Off-topic but interesting: At Musikmesse 2016, drummer and inventor Deniz Gungor is demonstrating the Aquadrum – a tongue drum that’s designed to be easily retunable to different scales or tunings.
According to Gungor, the Aquadrum builds on the original idea of Dennis Havlena’s propane tank drum (steel tongue-drum), adding the ability to retune the drum as needed, using patented tuning magnets.
Here’s a video demo by Gungor:
The Aquadrum tunable percussion instrument is available for 399€.
via sos
Anyone have one of these? Looks like an interesting alternative to a handpan.
hmm. i don`t agree. this sounds like a mixture of a kalimba with a big marimba. it has to much attack on the sound. the handpan sounds a lot softer. i think if you want to achieve this with this one here you will need gloves…..
I have a HAPI Drum Origin (http://hapidrum.com/), one of the earlier incarnations of this idea. The attack really isn’t as pointed as a kalimba or marimba, but it’s not as soft as a Hang either. Overall it does have a very nice sound though, and feels great to play. You never really play one note, sympathetic vibrations pull in pretty much the whole instrument and you can mute parts of it, etc.
I see Hapi is making actual handpans now… I may have to check that out 😀
Now THAT’s how you make a product demo video!
Except it doesn’t show the thing that’s supposed to set it apart from similar instruments: retuning. Or maybe I just missed it.
I don’t see him going up the scale with his hands all I see is him hitting it but no way in telling where that up and down scale sound melody is coming from seems like a recorded melody background….