Steel Pan
| Steel Pan |
|---|
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| classification |
| Idiophone , percussion instrument |
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The steel pan , also known as steel drum ("steel pan " or "steel drum "), is a musical instrument associated with idiophones that originated in Trinidad . An ensemble of several pans is called a steel band . Steel Pans are made from a concave driven thin sheet in the form of a round metal resonance body (traditionally: oil barrel) into which sound fields (sound surfaces) are driven in order to generate tones. The clay fields are struck with mallets.
Design
The steel pan is often referred to as the steel drum . This expression has become particularly popular in the USA. In Trinidad, the steel drum is the raw material from which a steel pan is built. With pan is meant the material and the inwardly curved playing surface, drum refers to the sheet metal plate which is beaten with a membrane like a drum and the shape corresponding to a frame drum .
The steel pan as a musical instrument is best understood from its function within the collective of a pan orchestra. This always consists of the following instruments (sorted by pitch):
- Tenor (soprano)
- Double tenor (soprano)
- Double Second (Alto)
- Double guitar (tenor)
- Triple or Four Cello (baritone)
- Quadrophonics (baritone)
- bass
This combination covers a range of around six octaves. A steel band equipped in this way is able to perform practically all typical orchestral music.
The pitches are usually chromatic so that all keys can be played. Pentatonic tunings are also common . Pans for only one key are rare, but do occur.
The clay fields are struck with mallets made of wood or aluminum, which are wrapped or covered with rubber at the end of the game.
history
The instrument was invented in Trinidad in the 1930s and is the national instrument there. The British colonial rulers banned the locals from drumming on African percussion instruments. Therefore the lower class was looking for new ways of musical expression. In this island nation, oil production plays an important role and has contributed significantly to the industrialization of Trinidad. Thus, the first steel pans were made from discarded oil drums, which were in abundance in Trinidad due to the oil industry. Carnival celebrations in Trinidad were suspended during World War II . The end of the war was celebrated exuberantly by the population. At the celebrations of the V-Day, steel bands could be heard for the first time in the streets of Port of Spain . Since the carnival is traditionally a big parade, the pans were hung around the necks of the players with straps, so you were mobile. Hence the expression "around-the-neck-pans". Due to the limited space available on an oil drum (resonance body), these instruments were not chromatic. B. place only one D major scale on a single guitar.
The Steel Pan is an artistic expression and socio-cultural “valve” of the Trinidadian people, who are mostly composed of former African slaves and Indian contract workers. How, where and when exactly the development of the Steel Pan began can no longer be determined with certainty today. The fact is, however, that in the early days of this story, real gang wars between the districts of Port of Spain dominated daily events. Rivalries between individual bands (gangs) took on such brutal dimensions that British law enforcement officers only knew how to help themselves through even greater counter-violence. Over time, the Trinidadian succeeded in converting the available energy productively into a musical competition. One was now in competition for the more powerful sound of an orchestra or for which group had the instruments with the larger range. Winston "Spree" Simon , Anthony Williams , Neville Jules and Elliot "Ellie" Mannette are mentioned as groundbreaking pioneers of this era, to name just a fraction of a huge group of innovative (then very young) people.
The very young Steel Pan gained international attention when TASPO (Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra) was invited to England in 1951 to present this new musical instrument at the Festival of Britain . Some musicians in this group stayed in England ( Sterling Betancourt ) and made the Steel Pan known successfully in Europe. Still other Trinidadians carried the steel pan and the music of Trinidad ( calypso ) to America and around the world. The airline BWIA West Indies of Trinidad and Tobago, which was dissolved in 2006, had a steel pan as its logo.
development
The Steel Pan has undergone constant development since its invention. Were z. For example, until the late 1960s the sound box was hardly noticeably deformed, but immense progress has taken place since then. The attunement of harmonic partials did not find its way into the world of steel pan until the 1960s ( Bertie Marshall ). There have been many notable developments since then:
- New knowledge about the geometric structure of the clay fields
- Acoustic investigations into the creation of different sounds on a single playing surface
- Metallurgical exploration of the steel pan raw material
- Development of the new instrument Hang
Steel pans of all voices are mainly used in steel bands, but are becoming more and more popular in other musical styles. The soprano instruments "tenor" and "double tenor" can be used as a single pan in a group with other instruments. The term “tenor” is historically based (early instruments had 10 tones = ten), the term “soprano” would be correct according to the range. Efforts are now being made to standardize the tone arrangements of the various registers.
