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Bowls of Music
Cascading music: Handpan maker Ketut Suda plays the new-age instrument that sounds like an orchestra under his fingers
Cascading music: Handpan maker Ketut Suda plays the new-age instrument that sounds like an orchestra under his fingers.
Nestled on foam slabs, looking like miniature flying saucers, are bowls of music that have spawned a new business in the remote hills of Bangli in east Bali.
Out the back of this home industry's newly built workshop, dozens of 44-gallon drums are stacked that are the raw materials for steel hardpan drums that have been taking the alternative music industry by storm since their invention in 2001.
Once filled with oil, the containers are transformed from the utilitarian into literal bowls of music that are orchestral in range.
Creating hardpans that spill perfect sounds often used in meditation has taken former farmer and restaurant waiter, Ketut Suda and partner Nengah Retno, a decade between them.
'Making hardpans is not something that can be taught. We taught ourselves over three years of trial and error. I had no examples to work from, all we had was a music tape of hardpans being played,' says Ketut, who has played gamelan most of his life, as has Retno.
As musicians they have the trained ear necessary to make the hardpans that are exported all over the world from the steel base of the 44 gallon drums.
'The idea for making the drums came from a friend named Christopher Anderson. He studied gamelan with me and came up with the idea for the hardpans, so this is his business,' says Ketut, adding orders are strong, with buyers waiting long periods for a hardpan made in Bali.
'Orders for the hardpans are incredible. We have people on a year's waiting list. There are other people in the world making hardpans, but the sound is different. I am considered to be the third-best maker in the world,' he says of a skill that almost defeated him in its learning.
So difficult was the process of making these new-age drums, that after two years of trying to achieve the perfect tone and harmony between the notes within the drum and failing, Ketut was ready to give up.
'When I had been studying making hardpans for two years, I felt I was getting nowhere and I was ready to give up. Christopher said keep going and by the third year I was creating hardpans in a range of musical scales,' says Ketut.
Growing the business is almost impossible, he adds.
'There are only two of us that can make the hardpans. You have to have a particular skill to make the right sound. If the sound is wrong, if the hammering of the steel in shaping the hardpan is wrong, it can't be fixed and it takes years to learn the sounds,' said Ketut, who began with four people learning the craft only to soon discover half of the team did not have the ear needed to form the hardpans that are set to particular keys, such as D minor or the Japanese Akebono melody.
As Ketut plays a recently completed hardpan, his fingers dance across the drum's dimpled surface, each dimple producing a different note ' Ketut's music is like a waterfall sparkling with light prisms.
This is a talent his partner Nengah Retno said he does not possess, but he also makes beautiful hardpans.
Retno said crafting a perfectly pitched hardpan demanded a very good ear and patience, with each maker having his own approach to the instrument.
'My technique in finding the tone of the hardpan is different to Ketut's. I search for the base note first then the frequency, like an echo, that remains after the note has been struck. From this I find the harmony, the balance of the sound. Ketut first seeks the frequency, then the base note,' says Retno, adding that the exquisitely pitched instrument is the result in both cases.
Tuning the hardpans is a slow process. A note is struck then the steel is hammered to adjust and refine the note, millimeter by millimeter until all notes formed by the hardpan's dimpled surface are in harmony.
'These days it takes me about half a day to tune a hardpan. Finding its tone takes at least a day. In the past it could take days. I was shocked when I began making the drums to realize just how very difficult it was. The most difficult aspect is finding the tone. That took me three years to discover, that was the most complex part, not the shape of the drum, but the tone,' says Retno as he hits a drum in process with a rubber-ended drum stick.
Hardpans are unlike other drums with no two instruments making the same sound.
'Each hardpan has a specific tone, there are many different tones, but each has only one setting, such as D minor, but the tone is also influenced by the steel used for the drum,' says Retno who together with his partner, Ketut, have brought a new industry to the remote hills of Bangli.
'We are teaching our children to make the hardpans and I hope in the future we can become more famous for our drums,' says Ketut.
' Photos by J.B.Djwan
