When we pluck the string in normal fashion, we hear the fundamental or the main pitch of the note. We can use the example of a guitar string to help explain this. ![]() Understanding and developing the ability to hear the harmonic overtone partials that are present in musical notes is essential if a person is going to eventually learn to tune a steel drum instrument. Here, we will give just a small insight into the intricacies of the final tuning process after the steel pan has been crafted. There are many in between steps to this handcrafted process that require specific techniques. ![]() This is just to give you a sense of how steel pans are made. Tuning is done with a ball peen hammer with a shortened handle. Some of the main steps and processes are grooving or engraving the note shapes into the playing surface, backing and the hammering of the metal at various stages to knead, adjust height, acoustically separate and harden specific areas of the note playing surface, cutting the skirt to the proper length for the steel pan instrument being made, firing the steel pan in a fire pit but sometimes with a bunson burner or by baking in a stove, lifting the notes with a wedge to a proper height, rough tuning, applying a finish to the metal and then fine tuning. It then goes through a series of steps, each of which must be executed in just the right way if the steel pan is to have excellent sound. The top of the barrel is sunk to create a concave playing surface. Most often, a steel pan is made from a 55 gallon steel drum barrel. In a broader sense, the steel pan instrument is being tuned during much of the crafting process, since the principles and some of the tuning techniques are applied at different stages of the process. They must do this while maintaining the proper shape, height and tension of a note to very exacting tolerances or the sound quality of that note will suffer dramatically. ![]() Rather than just adjust fundamental pitches like most every other major instrument, steel drum tuners achieve the shimmering and buoyant sound of the steel pan by careful tuning of the fundamental plus the harmonic overtone partials (high pitches that sound very lightly as bell like tones above each note). At the heart of the steel drum musical revolution is the remarkable way in which steel pans are tuned.
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