Tips for Playing Bass Beats on Steel Drums

Tips for Playing Bass Beats on Steel Drums
Hi. I'm Alan Lightner with Expert Village. We're talking about the steel pans and the various roles that members of the steel pan family play in a traditional steel band setting. We're talking about the bass pans now, which I have here. I only have two of the bass pans here. I should have at least six to have a full set. But for our purposes, I can demonstrate here. We talked about the patterns that the bass players play being mostly down beats while the strummers are playing a lot of up beats. And that's true although there are variations. For instance, the bass players also play, don't play the one every time. In other words, still playing on the down beats often, but leaving off the first down beat. I'll demonstrate what that means. If I say, "one, two, three, four, one", I played two hits but I left off that first one. Still started on a down, but It wasn't like the ups like in the strums. If, for instance if I were playing like the strums, it would be one, two, three, four, a one. We're not playing that. We're still playing on these down beats, but I leave off the one. One, two, three, four, one, and I play two hits. I'm going to go through a pattern just like that playing through the whole chords and I'll be singing those ones loudly and playing the three and the four. So I'm going to be playing one, or actually like two and. Two and, and four and. If I say one, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and. I'll do that again. A one, two, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and. They might play the first down beat just to get everybody rooted and then you can feel where it is. One, two, a one two, three, four, one, two and, three and, four and, one, two and, three and, four and, one and, two. And they might throw in some other down beats. There are variations to that also, keeping that same rhythmic feel. So it would be one, two, three and, four and, one, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one, two and, three and, four and. That would be a typical bass pattern using those chords that we had for that simple little melody.