Handpan
Handpan is a term for a group of musical instruments that are classified as a subset of the steelpan. Several handpan makers and brands have emerged in recent years, resulting from a growing worldwide interest in the Hang, which is an instrument developed by the company PANArt that is based on the physical properties of the Trinidadian steelpan, Indian ghatam, Thai gong and Indonesian Gamelan etc. The basic form of a handpan consists of two metal half-shells glued together, a centre tone field (named Ding) surrounded by a circle of at least seven tone fields on the upper side and an opening in the bottom side (named Gu). Differences between manufacturers include the used materials, the manufacturing processes of the raw forms, the shaping of the tone fields and the tuning methods. History The term handpan first appeared online in the autumn of 2007 on the website of an American steelpan producer Pantheon Steel. It was used to describe its own development of a new instrument that was launched as an alternative to the Hang. Consequently, the term found its way into discussions in the now-defunct Hang-Music Forum on the Internet. The successor of this forum was founded in 2009