A short history of the handpan
The handpan is a steel instrument you play with your hands, resting on your lap. Two shallow steel shells are joined at the rim like a flying saucer. On top, a domed note in the middle is surrounded by a ring of tuned dimples, each one a separate note, and there is an opening underneath. It is one of the youngest acoustic instruments in the world.
Roots in the steelpan
The handpan grew out of the steelpan, or steel drum, of Trinidad and Tobago, where musicians in the 1930s and 40s discovered they could hammer the tops of oil drums into tuned notes. The handpan uses the same idea: each note is a carefully shaped area of steel, tuned so that it rings with its own pitch and harmonics.
2000: the Hang
In Bern, Switzerland, Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer had spent years making steelpans at their company, PANArt. In 2000 they created a new instrument from two steel shells, played with the hands instead of sticks, and called it the Hang, a Bernese German word for both "hand" and "hillside." They showed it to the public at the Frankfurt music fair in 2001.
Each Hang was tuned to its own scale, drawing on musical traditions from around the world, and PANArt kept refining it over the next decade, introducing new generations and tunings. The makers never liked the name "hang drum" that many people used for it, since they did not see it as a drum. In 2013 PANArt announced it would stop making the Hang to focus on new instruments.
The word "handpan"
Demand for the Hang far outstripped what one small workshop could make, and other builders began making their own instruments in the same spirit. In 2007 the American steelpan maker Pantheon Steel used the word "handpan" for its new instrument, and the name stuck as the general term for the whole family. Online communities grew up around it, including handpan.org, founded in 2009.
Handpans today
Today handpans are made by builders all over the world, in different steels, shapes, and sizes. Most have a center note called the ding and seven to nine notes around it, and some add extra notes on the underside. Every handpan is tuned to one fixed scale, such as D Kurd, Celtic Minor, or Pygmy, so many players own more than one. Because every note fits the scale, it is an instrument that sounds good from the very first touch, which is a big part of its appeal.
Try one in your browser
Llamapan is a free handpan for your browser, with seven popular scales to switch between.