Handpan instrument and/or soundfont (Musescore 4)

• May 6, 2024 - 00:37

Hi, everyone!

Does anybody know, how i can put handpan (with its special sound and musical range) in my scores?
There is no handpan in the list of instruments.

If no, where i can get samples of its sounds, or record them from real handpan and then put my samples into musescore as a new instrument?

My purpose is to create scores with several instruments including handpan (and it's fine with other ones),


Comments

I think that "handpan" is another name for "steel drum". You might try that and see if it's the right sound (at least close to the right sound :-)

In reply to by TheHutch

well...
First and foremost, thank you very much for your advice!
Unfortunately, the timbre/tone color of that steel drum and its neighboors within percussion group (soprano/tenor/bass/guitar/cello steel drums) don't have the sound as deep and saturated/rich as necessary. It's like if I replaced a flute with an okarina))
I need either the separate instrument here in musescore or samples of handpan sounds or (in future) even a complete record of the whole musical track in a recording studio combined and mixed with other instruments...

In reply to by bobjp

Hunh! So a "hand pan" is physically similar to "steel drums" (which are often called "pan" by players), but (guessing?) played by tapping (or otherwise touching) with the hand?

If so, I would have guessed the the damping caused by the contact with soft skin before and after the impact of hard tissue would make such an instrument's tone less deep and saturated rather than more so.

Or perhaps I don't understand the difference at all :-) Definitely not a family of instruments I've ever had anything to do with. Only read/heard about them.

[A few minutes later] I took a look on YouTube and listened to both steel drum and hand pan (which I have always known by their sometimes other name of "tongue drum" [?]. Still never had anything to do with them :-) The sound difference is fairly subtle. I'm not sure I would use the phrase "don't have the sound as deep and saturated/rich" to describe that difference. I definitely disagree with comparing the difference to that of flute versus ocarina, though I'm not sure how I would describe the difference. :-)

Nonetheless, if you feel you need a handpan sound, then you need it. *shrug* I would guess that you could probably use a handpan at a music store and set up a recorder in one of their practice rooms (obviously, find a music store that also teaches lessons in-house) and get a good sample of the sound that way. I don't know what's involved with that aspect of the work.

In reply to by Optimus28

I still think it sounds very similar to steel drum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaNjXwElAUE. Not identical, no, but very similar. :-) That said ...

You can't do any recording using musescore.

I don't know what's involved with creating a soundfont, but I would certainly assume you would need many recordings of a hand pan playing each note in its range, probably many times each. I think you said that there are multiple handpans with different ranges? If that's so, you'd probably need the same set of recordings for each different range of handpan.

As I said though, I don't know anything about creating a soundfont, so I could be completely incorrect there.

In reply to by TheHutch

now i see, what you mean)

imho, they sound pretty different, because, "my" handpan is made of two parts and players tap with hands, just as you mentioned above!

the steel drum on your link sounds really brighter

assume the only way now to get that very dark and "vaccuming" sound of handpan is just to separate each instrument, save them as wav or flac or any and then add my own playing , then mix them properly

i may save steel drum in my scores in musescore only to show other people the common idea
that's why the complete song will sound differently in the editor and in the wav file

yes, there are multiple pans with different ranges, i know about that with d-moll (Dm): D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D notes, so it has 8 places to tap, each for separate note
together with guitar both players can create a wonderful song in d-moll
just recently i found on youtube a video just with handpan and guitar, it was magnificent)

apparently, I received the answer on my question here...

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