We are finally taking a sigh of relief after weeks of celebration.
HangOut USA and the Asheville Percussion Festival were absolutely amazing events!!! Huge thank you to Rusty and Imani as well as River and crew for organizing each event!!
During HangOut USA, we finally accomplished a 2 year dream of building the chromatic set of handpans that are in the photo above. The endeavor was actually one of the primary motivations for ever starting to build handpans. Mark joined Peter Levitov and Maxime Le Royer to write a composition on the chromatic set of 6 Saraz and performed it on Friday night of HangOut USA.
The set spanned C#3 – D5 leaving out only Bb4 as a fundamental (although it was represented in 3 places as a harmonic). A huge thank you goes out to each person on the Saraz crew that made this dream a reality! We are looking very forward to building our next prototype chromatic set and continuing the endless exploration of composition possibilities that are opened by two full octaves of western notes.
During our exploration of the chromatic set, we also extended our range of offered notes. As though we don’t currently offer enough scales, we will be adding a few more scales to our list in the near future. First, we will add some scales with a C#3 center. Many of these will be limited to 8 total notes on top because of the size of the C#3 while additional notes can be added to the bottom shell of the instrument. The following instrument confirmed that we are not far from also offering F#3 as a side note.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw_5TNMUNSQ
The chromatic set also included the first Saraz with a Eb3 in the center. Along with a Bb3 on the side, the instrument had two Bb4 harmonics. With the use of internal baffles, we achieved excellent clarity and sustain of each note and harmonic even though this frequency is the hot spot of our chamber impedance. After some additional tests, we will likely open up a number of scales with Eb3 as well. Here is a video of our first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjv1iM1SIUY
Finally, we also recently built the first Saraz with a G#3 in the center. This is the highest note yet in the center of a Saraz built from a rolled shell. We were all particularly excited about this instrument. This hexitonic variation of C# minor was raffled off at HangOut USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmuFM2iKQ6k
Because our waiting list has grown more than big enough, we are no longer accepting requests for instruments until further notice. If you would like to be informed about when we will be accepting requests, please sign up on our mailing list.
After a month of fun and festivities, it’s time to get back to hammering in preparation for HangOut UK!!!
Wishing you all many blessings and endless inspiration,
