Llamapan

How to play

1. Tap a note to strike it. It rings out and slowly fades, like a real handpan. Tap with several fingers to play notes together.
2. The ding in the middle is the lowest note, the home note of the scale. Around it, the ring of notes zigzags upward from left to right, starting nearest you at the bottom, so each step up the scale moves to the other hand.
3. Drag across the notes for a quick run.
4. Pick Classic, Glow, or Art at the top to change the look. Art paints the handpan like a blue-and-white porcelain dish.
5. Choose a scale below the handpan. D Kurd is the most popular, dark and gentle. Amara (also called Celtic Minor) is softer and folky, in D or in the deeper B, Pygmy is deep and mysterious, Aegean is airy and calm, Akebono has a Japanese feel, and Hijaz has a Middle Eastern flavor. Your choice is remembered next time. Not sure which? See handpan scales explained.
6. On a computer keyboard, Space or B plays the ding. S D F G play the left side of the ring from low to high, and L K J H play the right side from low to high, so playing back and forth between your hands climbs the scale. Use Show keys to see which key plays each note.
7. Using Bluetooth headphones? You may notice a slight delay between playing a note and hearing it. That comes from Bluetooth itself, not the instrument, so for instant response use wired headphones or your device's speakers.

About the handpan

The handpan is a steel instrument played with the hands, first made in Switzerland in 2000. Two shells are joined at the rim, and a central dome called the ding is surrounded by a ring of tuned dimples called tone fields. Each handpan is tuned to one fixed scale, so players often own several.

Llamapan has a ding and eight ring notes, the most common layout. The sound is generated live in your browser, with no recordings.

Handpan scales explained → · History of the handpan →