The Steel Pan Instrument

The earliest steel pans were made of steel garbage cans salvaged by poor young Trinidadians trying to find new ways to make music during Carnival season. However, during and after WWII, 55-gallon steel oil drums became the standard for making the instrument. According to Peter Seeger, the “metal is stronger and the disk bigger, allowing more tones” to be played than with earlier versions. Though different pans are constructed in different ways to achieve different sounds, and different makers have variations of technique, they are all made in more or less a similar fashion. (Seeger 52).

A pattern is carefully dented into the pan, creating separate sections that are hammered into a specific concavity or curvature. When a rubber-tipped stick strikes a particular section, a specifically-pitched sound is produced, the pitch determined by the shape and curving of the section. There are many different patterns that can be marked into a steel pan, depending on what notes and octaves the maker wants. As such, each instrument has its own range and ability, with several standard variations. There are bass, tenor, and alto pans, but the most well-known is the “ping pong” which leads the melody in most steel bands, and produces the characteristic sound associated with the instrument. The lower pitched pans accompany with rhythm in the background. The image below illustrates a few patterns and the corresponding notes to each section. (Seeger 54, 55).

This image shows four different types of steel pans, with different ranges in pitch and varying use in an orchestra. Taken from “The Steel Drum: A New Folk Instrument”

This incredible instrument came about through decades of trial and error, of experimenting with different dents and patterns, until the science was perfected to produce a huge range of sounds. This versatility allows for entire orchestras to be composed of dozens of steel pan players, with the ability to cover numerous scales and produce a multitude of harmonies. It was also essential to the instrument’s development. Earl King remarked that the steel pan was, and still is, one of the easiest instruments to play and learn music from. Because the pan was created by the poor and underprivileged, those without formal music education, it had to have a certain intuitiveness that made it possible for such amateurs to work with. One could pick up a pan, hear the different pitches it could play, and quickly begin playing rhythms based only on their ear and what they found pleasing to listen to. Music could be played without even knowing the names of the notes. This made the steel pan easy to learn for lower class youth, who were exposed to it at an early age in their community. They, like Earl King, could learn from some of the first self-taught players scales and basic composition, to become themselves pioneers and professional musicians in the future. (Interview).

The steel pan allowed talented people, who would have never been able to learn music institutionally because of their background, to thrive. As the stigmas attached to the pan began to diminish, and the music become more accepted, opportunities came to impoverished musicians to share their talents to the higher echelon of Trinidadian society, and eventually bring the music to countries all around the world. Consequently, the steel pan could be a means of achieving social mobility and became an important symbol of Trinidadian nationalism. (BBC).

Click here to learn more about the steel pan, as well as the musical style of soca.

SOURCES:

“A Brief History of the Steel Pan.” BBC News. N.p., 24 July 2012. Web. 10 May 2016. <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18903131>.

Seeger, Peter. “The Steel Drum: A New Folk Instrument.” The Journal of American Folklore 71 (1958): 52-57. Jstor. Web. 10 May 2016. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/537959>