ll let you know why you should not call it a "dangle drum" in a little bit bit, however first:
Origin of the Handpan/Grasp
In the 1970s the Trinidad steel drum sparked a phenomenon throughout Europe. Felix Rohner had been playing the metal pans for twenty years and by the 1990s, he based his own company, PanArt, for the creation of those concave instruments. Sabrina Scharer, who would develop into his lengthy-term enterprise partner, signed on to PanArt shortly after.
A Swiss jazz and steel pan musician, Reto Weber, traveled to India and approached PanArt in search of a strategy to play the steel drum along with his hands, as he had achieved with the Indian ghatam (clay drum) asking, "Are you able to make a ghatam with notes?" The inspiration for the Hold and what was later to be called the Handpan was born.
Trinidad Metal Pan - Photo courtesy of cestlavibe.com
Trinidad Steel Pan – Photo courtesy of cestlavibe.com
Felix and Sabrina revolutionized the Trinidad steel drum by flipping a customized hand-hammered metal pan from a concave to a convex position. Each of the seven to eight notes were then made profoundly sensitive to the lightest touch, allowing musicians to play the instrument by hand. The center be aware of the instrument, referred to as "the ding" bubbles out from the middle while the notes of the musical scale circling across the ding and up the sides of the pan are sunken into the metal as you would see with a traditional Trinidad metal pan, except with an additional dimple within the heart of the note.
The tuned convex pan was then sealed together with a strong adhesive and resonating chamber of thicker steel with an opening within the middle (called the "Gu" that will also be played percussively when the instrument is flipped upside down), creating an aesthetically mysterious UFO shape.
Felix and Sabrina called the instrument "the Hang" (pronounced hah-ng), simply which means, "hand" of their Swiss-German dialect. They took legal rights over the name "hang drum instrument (Suggested Webpage)" below PanArt. The Hold was formally offered to the public in 2001 in Frankfurt, Germany and instantly the devices turned common for their beautiful and mysterious tone and distinctive scales. The will for the Hang began to develop rapidly. However, Felix and Sabrina approached the Cling as a murals, not a commodity and refused to mass-produce their creation, making only a limited number each year by hand.
