hangforum.com - The Archive

I would say that you might take your own advice, that is not to take things said here personally.

=)

No-one here is attacking you or your words, they are just sparking interesting conversations.

For instance there are steel pans that are marketed as 'Meditation Pans' that are pentatonic and can diverge slightly from what you might consider what a Steel Pan sounds like:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MoqpCQ79nLE

There is also the steel pan based Caisa that has a sound that can be very unlike what one expects a steel pan to sound like:
http://vimeo.com/1736063

The point being that there are many paths out there that may appeal to those waiting for a Hang.

The Eclipse from 1tone seems very over priced to me.

The web site is way cool though.

It's just that the tongues sound out of tune in an unintentional way.

Cheers.

interesting conversations indeed.

there are no attacks here..... it's all in the friendly game of knowledge and opinions. text can be interpreted in many ways .. especially in a multicultural forum like this.

so back on topic

... i love the website and i think that the scales on offer are nice too.. i still can't love the steel tongue vessels though because of the dischordant sounds that come from the body of the instrument... even when the tongues are tuned well there is a residual resonance that comes from the 'untuned' body that really irks me.... and i think the price is ridiculous..

sorry for misunderstanding again

cheers!

Because there were several praises of the website, here a contradicting opinion:

From a web publishing point of view, the website is quite bad. You can navigate the site only by catching this flying balls. And without catching the single balls you don't know the contentof the pages. For a computer game this might be quite pretty and funny. But for an information or advertising site it is deadly. If there wasn't my strong interest to understand, what derio was talking about, I never had open any page. The site is also not convenient to blind or otherwise handicapt people. Other disatvantages are: The browser's navigation tools don't work at this site; you cannot link single pages of the website.

This site is like a house that looks funny and cool, but nobody want to live in because the basic functions of a house are'nt provided (for example the floors are not horizontal but have 20°. The hight of the rooms is under 2 meters.)

Ix

You caught me in a white lie. I didn't say it was a good website I said it was a beautiful one (I was trying to be nice).

It does suffer from many issues that are wonderfully called out at this website:

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

The main one I saw first was Mystery Meat Navigation:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mystery ... ation.html

But there are others:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/top-30- ... takes.html

haha, yes - got to agree with Ix here the website is certainly interesting but very poor from a usability perspective. I tend to shy away from full flash sites (though they seem to be back in fashion right now) for reasons Ix already mentioned. In addition I feel that on the web, which is a medium lacking in the kind of history that gives its content authority instantly a flash site can suffer because often it replaces commonly understood standards both in presentation and user interface. This will often lead to something which might be aesthetically very pleasing but 'feels' wrong. There is something weighty about html rendered text, for me it is a gut level feeling.

Meditation steel pans look like great fun! Any information on reputable manufacturers? What sort of price? My searches so far reveal a cost of anything from $1500 to £300 so for something labelled a meditation pan, but will all of these be the hand played pans I see in the video posted above? Any info much appreciated.

Hi guys

i found this video on you-tube , some dude playing on the eclipse drum
(come open minded )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLsLMu0yOq0
i found it really cool instrument by it self,
and for those who compere it to a hang drum,in some way it gives that eclipse a nice small compliment just by the "being compered to" the hang drum

Hello,
my name is Anton Koren, i am the founder of 1TONE drums.
i usually do not read or reply to all the stuff being written about our drums but this time i just had to register here to explain something to dear mr.Funky..
when making a musical instrument we (the makers ) try to find the best sound for a specific note- the best tone.
the tone is influenced by many parts of the instrument and proper tuning. for example the material of the instrument, the right size of the sound box.the right shape, proportion and placement of the vibrating parts- in our case the drums tongues.
the tuning process is the trickiest one, in one word- OVERTONES.
sorry for mentioning the hang drum to compare, but..what people ( or their ears ) love the most about the sound of the great hang drum is the harmonically tuned overtones. each fundamental note produces its own octave and its fifth notes, we actually hear three notes being played in each strike. when these three are combined ( produced together ) the sound of the main ( fundamental ) note changes its form, physically, and it sounds like it does. until now proper tuning of two overtones to the fundamental was achieved only with a steel drum/hang drum.please notice that we are talking here about a different kind of musical instrument.
in our Eclipse drum we also tune overtones to each note ( but only one, not two), by hammering. it is a bit hard to see, but you can hear it and feel it while playing. the physical form of a certain sound wave doesn't look at all similar to the ones other (simpler) metal tongue drums produce.
besides the tongues, there is also the center dome that we tune to the scale, also by hand, and it also has tuned overtones.

