Learning Steel pan, Day 1

Today was the first Steel Pan lesson at the Bird Song steel pan yard, right down the street from Rawle Gibbons’ bookstore. I initially went into this experience excited and not really knowing what to expect. Before arriving in Trinidad I was briefly introduced to the steel pan at Carnival held in both Cambridge and Boston. Also, one of my high-school classmates used to play and I always thought of it as such a weird instrument. Our steel pan instructors name was Harold Headley, which I expected to be very stern and down to business because of what we’ve heard from Dr. B however, Mr. Headley was in fact very nice. We started off listening to a short lecture of the history of the steel pan by Mr. Headley. The information was interesting and a lot of what we had already learned in previous lessons about the history of Trinidad. But I missed most of it because Mr. Headley was soft spoken during his lecture, I could barely hear what he had to say and the outdoor noise was adding to the faintness of his voice. Either the loud cars, or the rain hitting against the tin roofs drowned him out. He wrote letters, and notes on the board, which meant absolutely nothing to me because I couldn’t hear any of the explanation behind it. Finally, after struggling to hear Mr. Headley speak, he introduced us to the steel drums that we going to learn how to play. There were 4 different kinds of pans that we were assigned to, and I chose to play the Tener pan (which little did I know carried the most notes in the band). He taught us all of the notes on the pan, which was what he was writing on the board, and then everything made so much more sense to me. The pans, are all really cool too because each section of the pan makes a different sound which ultimately creates an entire song. By the end of the session we (the whole group) played the tune “The Waltz” and it sounded really good! I was so proud that all of us, we were so good and played well together. I’m excited to see what tomorrow brings! I’m also excited to be able to get some of our own pan sticks and take them home as souvenirs.