Sponsors - Hot Pans Steelband
The steel pan, the tuned steel drum, is one of the few genuinely novel acoustic instruments invented in the twentieth century. Its origin is believed to be dustbins, used as rhythm instruments by the traditional Carnival bands of Trinidad & Tobago in the 1930's. During its 50-year history the steel pan has evolved from a multi-pitched percussion instrument to the mellow-sounding melodic-harmonic instrument of today.
Steel Pan Tuning - a Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning
by Ulf Kronman - the one and only book of it's kind - now on the net!
Here presented in full format, including pictures and drawings.
Hypertext presentation done by the author, with courtesy of the
publisher, Musikmuseet in Stockholm, Sweden. Printed copies of the book may be ordered from Panyard, Inc.
Answers.com has an interesting Wikipedia entry on steelpans.
About the "Steel Drum"
A presentation of the instrument, done by the Toucans Steel Drum Band.
The Finnish tuner Ari Viitanen has put up some pan building instructions on the web. Address: http://www.dlc.fi/~pan-ari/panmake.htm
The California-based company Steel Drum Shop has put together an FAQ page named "All about pans", including a brief history and some nice photos from the building and tuning process.
Japanese tuner Ryo Sonobe has kindly provided some pictures of his pan making.
The Steel Pan - an introduction in Swedish
En kort bakgrund till instrumentet steel pan och karnevalen på Trinidad.
Try the Pan on the net
Imagemap pan - this a simple clickable image map of my own low C tenor pan. Just click, wait and listen.