SonicCouture Pan Drum MULTiFORMAT DVDR (repost)

Soniccouture's quest for the exotic, the unique, the esoteric, and the downright weird and quirky, brings us to our latest obsession, the Hang. You may not have heard of the Hang - it's a relatively new instrument and it's extremely hard to get hold of one. First invented in the year 2000 by PANArt, they are hand-built in Switzerland by two very dedicated people, Felix and Sabina. If you want one, you must ask them if they will build you one. If they agree, then you may have to wait up to 2 years.

The Hang is played with the hands. Everyone who gets to play one falls in love with it a little bit. It's incredibly sensitive and dynamic - the entire disc resonates at a central frequency as your hands move around the edge teasing the notes out.

Two Different Drums
There are two types of Hang, the Mk1 and Mk2. The Mk 1 had 8 notes around the Ding. These were available in 45 different tunings, and PANArt produced nearly 4000 of them. The Mk 2 is basically the same shape but has a brass coating on the top as well as around the rim. The Mk 2 comes in only five different tunings and has only seven notes around the Ding. It is a more sturdy design, stays in tune better over time, and has a slightly longer and purer ring. We have recorded an example of each Hang for this sampled instrument.

The Sampled Instruments
The Soniccouture Pan Drum Instruments feature over 1000 samples per drum, with up to 21 velocity layers. The Hang drums have been sampled in 6 different areas (Gu, Ding, Outer Ding, Tone-field Centre, Tone-Field Edge, and in-between the Tone-field). Each area was sampled being played with Finger, Slap and knuckle, which is triggered by key-switches. Each hit has up to 3 alternate round-robin versions, to ensure there is no 'machine-gun' effect.

We have presented our Hang Drums in their original keys. This can be quickly transposed using the drop-down menu on the front panel of the instruments. There is also a full chromatic mapping included, as well as a choice of different key-mappings to suit different playing styles.

The KSP Jammer
Built into each Soniccouture Pan Drum Instrument is the Pan Jammer script - a generative pattern sequencer. This fantastic real-time peformance tool randomly builds on the notes you play to create organic, evolving sequences from the Hang. The acompanying Tweak page means you can Jam and create soundscapes using the delays, filters and reverbs built into each instrument. This is only available in Kontakt, although there is a reduced version of it in Ableton Live.

Soniccouture Pan Drum is a unique and evocative sampled instrument that will bring indefinable atmosphere to all kinds of music production, from Film scores to IDM to Song-Writing to Trance to World Music, there is no genre that can't be touched by Pan Drum.