This hanging has attracted the interest of scientists, making it a puzzling PANArt.ch.
There’s something mystical about the Hang. The Swiss-made instrument has become a kind of Holy Grail for tens of thousands of people around the world. In this rare interview, its equally enigmatic makers talk about their unexpected success.
This content was published on May 9, 2014 at 16:30
“Hanging is a virus.” Felix Rohner often likens his and Sabina Scherer’s creation to something infectious. Indeed, he can’t seem to keep his hands off it.
As he chats, he frequently reaches for an oddly shaped iron instrument beside the sofa and bangs it for emphasis.
The sound that echoes through their spacious riverside workshop is similar to that of the Caribbean steelpan that inspired them: the first prototype was made from two surplus steel hemispheres glued together.
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Hung played by Sabina Scherer
This content was published on May 9, 2014
Read more: Hung played by Sabina Scherer
Ronner fell in love with steel pan in 1976 after hearing a Trinidadian band playing on the streets of Bern. “It wasn’t really music, it was a kind of ocean of sound,” he says. Everyone around me was dancing. “I saw the amazing effect it had on people, and the next day I started making pans with steel drums.”
He’d been making steelpans for years, and in the 1990s he partnered with Scherer to find new ways to use sheet metal on the instrument, devising the Hang in 2001. Scherer says the Hang captures “the essence of steelband,” but with a more powerful sound. Unlike the steelpan, the Hang is played with the hands (hang means “hand” in Bernese Swiss German dialect).
At first, people could buy this new instrument in stores, and demand for the unusual-sounding “drums” quickly soared.
But Rohner and Scherer, who trade as PANArt, couldn’t cope: “We realized we couldn’t just work for these orders. We needed time to listen, to develop, to understand what it was all about,” Scherer recalls.
Prisoners, politicians and psychologists
While many might have jumped on the bandwagon, Rohner and Scherer weren’t interested in making money, so they changed how they sold them to reduce demand: People who wanted one had to write a letter. Thousands of letters came in from all over the world.
“Look at this,” Rohner said, pulling out an envelope dated 2009 from a file marked “Unsent.” The sender had written that she was requesting the instrument for her husband, one of America’s most notorious murderers, who is in prison. Inside was a handwritten note from the husband saying that he liked the sound of the instrument.
Politicians (“It’s the sound of Georgia!”), neurologists, prenatal psychologists, and mystics were all in touch: “We received 20,000 letters, all saying the same thing. They told us their stories of the first time they encountered this sound,” says Rohner.
According to Scherer, the intensity of the sound the Hang produces is what draws people in: “There’s so much information, you don’t know where to place it, and you’re like, OK, you’re overwhelmed by it. And then it relaxes you, it lowers your blood pressure. It also has the effect of reducing people’s distress.”
(swissinfo.ch also wrote to PANArt requesting an interview, as no phone number or email address could be found anywhere.)
“The Chosen Ones” and Those Who Seek Opportunity
The creation of the drip-feeding machines has given the instruments and their makers a mystique. They sell for around 2,400 Swiss francs ($2,700) each, and there are long waiting lists; just a few people have shown up at the Hanging Workshop, a converted butcher’s shop in an industrial park along the Aare River in Bern.
A special welcoming area had to be created not only for people coming to pick up their instruments, but also for unwelcome visitors: “They come from all over the place, from Alaska to Taiwan to China, sometimes without a reservation,” says Rohner.
“If they get the news that it’s not going to work out, you can imagine what it means. And some people get irritable, aggressive, upset, or cry all day.”
Filippo Zampieri first heard the sound of a hang on the streets of Venice. He wrote a letter to express his passion for the instrument. When he received a reply, he was asked to further explain his motivation. A few months later, he said he had been “chosen” and drove from Italy to Bern with his parents.
“They told me I had to pick one, and I tried them one by one, touching them, looking for sounds, until I felt something, and obviously I knew this was it,” he said.
He says hanging has become like a part of his body and a way to express his feelings and emotions. “Hanging has changed my life.”
Pan Art
Vibration Student
Because the Hang was produced in such small numbers, it was heavily imitated. Some of the copies resembled the original in shape but not in sound. At this point, it was too late to patent the design of the piece, but the name “Hung” was protected. What was patented was the method of manufacturing the material, steel mixed with nitrogen.
PANArt collaborated with physicists along the way: “We wanted to know how our devices would move and vibrate when you touch them,” Rohner says.
One long-time collaborator is Uwe Hansen, a professor emeritus at Indiana State University with an interest in timbre and structural vibrations, whose input, along with that of another physicist, Thomas Rossing, was instrumental in developing PANArt’s tuning technology.
“Felix does a lot of the science,” Hansen told swissinfo.ch, “he specifies the caliber of steel required, and the hardness and elastic properties of the steel determine what waves can travel over it.”
Additionally, PANArt makes the playing surface very uniform, making it much easier to tune, and heat treating it during manufacturing makes the steel harder, making it easier to stay in tune, he said.
Moving Forward
In the process of perfecting the hangings, they developed a new tool called the Gubal. In their workshop, dozens of the UFO-like objects are lined up on racks. They need to be aged for three months, “like wine.”
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Felix Rohner explains how to make a hang
This content was published on May 9, 2014
Read more: Felix Rohner explains how to make a hang
The Gubal is similar to the Hang, but acoustically, the Gubal has an additional sphere, giving it more volume and bass, and is tunable and has a wider range (40-10,000 Hertz), whereas the Hang does not have a stable pitch.
“This is really a new dimension. It’s like having an orchestra in your lap. There’s no other instrument like this out there,” Rohner says.
One hundred prototypes have been distributed to people to test them, and they will come together at the PANArt hub in May for so-called “Gubal Days” – a time to play together and give feedback to the makers.
“The Gubal has a heart. You play what’s inside you,” explains Ronner. “The Gubal has a body. The hang grabs your body. You leave your body. It’s a passage instrument, you leave your body for a moment. That’s why it resonates so much around the world.”
He acknowledges that while Gubal is “not magic anymore,” he “can still make magical music.”
Twenty-one years later, Rohner and Scherer have learned from the past: They’ve patented the Gubal design and have begun licensing the materials processing process so that companies can make other instruments from the Gubal.
In a recent trademark dispute, the pair reached a settlement with Samsung over the naming of one of its smartphone ringtones “Hand Drum,” after which Samsung agreed to stop producing it.
They have had a falling out in the past; today, PANArt only sells Gubal instruments. A December 2013 website post said that Gubal is no longer manufactured and that the company “will no longer respond to letters or emails.”
“That’s development,” Scherer said. “You have to leave something behind and move on.”
“Hopefully it’s not a virus anymore. Maybe playing the Gubal will cure me of the hangover,” Scherer laughs.
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