hangforum.com - The Archive

How to learn how to play Hang

(the slight confusion in this sentence is intentional – further confusions in the following text are due to my limited english

Meanwhile i am a proud owner of a (free integral) Hang too and i am exploring the possibilities which i find hidden in this piece of metal.
(i do own a handpan already for almost a year)
According to the intention of the hangmakers, i try to consider the

Hang as a Soundsculpture

and play with my nails, fingertips, knuckles (gently), heel of hand on the ding, the gu, the tonefields and the area between the tonefields listening to the variety of floating sounds and mutual interferences, which i really like - although after 15 to 20 min my concentration fades and says its enough. This meditative ”soundcloud-landscape” is mainly perceived by myself and probabely by my girlfriend, that sometimes sits nearby (reading a book or so).

There is a further meditation-dimension, using the

Hang as a Percussioninstrument

I call it the “shaman-dimension”, the repetition and variation of tone- or rhythmpattern (which is found in music-history / ethnologie of all cultures ) has a relaxing and sometimes “bringing into trance” effect. This is not only perceived by my girlfriend but most likely by my neighbors also
And further the

Hang as a Melodic-Instrument

mainly for pentatonic melodies and tonepattern, but even to create harmonies
especially when playing together with other (Hang- or Hang-like) instruments, what i as
a guitarplayer who sometimes combines Hang and Guitar of course appreciate a lot.


There are two main ideas behind Hang-playing-philosophy:
To play for oneself and to play for others.
I myself would miss something if i was restricted to only one side of the medal.
I like to meditate in a closed room, but also to present my musical personality as a musician (mainly in musical creations but also by showing my temperament and my fingerskills) and therefore i appreciate that there are some lessons to be found in the www that show different playing-attitudes, pattern, tips and tricks.

Everyone who wants to get more out of his instrument and himself will come to a point where outside-influences and innervoice are going to form a new entity (call it personal style or similar). This will happen ….. or not - if not, explanations like: don’t play this way, play that way, close your eyes, open your eyes, count , don`t count - are needless anyway.


I appreciate one sentence that Felix Rohner said during the introduction (Hanghistory and Hangphilosophy) to our little group of “elected new Hangowners” :
Don’t let vanity and fishing for compliments/quick applause determine your playing.
I think that is the most substantial, that is to be said about Hang(and Handpan)playing

Last but not least Panart (Sabina Schärer /Felix Rohner) is/are the inventer/developer of the Hang (which itself is based on many inventions and working-experiences of steeldrummakers) and that merit no one can ever deny. With that invention/development new words were created too (Hang/ HangHang /Ding / Gu / Guing). I think it is like the famous fight of Don Quijote against the windmill-wings to insist that those words (especially Hang) are only to be used for Panart-Instruments/Soundsculptures. ( ... but maybe it has a juridical background)

Although I have to admit that my Panart-Hang sounds and reacts a bit better than my Handpan, there is a Ding – Gu (or Centernote – Resonancehole) correspondence also found on my Handpan and the sound-landscapes i create with the one, are very similar to those, created with the other.
(my girlfriend says one sounds more clearly and the other a little warmer - and when i say could you pass me the Hang, she asks back : which one)


I’m looking forward to that day when there are separated the sheep from the goats, (with almost no application, speculation and so on) and there is a family of payable instruments, made by enthusiastic makers, all looking in a certain way similar like little abandoned UFO´s that can be played alone as well as in a group of other instruments, allowing the player to create stirring percussion-parts , backing tones, lovely overtone-choirs, meditative landscapes … called: HANG.

Hi Ambient Guitar,
welcome to the forum. Let me answer this time to the quoted part of your post.

There is a short answer and a longer.

The short one: Yes there is a juridical background. "Hang" is a registered trade mark for musical instruments and property of PANArt Hangbau AG. So other musical instrument vendors cannot use Hang as name for their instruments.

The longer one: To understand why Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer decided to protect the name of their instrument. we must understand what makes a Hang a Hang. The usage of Hang or "hang drum" for other musical instruments usually comes from a naive understanding: It looks like a Hang and I see people doing the same with it like with a Hang, so it must be a Hang.

A closer look at the history of the Hang will show us that this thought is a bit too easy. There is more to consider.

There are several aspects that defines a Hang.

The first is the material: Pang. It was developed beginning in the second half of the 1980th and reached a milestone in the middle of the 1990th when Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer began to work with deep drawn and nitrided raw forms instead of steel drums as rawforms.

