About Steel Pans
About Steel Pans brought to you by Steelasophical and online recourses
Steelpans
(also known as steel drums or pans, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steel band or orchestra) is a musical instrument originating from Trinidad and Tobago. Steel pan musicians are called pannists.
The modern pan is a chromatically pitched percussion instrument made from 55 gallon industrial drums that formerly contained chemicals.
Drum refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steel drum is more correctly called a steel pan or pan as it falls into the idiophone family of instruments, and so is not a drum (which is a membranophone). Steel pans are the only instruments made to play in the Pythagorean musical cycle of fourths and fifths.
The pan is struck using a pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber; the size and type of rubber tip varies according to the class of pan being played. Some musicians use four pansticks, holding two in each hand.[1] This skill and performance have been conclusively shown to have grown out of Trinidad and Tobago’s early 20th-century Carnival percussion groups known as Tamboo bamboo The pan is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.
A typical steelband (steel drum band) has four sections
- Frontline Pans section – contains the highest pitched instruments
- Mid-range pans section – contains instruments in the middle of the steelband range
- Background pans section – contains the lowest pitched instruments
- Engine room – contains percussion instruments other than the steel pan
About SteelPans
