SEW Mini F# Kurd | Stainless steel

The SEW Mini handpans represent a particularly warm sound experience. Their gentle tones, seasoned with a full-bodied timbre, reach beneath the skin into every cell. The long-lasting and at the same time well-balanced aftertaste, also known as sustain, ensures a spherical sound carpet - for both slower and faster playing styles. The full, spacious sound creates a calming, warm atmosphere.

The SEW Mini handpans are very suitable for studio recordings due to their very clear and fine sound. For good reason, they are particularly popular to accompany meditation, yoga and sound journeys. The sounds open up a space of inner experience, mindfulness and sensual feeling. An aura full of encounter that connects us with our deepest self and at the same time with what is greater than us.

High-quality, specially hardened stainless steel is used for production. The visual design and sound aesthetics of these instruments are well coordinated and form a sophisticated unit. Finely crafted tone fields make playing very easy. Every touch creates a beautiful sound. This makes the SEW Mini handpans easy to play even for newcomers.

Diameter: 43cm
Height: 22.5cm
Weight: approx. 3kg
Material: stainless steel

Mood name : Kurd
Basic tone sequence: F#/ C# DF# G# AB
Effect : Warm - Mysterious - Dreamy
Tone supply : Heptatonic

mode
Phrygian (tonal center 1st note) = major or
Aeolian (tonal center: B) = minor

Semitones: 7 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 2
Tonal center: DING or first tone

Mood description:
The Kurd tuning is, if you will, the natural minor variant of the handpan tunings. Due to its particularly harmonious composition of notes, it is particularly suitable for beginners. With them you can play everything from calm and meditative to melancholic to powerful and happy.

Even though this mood can sound very sentimental, it can certainly create happy sound images. For example, the second and third notes produce a triad in major. Just be aware that the second and third notes are played at the same time. Of course, you can also use this tension consciously to spice up your game and make the relaxation have a stronger effect afterwards. 

This tuning is one of the first seven-tone tunings to be built and has become very well known through some videos on the Internet.

Origin and music theory of the Kurd mood:

Kurd takes the name of the Arabic/Turkish Maqam Kurd. This tone selection also shares the arrangement of the tones with this Maqam if one assumes that the tonal center is on the first tone in the circle. This creates the complete Phrygian mode, which is characterized by a semitone step from the fundamental tone to the second tone of the scale and is responsible for the mysterious sound of the scale.

However, there remains an ambivalence, since the DING is a fifth below the first tone and thus appears like a second tonal center, which allows the mode to change to Aeolian (natural minor). Depending on how you play, you can switch between natural minor and Phrygian sound characteristics. With Kurd you can play anything from calm and meditative to melancholic to powerful and happy.

Kurd shares with other minor variations (cf. Celtic Minor/Integral) the jump from a fifth from the DING to the first tone. From this fifth level, assuming that the tonal center is the THING, one has all the tonal steps of a natural minor scale (Aeolian). What is special about Kurd is the half-tone step (semitone) between the first and second tone. This step is also present in the Maqam Kurd (Arabic or Turkish scale system) of the same name (see Semai Kurd), but also in the Phrygian mode. The Phrygian mode is used in jazz, psychedelic rock, flamenco and fado but also in classical music.