How to Play Ranges on Steel Drums

Video Transcript

"ALAN MARK LIGHTNER: Hi. I'm Alan Lightner with Expert Village. We're talking about playing the steelpans and fitting into various musical situations. I'm talking about playing and traditional and non-traditional ensembles, still continuing on talking about fitting in with a pop or jazz ensemble and choosing appropriate melodies for yourself. I'd like to talk a little bit about the range of your instrument and choosing the melody that will fit into that range. Often, if you're listening to a song or reading some music from a chart, it's like your favorite song but it won't fit on your particular instrument on this instrument, the double second steelpan. For instance, if you find the melody that has three octaves, you've got to choose the right key. For instance, let's say your song is in E flat and it's got this melody [PLAYS MELODY], and it does it again up an octave [PLAYS MELODY AN OCTAVE HIGHER]. Well, if you need to do that in the third octave, you can't do that because you don't have that range. You don't have those extra notes. You don't have enough of that. So you're going to have to adjust the key of that song to fit the range of your particular instrument, to fit the range of the steeldrum. And there are other issues, so I might choose a [PLAYS MELODY] I might choose that range because I know I can get all those notes. [PLAYS MELODY] I know I can get all three of those if I start on that particular note. There are also sweet spots on your drum. There's a sweet range, I should say. As I told you before in an earlier clip, [PLAYS STEEL PAN] I rarely use those high notes. The notes are there and I can get to them if I need to, but these are not the sweet spots [PLAYS STEEL PAN], that's not the sweet range on this particular instrument. The sweet range is in here [PLAYS STEEL PAN]. Even though long notes, although that note sounds good, it can get lost and you'll run some risks down there. The real sweetest range of the instrument is perhaps from here [PLAYS STEEL PAN]. You can hear out of it that it just fills up the room just playing those one two three four five notes. That's a real sweet range in this instrument. Learning your specific instrument can really help you choose appropriate melodies and fit into various ensembles very well."