Controlling The Sound in Steel Drums
Part of the Video Series How to Play the Steel Drums
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Video Transcript
Controlling The Sound in Steel Drums
Hi. I'm Alan Lightner. I'm here with Expert Village and we're talking about the art of playing steel pans. We just started talking a little bit about touch and becoming familiar with your own instrument. But in general, any time you're playing any steel pan, whether it's this one or one of my many other instruments, you have to learn that the lower notes, as we've mentioned before, you have to play softly on up to the higher notes which you have to play harder in order to get the same volume. I'm going to demonstrate again playing this note with the same intensity that I would play this note. In other words, I'm going to play this softly now. Not going to get much out of it. If I played this note, this larger note with that same intensity, I get a lot more out of it. That's what you have to become familiar with. The way you become familiar with that is actually just playing your instrument and listening, just like anything. My lowest note on this particular instrument is over here. So I'm going to play now and kind of use the whole drum, and I'm going to try to be aware of how the intensity changes as I move from the low notes to the high notes. You get a little bit of an idea about when I was hitting those high notes, I had to strike those a little bit harder. When you get to those low notes, you've got to be really gentle on them. Now there are also musical choices that you'll make. Sometimes you want to hit those lower notes a little harder. Sometimes you want to hit those, those soft notes to be softer. Those are musical choices. But learning the intensity that's necessary for each note on your instrument is very important.
Hi. I'm Alan Lightner. I'm here with Expert Village and we're talking about the art of playing steel pans. We just started talking a little bit about touch and becoming familiar with your own instrument. But in general, any time you're playing any steel pan, whether it's this one or one of my many other instruments, you have to learn that the lower notes, as we've mentioned before, you have to play softly on up to the higher notes which you have to play harder in order to get the same volume. I'm going to demonstrate again playing this note with the same intensity that I would play this note. In other words, I'm going to play this softly now. Not going to get much out of it. If I played this note, this larger note with that same intensity, I get a lot more out of it. That's what you have to become familiar with. The way you become familiar with that is actually just playing your instrument and listening, just like anything. My lowest note on this particular instrument is over here. So I'm going to play now and kind of use the whole drum, and I'm going to try to be aware of how the intensity changes as I move from the low notes to the high notes. You get a little bit of an idea about when I was hitting those high notes, I had to strike those a little bit harder. When you get to those low notes, you've got to be really gentle on them. Now there are also musical choices that you'll make. Sometimes you want to hit those lower notes a little harder. Sometimes you want to hit those, those soft notes to be softer. Those are musical choices. But learning the intensity that's necessary for each note on your instrument is very important.
About the Expert
Expert: Alan Mark Lightner is a master faculty member at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts where he served as the director of the steel pans and drum set departments. Read More
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