A trained drummer, handpan player, singer — and tool builder

I started music at 4, on drums. From my very first lesson, reading sheet music was forced on me. I quit, and learned self-taught, by ear.

I came back to it through school, in this order: first four years at the Marciac jazz college — the jazz section attached to the festival, sponsored by Wynton Marsalis — where I discovered vocal improvisation; then the lycée, with a TMD baccalaureate — Technique de Musique et de Danse — obtained in 2012 at Lycée Saint-Sernin in Toulouse. It is the equivalent of a sport-study programme, but music/study — also called adapted timetables. Then four years at the Toulouse Conservatory, which I left in 2013 with a drums award, highest honours.

To “catch up”, I had 7.5 hours of music-theory class a week, across 4 different levels. I still can’t read music… that’s how disconnected the teaching was from sensation and from meaning, with an approach turned solely towards classical music.

I started bands, learned video shooting and editing, joined Thierry Vanoffe’s team in 2017 as a trainer and video creator for the Numéricoach channel, then from 2020 worked on Aora Mana — one of the first virtual-reality platforms for initiatory journeys — as camera operator, director, 360° virtual-reality editor and drone pilot.

I sang in the blind auditions of The Voice on TF1, season 11, with an African song: Koth Biro — recorded on 21 December 2021, broadcast on 12 February 2022. After the show, I was invited for a solo concert in Côte d’Ivoire.

Working as a Google trainer, I realised how good I am at finding technical and technological solutions to people’s problems. But well before that, I was already handling the sound for the conferences of the Salon Santé Nature, in Flourens — the fair moved venue several times —, and their IT equipment. I have always helped people find tricks and solutions to their computer problems.

I have played the calabash, as a percussion instrument, since 2012.

On the calabash, I was missing the snare and the hi-hat. I solved it with plastic eggs — a workaround that became a way of playing, then a way of teaching.

It became Now Groove (2021): a rhythm method built on call-and-response and visual emoticons, which holds up with fifty people in the same room.

In 2018, while I was devastated by a break-up, my therapist Fred Hervaud placed his own N’Goni in my hands: that is how I met the instrument. In 2023 my collaboration with Joris Feuillâtre began, around the gonilélé harp, which I pass on today as an ambassador of La Maison du Ngoni. My lessons and workshops run under Now Music Academy, carried by the Résonances Productions association.

Marie-Christine Reculard is my singing teacher. She created Le Chant Holistique (holistic singing), which she describes on her site as “une méthode unique de chant thérapeutique et énergétique par la voix, les couleurs, les voyelles sacrées, les mantras, le yoga et les techniques de respirations” — a singing method working through the voice, colours, sacred vowels, mantras, yoga and breathing techniques. Her site: mariechristinereculard.com.

Her method inspired me, notably for a “Sing & Play” mode — singing while accompanying yourself on the handpan — that I am working on for Handpan Constellation Studio. It is still at lab stage: it is not available in the app today.

I play the HONA Festival, in Agia Anna. When I arrive I’m nobody: the stage is tiny, the sound system is bad, there’s no monitor. But I offer something people hadn’t seen — I sing, I play three handpans at once, and I handle percussion with both feet and hands.

The next day I run into a man at the festival’s outdoor bar. I don’t know who he is; I’m told he’s one of the best handpan makers in the world. It’s Yonathan, from Yishama. He listens to me at length, calmly, and doesn’t try to sell me his instruments.

That same summer, the very first beta Neotone is put in my hands. A month later I play the HUG festival in Hungary, stop by the workshop, and leave with a beta Neotone and a clear commitment: report the bugs and help the instrument evolve. I’ve done it ever since — thousands of reports later, I personally know Csaba, Norbert and the Soundventure team in Budapest.

In May 2023 I receive the two handpans Yonathan designed for me: eighteen notes each, tuned to 432 Hz, built for one thing only — so I could sing while accompanying myself, in any key.

There was no method. The handpan is a 21st-century instrument, still evolving, often modal, and there are almost as many note layouts as there are instruments.

In August 2023 I opened a document — just to be able to see which chords I could play on my own instruments. A few months later, Yonathan suggested I turn it into a little chord booklet, for myself. I made the booklet. It became an application.