Sounds good to me ..

[dieseltaylor]

Hang Drums

sound like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Bz-b6J-10

and Wiki tells you all about their recent invention and technical side

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_%28musical_instrument%29

play one on-line

http://www.hangfan.co.uk/play-the-virtual-hang-drum-ehang.php

how to build one

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Hank-Drum/

and the Smoky Mt version

Another neat instrument

[Merkin Muffley]

I almost bought one when I was in Vietnam, but thought it was probably too many dang Dong.

[dieseltaylor]

: ) Nice one.

[Michael Emrys]

Not bad. Strangely enough, since I have a long-term interest in Asian percussion instruments, I have never encountered hang drums before. They sound a little like Jamaican steel drums, but have a mellower sound because they are struck by hands instead of metal hammers. I like.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Possibly because they are Swiss : )

Also the inventors call them simply Hang .....

March 2009, page 66

Panel A

A cousin of the Caribbean steel pan, the hang (pronounced “hung”) is a percussion instrument whose tuned notes are struck by a performer’s hands. The hang, made by PANArt in Bern, Switzerland, has a devoted following. Its name means “hand” in the local Bernese dialect. If you have yet to hear the instrument’s sound, you should go to YouTube, search for “hang drum,” and enjoy a few performances by amateur and professional musicians. PANArt has a long history of making steel instruments and pioneered a nitriding technique for hardening the steel that it uses in its drums. The inspiration for the hang came when a percussionist looking for new sounds visited the drum builders at PANArt. The builders realized they could put two pan-like shells together to create a steel instrument that could be held in a musician’s lap and played by hand. After further development, they created a new instrument with a full, resonant sound. But the hang is not solely of musical interest; it offers a wealth of interesting physics that makes for rich acoustical study.

The hang, like the steel pan, has individually tuned notes embedded into the surface of the steel out of which it is constructed. Most hang drums have eight or nine notes arranged in a circle around the top of the flying-saucer-like shape of the instrument. Some of the notes are visible in panel a of the figure. In the center of the drum is the lowest note of the instrument, usually an octave below the lowest of the circumferential notes. Striking that center note excites a deep Helmholtz-like cavity resonance whose pitch can be adjusted by having the performer change the spacing between his or her knees.

When struck with the hand, each note area of the hang vibrates in a rich complement of modes. In particular, the three lowest-frequency modes—the fundamental and the second and third harmonics—are all strongly excited. The frequencies of those modes are in the ratio of 1:2:3, and that harmonic relation leads to an interesting effect: Striking one note can cause another note to vibrate. The waves created when the hang is struck are not confined to a single note area. Rather, they initially propagate outward through the steel of the instrument and are eventually reflected many times off the hang’s boundaries. If any other notes have resonances at frequencies near those in the spectrum of the struck note, as is often the case, then modes of the other notes will be excited and the hang will vibrate at the corresponding frequencies.