Scales & creation scalestutorial

How to create your own handpan scale (tutorial)

Understand what a handpan scale is and learn to build your own, for free, in Handpan Constellation Studio's acoustic mode — then share it with the community.

How to create your own handpan scale (tutorial)

Creating your own handpan scale means choosing the set of notes that will make up your instrument — their order, their number and the emotion they carry. In the Handpan Constellation Studio app you can do it for free, draw your layout in colour, hear it live, then save it and share it with the community. This tutorial shows you how.

The approach is the same whether your handpan is acoustic or electronic: you pick a tonic, you place notes around the ding, you listen. The screenshot in this article shows the creation screen (now the “A scale” card in the Create screen) side by side, electronic and acoustic: the gesture is identical, and on acoustic, creating is free.

What is a handpan scale?

A scale is the “character” of your pan: a central note (the ding) surrounded by notes laid out around the dome. Each scale has an emotional colour — meditative, bright, mysterious — depending on the intervals you choose. Understanding this is already composing: you don’t place notes at random, you build a mood.

Tonic, degrees and intervals

  • The tonic gives the resting point, the “home” of the scale.
  • The degrees are the notes built around it; in colours (ChromaKeys), each keeps a stable hue.
  • The intervals — the gaps between notes — decide whether the scale sounds joyful, dark or contemplative.

Create your scale in Handpan Constellation Studio (acoustic mode, free)

  1. Open acoustic mode. The Discovery version of Handpan Constellation Studio is free and enough to build a scale.
  2. Choose your tonic. It sets the overall colour and acts as the central note.
  3. Add your notes. Place the degrees around the ding; the screen shows them in colour and draws chord Constellations in real time.
  4. Listen and adjust. Play your layout, move or replace the notes that don’t speak to you. Your ear decides, your eye confirms.
  5. Save your scale. Store it to find it later, on an acoustic handpan or a Neotone.
Screen demo, on a Neotone Mutant: starting from an almost empty pan (the ding and two notes), you tap notes on the arc of twelve colours, and they land on the pan one by one. The app is shown in French.
Neotone Mutant (electronic)D Kurd 10 (acoustic)
Two screenshots of the Create › A scale screen, side by side, cut to the same template, ChromaKeys On, the colour telling “the note”. On the left, a Neotone Mutant: the handpan's screen reads “D Kurd 19 – David Lesage · Neotone Mutant”; the D3 ding, D4 and D5 orange, F4 and F5 green, A3 and A4 indigo, C3, C4 and C5 red, G3, G4 and G5 sky blue, E4 and E5 yellow, Bb2 and Bb3 light indigo, several notes ringed with colours. On the right, an acoustic D Kurd 10, with “D Kurd 10 · Change instrument”, Stop, Sound and 440.00 Hz at the top: the D3 ding and D4 orange, F4 green, A3 and A4 indigo, C4 and C5 red, G4 sky blue, E4 yellow, Bb3 light indigo, also ringed with colours. Around each pan, the arc of the twelve colours from C to B and its octaves. At the bottom, on both sides, the seven cards: Dm · Balance (D F A) in orange, Edim · Momentum (E G Bb) in yellow, F · Adventure (F A C) in green, Gm · Ease (G Bb D) in sky blue, Am · Tension (A C E) in indigo, Bb · Nostalgia (Bb D F) in light indigo, C · Mystery (C E G) in red; on the right, under the heading “The 7 basic chords of your scale”.
The same screen, Create › A scale, side by side: a Neotone Mutant on the left, an acoustic D Kurd 10 on the right. On both sides, each note wears the colour of its name — D orange, F green, A indigo, C red — and the wheel of twelve colours surrounds the pan. At the bottom, the scale's seven basic chords, from Dm · Balance to C · Mystery, each in the colour of the note it is named after.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

Lean on the colours

If you’re a beginner, the visual method makes composing far more intuitive: choose the emotion first, then the colour, then the note. To grasp the principle, read handpan by colours (ChromaKeys).

Creating your own scales on the Neotone

Share your scale with the community

Once your scale is created, you can name it and share it: other players load it, try it and get inspired. It’s also how you discover layouts imagined by others — a living atlas that grows with every creation.

Want to go further and be guided from the first note to your first composition? David Lesage’s lessons walk you through it step by step.

Creating your own scale isn’t reserved for experts: it’s the most direct way to make your emotion sound, on your very own instrument.

Ready to make your colours sing?

Try the app for free, or discover the electronic Neotone handpan.

Discover Handpan Constellation Studio The Neotone