The Care Of A Steel Band Instrument

By Author: Annie Doucet
Total Articles: 5
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The most important thing is to keep your steel drum band instrument dry. You should be diligent about preventing rust formation which can eventually ruin your steel pan. Many musicians wipe the instrument dry with a soft cloth following every steel band practice or performance, removing moisture from rain, condensation, perspiration,etc. Many steel drum bands have pans with a chrome finish for their melody pans. A steel pan with a chrome finish should be cleaned once or twice yearly with chrome polish. The application should be a thin layer of polish on the notes and skirt. Lightly buff after a few minutes (after haze forms). Take care as rubbing very hard can detune a note on your steel band pan or even remove some of the chrome finish.

Have your steel pan tuned annually by a professional steel band tuner. It can be tuned more often depending on how much it is played and your personal sound requirements, but too much tuning will decrease the life expectancy of your steel pan. For this reason, many individuals and steel drum bands wait for one year, as a rule of thumb, to tune their steel pans. Unless you ...
... are a steel band tuner, you cannot tune your own steel pan as you do not have the expertise or the unique hearing ability that must be developed to perform this delicate, precise procedure. Attempting to tune a steel drum band instrument without the proper training will often do great harm. A steel band tuner is tuning the fundamental pitch (the basic note) plus harmonic overtones or partials on each and every note. Unlike other musical instruments, these harmonic overtones do not occur naturally on a steel drum band pan. Bertie Marshall of Trinidad first pioneered this approach, which is unique in music and brought us the modern steel drum band sound we now enjoy. This requires a very specialized hearing ability and is essential to achieving the modern steel band sound. Successive tunings will improve the overall sound of the steel drum band instrument. If your pan is new, you are in the "pounding in" phase, during which your playing of the steel pan compresses the metal in a way that is not achieved during the making of the instrument. "Pounding in" improves the tone and takes maybe 3 or 4 months if the steel drum band is playing or practicing every day. After the first two tunings in particular, you often will notice a distinctly better tone. If there are pitch or tonal inconsistencies that you would like a steel band tuner to address, it is better if you can wait until the "pounding in" period is over, since you will benefit from the better sound that the tuner can achieve after the "pounding in" of your steel drum band instrument.

Do Not Drop! This will usually detunes a steel band pan and can distort its shape. When hanging your steel pan, get a firm grip on the rim and position the each hanging loop onto the stand with your thumb. Keep mallets away from non-players and out of view or away from your steel band instrument. You may want to use steel pan covers for your unattended pans, which will discourage unwanted “playing” of them and prevent potential damage to the steel drum band instruments.

Many people write the letter names of each note on the steel band pans for players beginning to learn an instrument. You may choose not to label the notes, as the steel drum band musicians will be forced to remember the note names more quickly if they are not placed on the notes. However, you may use a Sharpie marker to label a chrome steel band pan. The markings can be removed with chrome polish later. If you wish to label the notes on a Hi-Gloss Black or painted steel pan, paper stickers will work, such as pricing dots found in stationary stores.

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