The second aspect defining the Hang was the result of researching of the new raw form: Tuning the new rawform the tuners noticed that a navel appeared in the middle of the tone fields. Used to tune flat tone fields they hammered it back, but then they began to recognize that the navel had a function for the oscillations of the modes of the tone fields. After a time of experimentation they decided to use the dome as an intended geometrical form driven into the raw form at the beginning of the tuning work. They developed a new geometry of tone fields together with a new systematical tuning process using some of the dozens of parameters that influence the sound of a steelpan tone. It is important to understand that the dome geometry (combined with a special shallow curved form of the tone fields) and the tuning process (using in plane and torsional pre-stresses as the main tuning parameters to design the sound) are related closely to each other. The tuning process requires the geometry and the geometry only makes sense if used for the special tuning process.

The third aspect defining the Hang was the idea that Pang was good for being played with the hands. Something that was seldom done before.

The fourth aspect of the Hang is the form: A vessel made of two joined shells with a central zone with an outwards dome on the upper side (Ding) and central resonance hole on the bottom side (Gu) creating a Helmholtz resonance. Later the integration of Ding and Gu (sounding together as one sound when adjusted to an octave) became an additional aspect of the Hang.

So these are the four inventions by PANArt defining the Hang:

1) The material: Pang
2) The dome geometry related closely to the tuning process
3) Playing Pang with the hands
4) The form of the Hang with Ding and Gu

Understanding this we can see that another instrument can only be named Hang if it covers all four aspects. Otherwise the name would cause expectations not realized on that instruments.

If we look at the number of handpan called instruments currently offered we can see that there is not a single instrument that covers all four aspects.

1) A minority uses Pang the majority not.

2) The majority uses the dome geometry but not the tuning process. So the player expects that the domes on a handpan is the same as on the Hang but it is not. On the Hang the domes are necessary to hold the stresses introduced into the curved tone field forms during the tuning process. On instruments like the the Halo that have domes but almost flat tone fields there are no stresses that need to be hold by the domes. So the domes doesn't have the same function on these instruments that they have on the Hang.

3) All are played with the hands (but some - like the caisa - would be better played with sticks)

4) The majority of the handpans copies (more or less) the form of the Hang. A minority (Caisa, Spacedrum, Sunpan) not or only partially.

No one of the instrument makers who built instruments as a reaction to the high demand for the Hang began their work with a complete study of what the Hang is and how it functions. Especially nobody followed the relationship of dome geometry and tuning process. I think the reason for this is, that this would require a long journey discovering the properties of the Pang shell and how tuning using in plane and torsional stresses functions. Not practicable if you want to be ready with something for the market looking like a Hang and sounding harmonical tuned in a short time. So the instrument makers looked for easier ways to create an instrument able to be sold.

As a result of this decisions they build instruments ignoring the main devolopments made by PANArt on the way from steelpan to Hang.

I think (besides from trademark reasons) these instruments shouldn't be named Hang. They are not offsprings of the Hang but a sort of "sidesprings".

As far as I understand this was also the reason for PANArt to register the trademark Hang when they noticed that people began to call everything (even the tank drums) a Hang.

Michael

Hello (bzw. Hallo) Michael,

thank you for your answer/comment/explanation and the welcome.
I don`t really know why i started this topic - there is nothing new in it ( exept the statement that i am now a Hang-player too) ,
i guess i only wanted to say, "hello here i am" in a bit more circumstantial way.

Of course i know a bit about the Hang - Handpan matter ( developing efforts, materials, tuning philosophies, juridical questions/ongoings and so on )
In the past weeks i scrolled trough several topics at hangforum and handpan.org. and
followed some discussions and ping-pong-like exchange of arguments from the different viewpoints.

The proposal to use the word Hang as a general term , or better, the comparison to the Don Quijote windmill-fight, is due to the fact, that
people that saw/see me with my Handpan relatively often say " Oh, i know this instrument, it's a Hang" and i am not willing to spend time and energy
to explain, that it is not a Hang because it is not made out of Pang, it is not made in Swizerland and the tuning philosophy behind it is different to an "original Hang".
If i played trombone and someone would say " Oh, a trumpet" , i would correct that person.
A further problem i have to explain the difference between Hang and Handpan ( at least concerning my instruments ) is .... that for my ears, there is not
really an obvious difference in soundquality that is immediately audible, especially for "greenhorns" (to which i count myself to a certain degree too).
I really love my two instruments, each one sounds and reacts a bit different, but they both have rich overtones/harmonics and a resonating interaction between the
tonefields and the entire body. If i had to go to jail in a solitary confinement cell i know i could spend years exploring my Hang and my ability "to handle" it but i could do the same with my Handpan too. ( i prefer "to handle" instead of "to play" - but anyhow finally is it the exploration of something in ourself that makes the occupation and activity with it so inexhaustible )

So, "nuff said" , time to play


Beste Grüße Wolfgang