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Handpan tips - the slap

September 28, 2022 2 min read

In this blog series, we will highlight different techniques to help you find ideas and improve your skill. To help you, we collected some of the most interesting videos to make your approach and learning as easy as possible.

The slap is the sound obtained when hitting the area between tone fields. You can do it on the shoulder ring and on the rim. Each one will produce a different kind of percussive slap sound.

Where to do the slap

The slap on the rim that we can call outter slap really sounds great  and impactful if well done and produces a very percussive thick slap. The percussive slap on the shoulder ring that we can call inner slap is less powerful but gives more possibilities and percussive varieties. However, the location of the slap depends on the idea you have in mind. There are not best practices regarding the location.

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The slap technique is a great way to make your composition more groovy. Adding a slap on your melody brings more complexity to your music and makes it more exciting to play. 

handpan-slap-technic

To learn how to play the slap here is a good video from the channel David KuckhermannI invite you to have a look a this channel as there often some free lesson updates that really help and bring value to your handpan playing practice. 

Example of slap performance

Here is a classic video of "Sam Maher" that many of us have already seen many times. This video is a great example of how to use effectively the slap technique to give some groove to our music. Big up to Sam Mayer for this great performance. 

alexandre zunino
alexandre zunino



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