hangforum.com - The Archive

I know there's a hang video on YouTube with a busker that's set up the Shruti Box to work with his feet. I just can't find it.

Electronic !!!!

Actually, in our recent rehearsal for our upcoming concert here, Tapado used an ocean drum both with me playing the hang and also Sahayak playing the flute. The sound was amazing...it is something for sure we want to get. I haven't researched it to give you any links but I imagine it would be easy enough to find.

Reallly worth exploring, and it looks very simple.

...and actually, just had the thought to mention there is a other interesting instrument under the hang video section if anyone is exploring this thread and hasn't been to that topic. The post is called Hang-PantaRheiHarfe-Didgeridoo.

Of course, why not?

For building complex drones I also use banks of sine wave generators as well, from 60 year old tube gear to contemporary solid state. I was doing that many years before I began playing Hang as well. They go together very well, and reveal things about the Hang one might not otherwise hear.

There are many paths through the open country...

My wife uses an ocean drum to accompany our crystal singing bowls and flutes and hanghang. Very effective. We host Musical Meditations at our dome home in Apache Jct, AZ USA. By all means you should also investigate well crafted Tongue Drums. Michael Thiele of Arizona (Hardwood Drums) is among the best. We have a large Meditation Tongue Drum of his that you can hear on track 10 of the Hollow Bone CD. Go to my cdbaby page.
Saggio

I spent 6 weeks on the coast of Brazil a few years ago to learn how to play the Ocean Drum.
(Actually this is a joke )
But I did learn how to use the Ocean Drum by listening to the surf while I was there.
Something I miss with most people who use the Ocean Drum is the actual dynamics of the sound of surf,
including moments of "almost" silence

I agree whole-heartedly about the spaces in the sound of the ocean drum - that is how I heard it played and it has a very powerful effect. If it was aall sound it doesn't offer any light and shade, it doesn't offer any stillness and silence in contrast. I would say the same for any instrument actually. This says it pretty well...

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides!"

Artur Schnabel

When performing I often ask the audience to ponder this question... 'Is music the sounds of the notes, or the silence in between the notes?'

I don't progress from there to answers or discussions, but for me, it is of course both, and each without the other is not music.

And from a spiritual perspective, music is said to come out of silence and then return to silence, so from that perspective silence is like the foundation, the base, the container out of which the music arises...which puts a different slant on things.

It's all very interesting

If your Hang is in a similar scale, try playing around with this and then playing the Hang along to your creation!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

(needs latest flash version)

This is like the Tenori-On (search YouTube) but this is free!

This is fun! Even without a hang!

And for the geeks
http://www.hobnox.com/index.1056.en.html

Hi,

i remember the time, where people pay a lot of money to make sounds like that with big hardware machines. Very funny find. Only a few minutes later a few hours are over.
I have the beat.

Frank

Hello all,

I posted something very similar to what I am about to put here on hang-music forum but I feel it fits pretty perfectly into this thread so I will replicate much of the post on this forum. I hope nobody is annoyed by the crossposting! Let me know.

I wanted to find a way to Jam easily with other musicians and my Hang.
I sat down with a close friend who plays Bass guitar. He began to teach me how to play in modes. What he was teaching me would soon allow me play in almost any key!

The notes I had available to me were common to many western musical scales. I had always viewed my Hangs scale as starting in the centre, with a deep beautiful D ding. Stu (my bassist friend) had me number the notes around my hang, starting with the lowest tone field around the circumfrence - the low A, 1-7. The Ding (being an octave lower and in D, a note repeated along the circumfrence) was not numbered.

Stu picked out scales and found which notes were found in my Hang also. We discovered that with most scales there were at least four notes shared on the Hang. This allowed me to play those notes at any time while jamming in a particular key and sound 'in tune'.

For example:
Playing in C Minor: My hang shared the notes C,D,Eb and G, meaning I could freely strike notes 2,3,4,6 and the Ding.
Playing in D Minor: My hang shared the notes A,C,D,G and A meaning I could freely strike 1,2,3,6,7 and the Ding.

You can easily work these out on your own Hang -
- Take the notes you have on your Hang and note them down.
- Look up the scale you would like to jam in.
- Find the shared notes.
- Write down a set of which tone fields you can freely strike.

You can of course strike the other notes on your Hang in a jam in C Minor, but as passing notes to add colour or as a fill between bars. This way you know what notes you can strike at any time, and rely on these to sound good while you play with other musicians.

Well. After trying this out Stu invited a Sax player over and the three of us had a night making music together. I had an amazing time finally being able to play with confidence in a mixed jam. We are even thinking of forming a band between these instruments - Hang, Saxaphone and Bass (a little accordian as well ).

If you'd like to listen to some of our jamming just download the file here - http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1260284/Hanging%20Around.zip
There are 5 tracks there. I reccomend putting some good headphones on for the best sound reproduction while you listen.
Any comments would be very much appreciated - I think if we want to start a band with hang in it the first people to ask about the results are other Hang players!

Glad to be here,
Simon Fox.

OMG this is fun I like it Thanks for the link.

Thanks Simon, great post - glad you added it to the mix...it has triggered a further idea too!

I have always assumed musicians who read music and know their instruments well can adapt to me, which seemed to me the easiest way, given I would only be guessing if I tried to adapt to them (by listening and getting a feel for it - which is fine if you have some rehearsal time, but not so fine if you are thrown in front of an audience with other musicians sponteneously! ...which has happened by the way). So this info is great - it gives me something to explore and if I make notes and keep them with me, I will be able to adapt.

