Hand Pans on Strings And Tines

Electronic Hang Drum

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have loved the sound of the Hang Drum for quite some time. Having no interest in paying thousands of dollars for one, I thought about making an electronic version of one. My first attempt at it was years ago with an Arduino, but I ran into problems getting all the buttons to work. So I tucked the idea in a far corner of my brain. Recently I learned of a board called a WAV Trigger, which essentially plays up to 16 sounds in WAV format, triggered by buttons. This was exactly what I needed! At that point my brain started thinking about how I could do it. We had this large bowl that my wife almost threw out. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be the perfect shape. I got some arcade buttons, a spare speaker from my collection of random speakers, a power supply harvested from an old sleep noise machine, and got to work on assembling it. To hold the lid with all the buttons in place I used two bourbon bottle stoppers and hair ties. I later added two additional stoppers (not pictured) since the top was moving around a lot. It was a bit more involved to get it done, but in the end I was very happy with the result. I got the Hang Drum samples from Dark Arps. There are 8 individual Hang Drum notes, plus a row of buttons at the bottom, which play background songs to play along with. On the top row there are Volume Up and Down buttons, and a red button which stops all the background tracks in case I want to pick a different one. And it has a headphone jack that shuts off the speaker when in use, in order not to annoy others around me.

Water Heater Hank Drum

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One day as I was doing a trash run while camping, I spotted this metal tank next to the dumpster. As soon as I saw it I knew I could make it into a Hank Drum (Hang + Tank = Hank). Typically these are made from empty propane tanks, and this tank had similar proportions. Undeterred by my wife’s eye rolling, I brought it home and began to work. I used an angle grinder to cut the top and bottom pieces, which I eventually glued together with JB Weld. The water heater has a couple of tubes inside it, and after cutting these out it left a hole on the side of the finished drum, which you wouldn’t see in a propane tank drum. I found a template online for where the tongues should go, marked them, then used a jigsaw to cut them out. To tune this instrument you have to slowly cut to make the tongues longer, which will lower the pitch. It’s not perfectly tuned, but is close enough. I finished by spray painting it black and splattered some other colors, gave it a few coats of clear coat and called it a day. The sound is quite metallic, so I added a bunch of paper towels to the inside to help mellow it out a bit.

Wok Hand Pan

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I have wanted a Hang drum for a long time. However, they are quite expensive, so I keep looking for ways to make my own. I found a variation of this hand pan that uses tongues instead of the divots in the Hang drum, where people make them out of propane tanks. Not having a propane tank, nor the skills to cut and weld one of these tank drums, I instead opted to use an old steel wok. First I had to sand away the old faded paint, rust, and food particles accumulated over years of abuse. Then I cut the tongues with a jigsaw, not particularly tuning them to a specific scale. However, I like how it came out. You can play it with just your hands, or with rubber mallets. I made a couple by adding rubber bouncy balls to screwdrivers.