Pentatonic instruments also exist, suitable for meditative play and relaxation. These instruments are rather unsuitable for use in a band because of their deliberately limited range, they are now primarily used in therapy.
Most of the steelpank sounds heard in pop music, advertisements, etc. are generated electronically. The sound of the Steel Pan is relatively easy to imitate electronically, but not completely due to the non-linear sound development of metal membranes.
In 1999, the music teacher Werner M. Weidensdorfer developed a special tone field arrangement (= alternating-ascending), which makes the Steel Pan an ideal instrument for early musical lessons. The "PixiPan" and "TeacherPan" instruments have meanwhile become a central component of a comprehensive teaching concept in Germany that begins with elementary instruction in kindergarten and continues through to orchestral or concert maturity.
Technically speaking, there are now different pan sounds. Some Panbauer (Mannette in the USA, Schulz in Germany, Parris in Great Britain) have perfected their skills in the direction of strongly resonating, bell-like sounding steel pans. Others, however, stay connected to the tradition of percussive, short-sounding instruments (Smith, Denmark). These tonal differences are made possible by a large number of types of processing of the sheet metal.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is mainly divided into two stages:
Panbau
Every Panbauer cultivates his own style when it comes to building his instruments. The size of the sound fields z. B. is based on experience as well as the final geometry (depth, extent) of the instrument or the length of the jacket. The raw material used is generally a thin sheet of 1 mm to 1.4 mm thick. Since the production of sound boxes especially suitable for pan construction is still an exception, the majority of pan builders orient themselves to industrial standards (in Europe, 1.2 mm material thickness is the usual standard).
The tight-head drum is equipped with various tools (driver ball, hammer, pneumatic hammer) by hand ironed . The clay fields of different sizes (membranes) are drawn in and shaped after the driving work is finished. The membrane is then engraved, then the instrument is smoothed out. Through the multiple cold forming of the workpiece, the structure of the processed sheet is stretched, which on the one hand increases the hardness and strength , but on the other hand reduces the toughness and the material can no longer be formed as well. A significantly better machinability is achieved through recrystallization annealing .
Pantuning
As Pantuning the process of systematic matching of sound fields is called. Except for a few university projects in the USA, there is no training to become a pantuner. Tuning steel pans is an art as it involves at least 57 different parameters; it is mainly based on experience. Basically, when tuning a pan, it is about arranging different vibration modes within a sound (using the example of a concert pitch A, 440 Hz). For the sake of simplicity, a single sound field is listed and shown here as an example.
The ellipse serves as a model: its entire surface (and mass) vibrates as the fundamental at the frequency A, 440 Hz. The first partial ( overtone ) of the fundamental is its octave A, 880 Hz, which is tuned on the longitudinal axis of the ellipse. The fifth of the octave is tuned on the transverse axis (E, 1320 Hz). The mood of a pan sound thus corresponds to the natural overtone series . In and of itself simple, tuning a steel pan is very complex because the “neighboring tones” resonate and this fact has to be taken into account. It is about controlling vibration energies, controlling the radiation of individual frequencies and thereby giving a steel pan a pleasant, "usable" sound. The individual clay fields are tuned with a hammer, whereby the plastic deformation is minimal compared to pan construction.
