Steelpans
In 1994 Charles Moller received an Australia Council for the Arts grant to study steelpan building and tuning with Leroy Thomas in Trinidad . In 2002 he received a Winston Churchill Fellowship and studied the process at Coyle Drums and Panyard.
Lead, double second, triple guitar, bass, and other voices are available on order. Pans take at least 7 days to build and tune, and are priced accordingly.
Send an email if you are interested in learning to build and tune pans.
Steelpans are amazing instruments. On a single sheet of steel, 28 notes can be placed and tuned chromatically. Each note is tuned so that the fundamental, octave, and one or two other partials are tuned into each note area.
Steelpans are geometrical objects whose shape should be able to be described mathematically. The question is what are the appropriate criteria to define the geometry? My initial success tuning the rim notes of a lead pan was by grooving right around the notes. This idea was suggested by Leroy Thomas (1994). In my second study trip (2002/3), Panyard had already developed a system using oval notes and Coyle Drums was working towards a similar system.
This system is my own version. pan maths (280kb pdf)
The criteria are:
1. The background cross section (i.e. the regions between the notes) around the pan is the same everywhere.
2. Each note is symmetrical (length and width).
3. The edge of each note lies on a plane. (The structure of the note inside the oval is up to the builder/tuner.)
4. The cross section transition from rim to centre notes is smooth.
An example can be found here. contour map, profile and notes (466kb doc)
The Bouree from lute suite #1 by JS Bach is a well known piece, often played by classical guitarists in E minor. In this C minor arrangement for C lead pan, the separation between the two voices has been reduced by one octave.
Bouree (43kb pdf)
click an image below to enlarge
