The musician is playing Panart Hang in Oslo. The Hang is made from two deep drawn, nitrided steel sheets that are attached together creating the recognizable ‘UFO shape’. There is nothing inside the Hang but air. The top (“Ding”) side has a center ‘note’ hammered into it with seven or eight ‘tone fields’ hammered around it. The bottom (“Gu”) is a simpler surface that has a rolled hole in the center with a tuned note that can be created when the rim is struck.
The Hang uses some of the same physical principles as a steelpan but with a nitrided surface and structural change of having two clamped shells with a small opening so that the instrument is a Helmholtz resonator.Â
The Hang is sometimes referred to as a hang drum. The ‘drum’ label, however, is discouraged by PANArt: “Treating it as a drum and promoting the name Hang Drum, for instance, has created a ripple effect of misinformation that leads to damaged Hang, physical injury, and mental and emotional turbulence.”
The Hang is typically played resting on the player’s lap. The Hang is generally played with the hands and fingers instead of mallets. This lighter playing tends to produce a complex overtone-rich sound that could be considered ‘softer’ and ‘warmer’ than the ‘bright’ sound of a mallet based traditional steelpan.
