Storytelling with a UFO

Published Sep 7, 2023 in Pen & Paper

Oh, what would I do without Beethoven? His 5th symphony has helped my creative juice flow in desperate times.

Music is a powerful tool that can regulate emotions and boost productivity. Studies suggest that music is highly beneficial when it does not have lyrics. And it has been found to improve our performance on cognitive tasks, such as spatial or verbal ability tests, for short periods of time. One fine day while working, I was browsing through music on YouTube and saw a suggestion with a thumbnail of a guy holding a UFO-shaped instrument.

I am glad I clicked that suggestion.

I had experienced something beyond music, something that touched the untouched parts of me. I spent hours listening and discovering more about handpan; the more I indulged, the more it attracted me.

Then I thought, if listening to it is so calm and grounding, how must it feel to play the instrument?

After doing my homework I found the person who crafts handpan in India. Chirag Vaitheeswaran (founder of Chirp Handpans) He helped me understand the basic scales and I decided to start my handpan journey with DKurd10. Okay let me break down handpan anatomy in simple way for you.

Anatomy of handpan

The handpan belongs to the idiophone family, that is any instrument creating sound primarily by the whole instrument vibrating, rather than the strings, air, or membranes.

Kurd is the most popular handpan scale, which you can find almost in every handpan maker’s shop. The scale is often created with a D root note, and the notes go as D as the ding and A-Bb-C-D-E-F-G-A on the tonefield.

With the Kurd, you have all the notes in the D minor scale, which is excellent for creating melodies and playing as you like.

It took ~3 month to craft the handpan, and I literally used to count days, I even started practicing on any surface I found. And finally I got my hands on the pan!!

We are all very well aware of the genius of Hans Zimmer in Interstellar, I was itching to play this song on the handpan, and I did. A viewer in the comment section asked me what goes into my mind when I play this piece. The beauty of this composition is that it takes me back in time, and with every note I strike, it strikes a memory. It was an absolute pleasure to cover this masterpiece on the pan.

And I received lots of love from people.

So is handpan easy to play?

Yes & No

I will take the example of interstellar here, and I have divided the difficulty level into 4 stages -

Hitting the individual notes
Pairing the notes with chords
Adding percussive grooves
Keep garnishing

Yes, it’s true that any note you play on handpan sounds beautiful, and you can never go wrong.

But like handpan has an anatomy, music has its own anatomy, which you arrange to form a composition, and how do you breathe life into a composition?

Through storytelling.

Malte’s compositions make you feel like you are flowing with the wind, and there is a sudden gush of wind which breezes you through a valley of flowers full of butterflies, mountains, and rivers. Sam Maher keeps you on the edge with his dynamic tempo and blend of chord progressions with percussive strikes. Hang massive, a state of trance.

After spending hours listening to handpan I observed patterns in almost every artist’s composition —

Set an expectation
Build Curiosity
Pllot twist
Build tension
Release

Now there s a structure a standard that is defined. Here is where the concept of self expression comes into picture and that is what makes a music sound different or feel different from other. Every individual has their own way of channeling their emotions into music.

Like art, self expression is not and never will restrict you to feel the way the artist wants you to feel. Our brain is tuned to identify patterns and translate the emotions embedded in our own way.

Leaves falling off a tree is poetry. The leaf lets itself flow with the wind, now imagine you are the leaf and the wind is the emotion. In any form of storytelling beauty is when the artist lets the emotions flow without rushing them.

One of the key thumb rules in storytelling is to not rush.

The Japanese concept of Ma relates to all aspects of life.

In storytelling, Ma refers to the use of silence, emptiness, and negative space to create a sense of anticipation and drama. It is the spaces between the words and actions that allow the audience to fill in the gaps and interpret the story in their own way.

Now how do you keep the audience engaged?

Ever wonder why we feel so pumped when we listen to few songs? It’s because us humans are big batteries that emits and absorbs energy. And the act of tension and release in music creates energy which has the power to make us feel like we are the heroes of our life (which in fact we are)

Any composition that builds tension keeps the listener engaged and interested, because on a subconscious level we want to hear how that small bit of tension eventually resolves.

It’s been a wonderful journey so far, there’s so much more to learn and explore with this instrument. As of now I am working on 2 compositions which I will release very soon on few streaming platforms. Meanwhile if you want to listen to things I do on handpan, here’s my YouTube & Instagram.

“Without music life would be a mistake.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

References

https://www.masterthehandpan.com/
https://medium.com/@kiyoshimatsumoto/ma-the-japanese-concept-of-space-and-time-3330c83ded4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5yxIzs5Wug&t=757s
https://www.masterclass.com/classes/hans-zimmer-teaches-film-scoring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnTAS937LRs&t=45s