Collection: Steel Tongue Drums & Handpans

Steel tongue drums and handpans from SATORI and Groove Masters Percussion, for sound baths, meditation, therapy work and quiet playing.

Both are tuned instruments, and that is the point of them. The notes cut into the steel are chosen from a single scale, so any note played sounds right against any other. Someone who has never touched an instrument can sit down and play something that sounds intentional within a minute, which is why these turn up in wellness rooms, care homes and sensory spaces as often as in music rooms.

A tongue drum has tongues cut into a rounded steel shell and is played with the fingers or with soft mallets. The note is bell-like and rings for several seconds. Sizes here run from a three inch mini through six, eight, ten and twelve inch, in six, eight and eleven note tunings, in carbon and stainless steel.

A handpan is larger and hammered rather than cut, with a central low note surrounded by a ring of tuned fields. The SATORI twenty-two inch handpan comes in copper, silver and brown, and a fourteen inch handpan tongue drum sits between the two families.

Several models are also called rain drums, since a slow roll across the tongues gives a falling, water-like sound rather than a melody.