ToneWright Get the app

Songs on the handpan

Nine of the hundred, and that number has two halves. Eighty-one melodies the steel cannot play at all, because a handpan is not tuned to a scale you choose - it is tuned to one scale, permanently. Ten more it can play perfectly well, and is not asked to.

What this instrument has got

10 notes, B2 to B4 - a reach of 24 semitones, built from 6 pitch letters: B F# A C# D E. Everything below follows from that row.

  1. B2
  2. F#3
  3. A3
  4. B3
  5. C#4
  6. D4
  7. E4
  8. F#4
  9. A4
  10. B4

What it is actually taught from

20 pieces written for this instrument, before the catalogue is opened at all

The hundred melodies below are what a handpan can borrow. They are not what it is mainly taught from: its shelf opens with music written for it, and the borrowed tunes come after.

Meditative patterns 7

Three beats, a circular arpeggio, no accents anywhere, and the ring of one note meeting the attack of the next. This is the music people put a handpan on for, and none of it is a tune from the catalogue.

  • Spiral 66 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 13.6s
  • Tide 69 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 10.4s
  • Wave 72 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 15s
  • Open Hands 66 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 13.6s
  • Breath 72 bpm · 6 beats a bar · 20s
  • Bloom 63 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 11.4s
  • Still Water 69 bpm · 3 beats a bar · 31.3s

Grooves 13

The other half of the pan world: technique first, then the dance rhythms a player learns after it - four on the floor, tresillo, maqsoum, a backbeat.

  • Ding on One 76 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 12.6s
  • Ding and Tak 80 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 12s
  • Zig-Zag Walk 72 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 13.3s
  • Circle 80 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 12s
  • Six Beats 108 bpm · 6 beats a bar · 13.3s
  • Steady Four 76 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 12.6s
  • Three Against Two 100 bpm · 6 beats a bar · 14.4s
  • Ghost Hand 84 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 11.4s
  • Ghost Hand in Six 104 bpm · 6 beats a bar · 13.8s
  • Tresillo 92 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 10.4s
  • Maqsoum 96 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 10s
  • Pan Rock 84 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 11.4s
  • Groove and Fill 84 bpm · 4 beats a bar · 11.4s

Why 9, and not 100

This is a B Celtic minor pan: a ding at B2 and nine tone fields around it, and between them just six pitch letters - B, C♯, D, E, F♯, A. There is no G anywhere on the instrument, and there is no way to add one. On a steel pan, tuning is hammered into the metal.

That is why the refusals are almost never about size: only four songs are too wide for it, while seventy-seven fit the span perfectly and still cannot be played. They ask for a note the pan does not have.

The last ten are our doing, and they are worth explaining. A pan is nine or ten notes inside about an octave, so the only melodies narrow enough to fit it are the narrowest ones written - which means children’s songs. Left alone, the shelf sorted itself into a nursery: Twinkle, Pop Goes the Weasel, London Bridge, Row Row Row Your Boat. Nobody chose that. The filter did.

They are not wrong in the ear. A nursery rhyme lands in the pan’s own key and sounds perfectly sweet on it. What they are wrong about is the instrument: the makers of this tuning describe it as one for lullabies and sad songs, and a repertoire headed by Pop Goes the Weasel says toy. So the pan keeps the modal and the mournful - Amazing Grace, Auld Lang Syne, Arirang, The Skye Boat Song, Ye Banks and Braes - and hands the rhymes back to the piano, where every one of them still lives.

And melody is not what a handpan is for anyway. The music this instrument is actually known for is the hour-long calm recording, which is neither a tune nor a cover: it is a meditative pattern, a slow circular arpeggio in three, played without accents. The pan has its own lessons for that - seven of them - and thirteen grooves besides, all written as field positions rather than pitches so they play on every tuning. None of them is counted on this page, because none of them is a song.

Counted: 4 songs are wider than the instrument, and 77 fit the span and are still refused, because somewhere in them is a note this instrument has not got. A further 10 could be played and are not offered - that pile is a choice, not a tuning, and the paragraphs above say who made it.

Where the tunes sit

Of the 9 it plays, 0 are taught at written pitch , 2 move a whole octave - same note names, different register , and 7 change key altogether, which is what a player does when they pick up an instrument tuned to something other than C .

Play the handpan in your browser →

Easy 6

Medium 2

Hard 1

The same catalogue, other instruments

One song list, nine instruments, and every one of them meets it differently.