How to Play a Steel Drum Solo

Video Transcript

ALAN MARK LIGHTNER: Hi. I'm Alan Lightner with Expert Village. Today, we're talking about playing with steelpans in various musical situations. We've already talked about some traditional ones and some non-traditional situations. When I talk about the next one, which we'll be playing solo, playing steelpan solo, unaccompanied by any other musicians, it's one way that steeldrummers love to play, because you can really play in a nice volume where you can really here how sweet the drum can sound. You're not trying to compete with any other musicians. You can play it softy or as loudly as you'd like without having to be too loud where you hurt the drum. So steeldrummers really enjoy playing solo. One nice thing and one thing that you have to practice in order to play solo is trying to play melodies and accompaniment. That's difficult and there a lot of different techniques that people use, one you could try playing the melody, and then accompanying yourself. So you can see, that first part I was playing a melody and then I was pretending that I was the guitar playing and playing the chords and then I'd join them, play that melody again. So that's one technique that I like to use when I'm playing solo, playing melody and accompaniment, and trying to be creative and figure out how you can go back and forth between the two.

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