I just stumbled accross these relativly new metal percussion instruments. besides of beeing discovered by yogis, these seem to have vast possibilities of different expressions and tonalities. must be fun to combine them with electronics and effects. Is anyone experimenting with these?
here is an example of combining a rav vast with beatboxing
Ahhaah that’s THE polemic instrument among musicians.
I won’t launch a debate though 
why polemic?
Mmmmhhh. You want me to launch the debate.
Let’s say that you have musicians who practice an instrument for years struggling to make a living. That’s the background scene.
Then you have people who practice music since 15 mn who claim being musicians and channel energy from above who steal the deal.
At last you have everybody around musicians telling them for 20 years about this new instrument they should discover.
I’ve been myself busking with a hang player for quite some time. Even him was kind of gutted to see people giving coins in his hat when he was not playing, 10m away to smoke a cigarette. For sure people love that sound.
I’ve seen it played well but i’ve heard wayyyy too much about it for what it is honestly. A bit like if someone was telling you how genius and wonderful is a tom a drumkit or the left knob of a synth. I think it can be a nice sound in a percussion set but very limited to start a music career 
Amplifying it is not the simplest thing: due to the shape, notes are apart, you’d need overheads-like mics to do proper and the hang players are usually pretty busy learning what a scale is to bother about sound engineering techniques.
Secondly, the attack is not very neat and it might be a problem to sample/mangle it.
The best would be to play with sticks or to have an electric version with midi or a piezo per note. I’ve seen different iterations like that over the course of the last years since that instrument is highly overpriced (some from PanArt were going on black market for 10k € due to a long waiting list) when you know steel drums exist …
Also it is one of these instruments you can’t tune yourself.
If you like the sound you have many apps reproducing it well (a bit of tweaking on a synth and you also can get similar results).
Here is the first guy i think i heard playing it: https://youtu.be/deiviXjkshg
The RAV Vast is a metallophone. You can look at what people are doing with other metallophones and electronic effects, to get ideas for what might be possible, if you can’t find videos specifically for effects and the RAV Vast.
I’ve been looking at another metallophone recently as a source for electronic effects, the Kalimba. There is a lot of activity right now with people using Kalimbas with electronic effects, you will have no problem finding videos for that. Here’s a few:
Maybe I’m misreading some of the above, but that seems incredibly dismissive of what’s a rather lovely instrument… and I can’t say I’ve seen this argument about it, but it sounds an awful lot like the people at my music school who sneered at the fact that I also played electric bass, or the guitarists and pianists I’ve known who have sneered at the fact that I play synths - and hell, the people who play keys sneering at someone using a sequencer. We should be beyond the belief that an instrument that is easy to play is somehow inferior to one that isn’t, especially here of all places. I hope that isn’t what is being said here. I can see where that would be off putting to someone who is busking with an instrument that isn’t so simple to just pick up and play, but that debate is one that is not remotely unique to any one single instrument.
Anyways.
We have one, my wife picked one up a while back. Yes, it’s a limited scale tonal percussion instrument. It is a quite different sound than the hang drum and the steel drum. Sure, you could probably approximate it with a synth or samples, but show me an instrument you can’t do that with.
From what I can tell, the major “problem” with it is that it’s a fixed scale. It can be very expressive, via making use of harmonics as well as the incredibly dynamic and tactile nature of it. a fixed scale does limit the musical keys you can play in a bit. Some of the rav vast scales, like the RUS, make some interesting compromises to allow for a bit more flexibility.
The attack is as good as you make it. I was playing one through an instruo arbhar earlier and it sounded quite nice - it did not require a complex mic setup. I’ll try to post some tomorrow as I’m off to sleep at the moment - it is definitely a similar friend to electronic music as the kalimba, just much larger and with a sound unlike what I’ve heard in any other instrument… one I much prefer to the hand pan / hang drum.
Tuning should be a non issue due to the tongue design unless you somehow shave off mass or severely deform it.
They are incredible sounding in real life, recording doesn’t do it justice.
It’s impossible to pick one up and make it sound bad, which leads to a lot of the “meditative” use of it. This makes it a god music therapy instrument as well. That isn’t a bad quality, in my opinion.
