Try the Steel Pan

Now you have the chance to check out the sound of the Steel Pan - on the net! Below is a sketch of my own low C tenor pan. Clicking on a note will (hopefully) download a sound that I have recorded from that very note on my own pan.

Try the pan!

A short description for beginners: What you see above is a lead steel pan (Tenor/Soprano), seen from the players point of view. In the concave top of the steel drum a number of convex dents, separated by grooves in the metal surface, have been made. These are the notes. The larger the dent - the lower the note.

In the Tenor Pan (Soprano) above, the notes are laid out according to the circle of fifths with their octave counterparts in a circle inside of them. This is done to make each note surrounded by notes ringing with an harmonic interval to it, because when you hit a note, the notes around it will also ring together with it. Each note is surrounded by the intervals of a fourth to the left, a fifth to the right and an octave towards the center. This means that the surrounding notes will support the build up of a harmonical sound of any note in the pan. Just click on a note to try it...

Technical note: How does this work (...if it works...) ?

This is made by means of a "clickable image map". Beneath each note is an area defined, that links to a file with a recorded sound. When you click on the note, the sound file is downloaded and replayed in either a browser plug-in or a separate program.

For you tech nerds: sorry for the hiss, but this was the best sound I could get out of the cooperation between my tenor pan and my Mac PowerBook 520. Sounds are in .AU format, that should be dealt with by a standard plug-in in Netscape 3.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0.