An additional thought I have had is that, because I don't want to mark my hang with numbers, I might keep some stick on coloured dots in my hang case, so I can stick them on the rim and then take them off when we are finished playing in whatever key/scale. That way, I wouldn't even have to remember numbers - if there are 4 coloured dots (all the same colour) I would know just to play those ones to match a certain key/scale/instrument. I could just refer to my written notes about which hang notes need to be 'dotted'. And if I work with colours like that, it would be possible to have colour codes to match 2 or 3 instruments (in a big jam!) - e.g. red dots, sax, green dots flute, yellow dots harmonica...

I am looking forward to exploring this...it'll be fun!

I'm very glad you found some use in it Samjjana, it's been a bit of a revelation to me, of course I am only at the beginning of my journey with the Hang, and with melody in general being a long time percussion player.

Moving from percussion to melody has been very interesting, hard to push out of the strictly rythm pattern based approach and 'sing' with the instrument a bit more but well worth while. I find pairing down to four or five notes can actually really help for that - not to mention how much seeing these scales has 'opened' up the Hang for me in terms of quickly finding pleasing confluences of notes.

My hang runs C,Eb,G along it's left hand side (as the PanArt logo faces away from me) and although there are plenty of pairs for these notes I had found myself neglecting that area in passing play, preffering the bright mixolydian feel of the upper register, especially as the Eb so rarely feels like a resolving note. Now with this new knowledge it is like I see two voices in my Hang - the brighter area and a more Minor feeling side. The two run wonderfully into each other and passing back and forth in play has a beautiful feel - it's like the yin-yang of my Hang

Not keen on the dots personally, (Just my view though ) what i use is muscle memory and patterns combining the notes on the hang with all compatible cords etc that can be combines on my hang. Plus over time I have become instinctive to where my notes are located, not just through sight but through sound. Playing a note in the dark i can tell which way my have is facing what note is played, the notes next to it etc. Just like playing the guitar except the guitar has dots so I suppose is nothing like the guitar

I love playing in the dark, always have its a bit like the old british Rwhites lemonade advert where the guys sneaks down at night to drink lemonade, i sneak down to play hang........I'm a secret hang player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqBa7eay6Fo

Another thing I tend to do when jamming with accomplished musicians is tell them my notes and get them to follow me

Hi,

first i want to welcome you in the Hangforum @Mr.Fox. Nice to have you here.

if i heard the Hang for the first time I was also an percussion player. I saw the Hang on TV in the year 2001 and I felt in love from one of the next moment.
It is an interesting experience to play the Hang without any idea "how" notes work together in music theorie. (i hope you understand my bad english)
I think i followed a similar way as you. First i played rhythm patterns on the Hang and the melodys come from alone. I dont know what i do one the Hang with a musician background.
I play the Hang now for nearly 3 years. All what I play today is 'music in the moment".
I dont think about music theorie, but I had interesting talks with other people about that in the foretime.
I am not sure, if it is more helpfull for me as a Hangplayer to "know" what I do. But if you want to play together with other instruments it is maybe needfull.

Nice ideas in your topic. Hope to hear more about your experience.

Greetings
Frank

Thanks Funky, for the welcome and the comments. I've been reading hang-music.com's forum for a while and admire your steady and thoughtful approach to the topic.

Your comments here about your journey with the Hang remind be of a speaker on the film 1 Giant Leap, which I cannot reccomend highly enough by the way.
Speaking of spiritual progression in general this man (sadly i forget his name, I will ask a friend who I think will know and edit this later) details his own journey learning to understand life. He details how as a young man he became deeply enthused with knowledge, devouring books on every topic he could find. Eventually he found himself lost, and through this process began to discern a different voice, an internal voice that speaks in the silence in between speaking - he eventually finds the voice that is him, that is his own spiritual truth.

It is a beautiful speech and I wish I could remember more of it. I feel maybe with the Hang it will be like this for me - first I learn and then I speak.

There is no doubt that one can do more with the Hang than making music. On the other hand I feel that to make music and to share that with others is in line with Felix and Sabine's vision of the Hang - they speak of it as a pure form of creativity, something that lets one tap into themselves - why would you not want to share the creative expression of your self with others?

This topic gets more interesting as it progresses

I totally agree about playing the hang in the moment. It's my priority and I have been very careful not to get caught in 'thinking' too much about it. I used to play keyboard and violin with reading music, so I didn't want to bring structured playing to the hang - it's not what the hang is about. I agree it is like the description of that Spiritual man's journey - it's about being, and about simplicity. I believe that accumulating knowlegde can be an impediment. But I would make a distinction - there is knowledge on an intellectual level, and there is heart knowing. I think the heart's knowledge is far more suited to the hang than the intellectual...and the same could be said for many instruments. Also a combination of the two can work for many instruments, but again, I don't feel this for the hang.

I have a sense of where the notes are and what notes they are on my hang - you can't play a hang for a year and not have a sense of this, but my idea in having coloured dots to play with other instruments is so that I don't have to 'think' about which notes, and I can play spontaneously in the moment with other instruments. The visual reminder of which notes suit would not mean I would play in a structured way - it would still be improvised, just with less notes than usual.

Of course if other musicians can play their instruments in D minor that is ideal, then I can play all my notes - but if they can't, I really like the idea of being able to adapt quickly just by putting some coloured dots on the suitable notes.

The discussion about shifting from a percussion to a melody focus resonates with me - I have spoken about this under 'hang videos' when I shared out Music Alchemy videos. Plus in another post I have shared about the silence between the notes, and allowing spaces in the music.

It feels to me like a whole topic in itself actually...I have been thinking about starting a new thread about it.

Anyway, for now I will promise to try the coloured dots at the next available opportunity and if anything interesting happens I will report back!