The steel pan, or simply pan, is a tuned steel drum that can play more than one pitch. It is a percussion idiophone played with rubber-ended beaters. It is usually played in groups called steel bands, which may include other instruments as well as pans of many different sizes.

The sound of the steel pan drum is strongly associated with Calypso music, and instantly gives music a tropical Caribbean "island" sound.

Figure 1

Steel Pan Drum

The steel pan is the only acoustic (non-electric) instrument invented in the twentieth century. It was invented on the island of Trinidad, is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, and is still strongly associated with calypso and other Caribbean music styles.

The poorer residents of the island were long accustomed to fashioning their musical instruments from whatever was at hand. (For more on this, see the history in Calypso and Found Percussion.) During the 1930's, this was often the bottom (the "pan") of a metal shipping container, paint can, garbage can, or other large metal container. During World War II, many empty 55-gallon oil drums became available on the island, and these became the standard size for the steel pan drum.

Modern steel pans are professionally made instruments, no longer recycled from empty oil drums, but they still keep the design of the traditional instrument.

Even when musicians made their own steel drums from empty containers, they were not simply beating on a found object. The sides of the container were cut off at a particular depth, which depends on the range of the instrument. Lower-sounding instruments have deeper sides, while higher-sounding instruments have shallower sides.

Then the pan was beaten with a hammer until it was the shape of a shallow bowl. Sections in the bowl shape were marked off by hammered grooves, and then each section beaten (from below) until it was tuned to a specific pitch.

The modern, manufactured instrument is still designed much like the traditional pan. Steel pan drums come in several different sizes, with different numbers of pitches that can be played. The tenor pan (the highest-sounding, also called the ping pong or lead pan), which generally plays the melody, can play a chromatic scale over more than two octaves. The bass pan, on the other hand, has only three or four notes. Other pans, which include the guitar pan and cello pans, are tuned in whole tones or chords. These are often played (by a single player) in sets of two or three: for example, double guitar pans or triple cello pans.

Here is an animation that explains how the notes on a tenor pan are arranged, and then allows you to "play" a steel drum. Audio recordings from a steel drum concert can be found at the University of Illinois School of Music's on-line Media Center.