so..it does require a great deal time, knowledge and years of experience to make a good steel tongue drum.
your judgment for steel tongue drums is based on D.Havellna's gas/propane tank drum, which is very simple to make in its basic form that it has. but you should expect that someone will take this instrument a few levels higher, shouldn't you?

Hallo Anton,

your comment of the nature of the Hangsound (see quote) is totally wrong.
If you strike a Hang you could hear not only the note you play (with the tuned overtones). The notes on the Hang are not isolated.
You could hear the whole Hang singing. We speak about integration and not isolation of tones.
This is a very big difference between tongue drums and Hang. (only one of many, but important).
To compare a tongue with a Hang is like to compare apples and oranges.
On a Tongue Drum the notes are isolatet. A lot of instruments work with isolatet notes. For example xylophone.
I am sure, that your Tongue also produce Overtones. Any sound has these overtones.
It is also easy to see, that from all the Tongues on the market a few are more refined as other. But the physik of sound production is relative simple.

Greetings
Frank

hi Frank,
you are right about apples and oranges
the note's isolation is a big issue in lots of musical instruments. in the hang drum ( as far as i know ) the notes ARE intentionally separated or isolated by the angle you have between the notes oval "zone" and the bodies curve. you can find out more about it in books regarding building steel pans.
of course, in the hang drum the notes effect each other by vibration like in most instruments. for example if you hit the D note, it will vibrate all the other D notes ( regardless of octave ) and the A note ( produced by the D's fifth overtone ). it will also be empowered by the F# note ( D's third ) if the instrument has one, and so on...
but.. if you block all or some of the notes with a hand (or many hands), your single note will sound pretty much the same.
when you play together- it sings, the faster you play, the stronger you hear "the singing" am i wrong?
there is another issue of air pressure that exists in the hang drum. being a Helmholtz resonator, the hangs whole body is tuned to a one fundamental low note ( your gu ). this bass note also helps this "singing" effect. tongue drums cannot have this quality because of the way they are built. in the tongue drums, the tongues are NOT isolated from each other,
in the contrary, you have to invest a lot of planning to avoid the notes from "leaking" one to another.
the tuned overtones, by the way, help in this departure.
regards,
Anton Koren

Hi Anton,

By the way. To call the Hang a drum is an mistake. If you read the publications from Panart on the Hangblog you could read direct from the makers: "We dont make Hangdrums".

Yes, on the steelpan the notes are also separated. To compare a steelpan with the Hang is also a little bit like comparing apples and oranges.
Think about the name of the new Hang. Integral Hang or Free Integral Hang.
Integral means integration. Not isolation.
I know a lot of about this topic direct from Felix Rohner. He explained me the difference between the isolation on steelpans and other instruments and the integration of the notes on the Hang.
Panart dont isolate the notes on the Hang. Panart leave the steelpan way a long time ago.

Greetings
Frank

Hi Derio and I everybody
I've just arrived on this forum.
I write because I'd like to listen to somebody who made this experience before me.
I'd like to buy an eclipse or a hapi, and I would like some information if somebody knows
Did you buy the eclipse? And in this case, are you satisfied of it?
Did you pay a lot of money in inner taxes?
Thanks Derio and everybody, I hope to have my instrument soon
cheers
Licia