The hang is a musical instrument in the idiophone class where this hang is denoted as hang drum, but the creators of this musical instrument considered it as a misnomer. The hang drum instrument is created from two half-shells of the nitride steel sheet and deep drawn these both sheets are glued together at the rim leaving the hollow inside and making the form of a convex lens. The top surface of the device has a center memorandum of “ding” hammered into it and at the center part of the instrument 7 or 8 tone fields are hammered all around. The bottom side of the instrument is an even surface that has spin hole in the center with the “Gu” tuned note where the sound is formed when the edge is struck.
The hang is not a membranophone where there number of reasons why the hang drum instrument is not suitable for the hang. As from the systematic point of view this instrument does not belongs to the category of the drums called membranophone. Because the sounds produced by the membranophones are originated from the vibrating stretched membranes. However the sound from this hang drum comes from the gong or steel pan, in which the sound is originated from the metal structures created through stretching, compacting, compression and deformation.
Different types of handpans/hang drums
In general there are two types of hang drums are available in the market where each of the instrument produces the different sound effects and can be operated differently.
- Handpans – These instruments usually have the dimple in the middle of each note and generally have Gu (hole at the bottom side) of the instrument. The handpans instrument have anywhere between the 7 to 12 notes although the 9 note is a most common one in the handpans.
- Tongue drums – The tongue drums are technically as same as like the handpans instrument rather than having the dimples for each note the tongue drum has a cut into each note in the shape of tongue. The maker can tune the tongues by adding the weights to the tongues or by varying the length of the each notes cut. Generally the tongues instruments are less expensive compared to the hang drum and also come in lot of different sizes, designs and shapes.
These hang drums are used for making different sound effects than the drums providing the sound moreover this instrument is easy to use and it is available at different sound notes where you will be getting a soft and warmer sound effect when playing this instrument. This instrument is played by using your hands and fingers where there is no need of using the drum sticks for playing the sound.