I've been debating for a while if I should get myself a handpan. Ultimately I decided I couldn't really afford an instrument that expensive, so I decided to compromise on a hank or tongue drum, specifically a hapi drum, because the videos made them sound very good and they were extremely less expensive. I chose the Akebono G scale to go with one of my more common koto scales.

It came in the mail today. Here are my poor attempts at playing it. I don't know why the sound is so quiet. It's fairly loud in person. I used my cheap video camera to record it.



I'm not very good at the technique of "touching it like it's hot." It actually goes against most of my taiko training which is "play into the drum" so when I get fast I tend to deaden the sound. I also don't quite have a good feel for the scale yet, so even when I play with the mallets it's a bit aimless. I also played around with my looper, gave myself a koto background to play against. Mostly my koto playing is still too unsteady to really show that off yet. In my next life I want to make music with myself and post it on youtube. Cello, voice, koto, hapi drum!

Oh and it comes with an audio jack, that I'll have to play with sometime. Maybe that would help the sound be a bit more even.