I’ve definitely seen some really odd stuff like people posing with them in extreme yoga poses - cool if that’s your thing I guess, but I think that may be the sort of thing that has caused some to dismiss it. Put all that aside and what you really have is a truly unique sound in a fun and easy to play package, and I think there’s a lot of potential to work it into electronic music. I plan on experimenting with it more.
The 800-ish USD they go for is quite reasonable for what they are in my opinion- I’ve seen plenty worse instruments at the price point.
I like this one https://youtu.be/kO8YpA6ZeZo
Check also Facebook here you can find Richard Devine using one Azzam Bells - Home | Facebook
This is exactly what I meant.
I was kinda astonished about the „controversy“ mentioned above and wondered if someone like evelyn glennie would ever complain about an instrument thats „too easy“ to play and drawing more people into making music 
What I was thinking about, getting these new (well one to two decades old) acoustic instruments out of their esoteric image and combining them with contact mics, headphone loudspeakers, solenoids, loopers, wha-pedals, soma pipe, strega effects etc.
That’s what I’ve been doing!!! Messing with a Hokema Sansula and a Hokema Kalimba B17 running through a Mercury7 and a Eventide Timefactor and LOVING it.
There’s plenty of cool ways to play these and running them amplified while drumming on the tight end of the tines can emulate that hang/RAV drum sound (somewhat).
I looked into buying a RAV Drum, but somehow it seems just that little bit too limiting for the price point (though let me add: RAV Drums are extremely good value for money in the world of hang drums).
I eventually want to incorporate the amplified and effected Sansula/Kalimba into my live setup, it can really create phenomenal soundscapes (especially the Sansula!)
Paging @Wuola, he makes beautiful music with handpans, other instruments, and electronics:
Ha, I really wanted to get one of those Lottie Canto Colour Palette electric kalimbas. The last batch sold out in 1 minute, with like 4000 people on the mailing list 
that sounds interesting. Do you have any videos or recordings, you can share?
well I think a kalimba is relativly limited in the amount of different expressions, noises and overlaying soundwaves it can produce, compared to a rav vast or handpan. These are some kind of acoustic synthesizers, which seem to be more versatile. Or am I wrong?
I’d recommend checking out the Portico Quartet for hang pan meets jazz meets electronic: that’s how I first heard these kind of instruments many years ago. Love 'em!
I haven’t been able to afford a proper one (the good ones are so pricey and the little cheap variants sound a bit rough) but having recently got into sample instruments, I found some great versions to use in Kontakt, from 8dio in particular. I used a couple on this score (skip to 1.05 for the pans) alongside heavier electronic stuff.
I have a lot of music with those instruments.
Some vids on my youtube channel 
if limitation is a problem , get a roland hp-20
Thanks @spikysimon!
Yes, I’ve been playing the handpan for ten years now and combining it with electronics in many ways. There’s one jam video on Youtube where I play the handpan with Ableton and some synths.
Last two years I’ve been experimenting with an Octatrack-based setup. I’m thinking about focusing my next album around Octatrack and handpan.
Btw it’s quite hilarious how some people think handpans are somehow more limited instruments because they have often only 8-10 notes. (Not even mentioning there are crazy mutant handpan instruments these days that have up to 22 notes.) I mean, there are some very serious and talented people who focus their careers around tambourine/frame drum, but no one ever questions their instrumental depth or expressivity… It’s truly impressive what some people can do with a riq or tamburello!
I understand that it pisses some people off to see that handpans tend to draw people around them regardless of what you do with them… but isn’t that the same Elektron’s boxes do? Premade loops become magically more interesting when they are played on an Octatrack, just like silly digital farts sound better from a Monomachine. Who cares. Music is music! 
Hi,
I’m already playing with Rav Vast and different gear for some time. Now I’m looking for good microphone or pick up. My tascam dr05x is catching to much of everything instead of rav only.
I’m at the beginning of the journey (with Rav) so I do not have many examples, but here you can find what I have:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKH0kjAFnbw/?igshid=1q71r2g0bflyn
Cheers
Seb
for some decent and flexible professional recordings Id recomend an akg c414 xls, a stereo pair for stereo recordings if possible. you can choose between five different recording patterns with different bass responses. very linear sound, extremely low noise. Its a studio standard and akg sells them relativly cheap at the moment (1500 a pair instead of 2500).
I say if someone can use a coffee can and make music that people appreciate, well, more power to them. Less debate, more play.