Miscellaneous
price
The instruments are available in a variety of designs and qualities. Accordingly, the retail prices vary greatly. Instruments from well-known pan builders from Trinidad range from 600 to 1000 euros. In the US, a soprano pan costs between $ 600 and $ 5000, depending on the manufacturer. In Europe, melody instruments imported from the Caribbean are usually cheaper than a product from a European pan maker. The sometimes massive price differences are due to large qualitative differences in terms of shell and tuning of a steel pan, but a more expensive instrument does not necessarily have to be better. Hearing is required when making the selection; the timbre is decisive and a matter of individual taste.
Style of play
Even without previous musical knowledge you can learn to play the Steel Pan independently to a certain extent, in contrast to the violin or trumpet, where you cannot do without a competent teacher for the right technique. The Steel Pan is well suited for adults, but especially for children who want to learn an instrument and play in a group.
DIY
The self-construction is the main reason why this instrument was able to spread in the first place. In particular, Peter Seeger's book The Steel Drums of Kim Loy Wong (Oak Publications, New York, 1961) led people of all social classes to “pick up the hammer” and build steel pans. Building your own pan under the guidance of an experienced pan builder is highly recommended, as long as you don't hope for a particularly good result. The manual “Steelpan Building and Tuning” (in English) by Ulf Kronman, published by the Stockholm Music Museum, can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet; the construction is described there.
literature
- William R. Aho: Steel Band Music in Trinidad and Tobago: The Creation of a People's Music in Latin American Music Review 8 (1), 1987, pp. 26-56
- Felix IR Blake: The Trinidad and Tobago Steel Pan: History and Evolution . ISBN 0-9525528-0-9
- Shannon K. Dudley: Judging "By the beat": Calypso versus soca in Ethnomusicology vol. 40 n ° 2, 1996, pp. 269-98
- Shannon K. Dudley: Making music for the Nation: Competing identities and Esthetics in Trinidad and Tobago's Panorama Steelband Competition PhD dissertation; University of California Berkley, 1979, p. 353
- Shannon K. Dudley: Dropping the Bomb: Steelband Performance and Meaning in 1960's Trinidad in Ethnomusicology 46 (1), 2002, pp. 135-164
- Cy Grant: Ring of Steel - Pan Sound and Symbol . Macmillan Education, London. 1999. ISBN 0-333-66128-1
- Aurélie Helmlinger: La compétition des steelbands de Trinidad Musique et jeu du tenor. Mémoire de maîtrise, Paris X Nanterre, 1999, p. 86
- Aurélie Helmlinger: Geste individuel, mémoire collective: Le jeu du pan dans les steelbands de Trinidad et Tobago in Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles 14, 2001, pp. 181–202
- Aurélie Helmlinger: Mémoire et jeu d'ensemble; The memory of the repertoire in the steel bands of Trinidad and Tobago. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris X Nanterre, Paris 2005
- Aurélie Helmlinger: The influence of the group for the memorization of repertoire in Trinidad and Tobago steelbands, in: 9th International Conference on Musical Perception and Cognition proceedings, ed. By M. Baroni, AR Addessi, R. Caterina, M. Costa, Bologna 2006
- Ulf Kronman: Steel Pan Tuning - a Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning . Part of the series: Musikmuseets skrifter, 1992. ISSN 0282-8952
- Peter Manuel: Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (2nd edition). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006, ISBN 1-59213-463-7
- Peter Seeger: Steel drums - how to play them and make them , Oak. Publ. New York, 1964
- Stephen Stuempfle: The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, ISBN 0-8122-1565-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ National Instrument ( Memento from August 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Trinidad Guardian of July 26, 2013: Remembering Taspo 62 years later. Retrieved September 10, 2016 .
- ↑ Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer: History, Developement and Tuning of the Hang, 2007 (PDF; 2.1 MB)
- ^ Calypsos.ch: Manufacture of a steelpan. Retrieved April 20, 2018 .
- ↑ Ulf Kronman: Steel Pan Tuning - a Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning, 1991