Cosmic Hand Pans

Cosmic Hand Pans is your complete steel handpan virtual instrument collection.

We’ve partnered with instrument-maker Grahm Doe of Hapi Drum to capture a classic D minor handpan in exquisite detail, as well as a pair of unusual hybrids that each have an utterly unique sonic flavor you won’t hear anywhere else. The traditional handpan has a distinctively dark, warm, mellow tone, with a ghostly and ethereal resonance rich with harmonic overtones. We recorded it with fingerpads and fingertips, as well as small soft rubber mallets and jazz brushes to give you plenty of sonic options.

Next we sampled two unique specimens resulting from Grahm’s quest to meld steel hand pans and tongue drums into a unified instrument. The first mutation is a Prototype fusion of a standard tongue drum and a handpan resonator face that was the first step on his blow-torch and pneumatic-hammer driven journey. It has a brash, plucky steel drum quality with intense and chaotic overtones. The durable steel tongues allow for much more aggressive articulations, including soft and hard rubber mallets and metal rods.

The second oddity is his signature Hybrid Handpan, a well-balanced and precisely- engineered instrument with standard handpan finger dimples on its face, tuned to match playable tongue drum tines on its belly. Each side has a distinct character that compliments the other. We recorded soft rubber finger mallets and sustaining finger rolls on the handpan face, as well as superball and giant rubber mallets on the tongues. With our intuitive multi-layered modular UI, you’ll enjoy complete freedom to mix, layer, retune and customize each sound to your heart’s content.

This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.