Playing Tenor on Steel Drums

Playing Tenor on Steel Drums
I'm Alan Lightner with Expert Village. We're talking today about steel pans and the various members of the steel pan family and their specific roles and functions within a traditional setting. A Calypso, a steel band, Soca, playing Soca music, which is the music from Trinidad, the same place that the steel drums are from. So, the, we talked about the lead pan or the tinner pan and playing the melodies or the lead parts. Below that arrangers, writers usually like to have another instrument that supports that melody. Maybe plays the melody but has a little fuller sound. So we use a double tinner often. If the first one, the lead pan was called the tinner pan, we might use a double tinner pan, which might have a little bit lower sound, a little bit fuller sound which will support that melody that the high, piercing, lead pan would play. This is not an actual true double tinner pan. The double tinner pan has its own pattern. This is actually a double second, but I'll show you, I'll demonstrate on the double second what the double tinner player might play in this kind of situation. We were taking our simple melody, which was like an "f", "f" scale. You get an idea of some of the range. The double tinner player can play there, which is exactly where the tinner player played, or he can play it an octave below, starting on this lower "f", which is typically the lowest note that a double tinner pan has. Often the double tinner player will play exactly what the, what the lead player played or the tinner player played in the same exact octave. Just gives it a different sound. When I play this here, which is exactly the same notes that the lead player played, these other notes ring. So you're still getting a fuller sound just naturally. I can't, I can't help but vibrate this note when I play this note. It's naturally going to vibrate. In fact, all of the notes on the drum vibrate which is one of the factors that gives the quality of sound that people are attracted to. All those notes vibrating together kind of gives that hypnotic sound. That might be what a double tinner player would play on that simple melody.