Joliet professor, student map vibrations in steelpan

The Herald News

JOLIET – What started as an honors class project for Joliet Junior College student Joseph Garcia and natural sciences professor Dr. Andy Morrison has morphed into a very unique scientific research project, combining science and music.

“We set out to discover how vibrations travel when a steelpan is played,” Morrison said in a news release. “When you play a piano, one key strikes one string at a time, making one note. In a steelpan, all the notes are embedded in that one piece of metal.”

Originating in Trinidad and Tobago, the steelpan (sometime referred to as a steel drum) is a musical instrument created from the careful hammering on the bottom of 55-gallon barrels. Individual notes on the instrument are tuned by skilled tuners. Lead steelpans (tenor steelpans) are tuned to a chromatic scale.

Most instruments access the chromatic scale by manipulating a 1-dimensional environment, like a string on a guitar or an air column in an oboe. What makes the steelpan unique and interesting to study is that the vibrations of different notes are all coupled together because the notes are all embedded in the same piece of steel.

read more

You need to be a member of When Steel Talks to add comments!

Join When Steel Talks

Votes: 0
Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Well yuh think we could come in the STATES
    And say we does research STEELPAN
    Yuh MAD OH ME LARD OOHHHH
    Joliet have more STEELPAN RESEARCH more than TRINIDAD
    Why neglect yuh culture ....

    But for a long time now I have had a vision of THEM embedding computer chips into the notes of the STEEPAN and taking the instrument to a WHOLE NOTHER LEVEL!!!

    • that has already been done here in t&t Claude. We have an electrical pan . I call it a synthesizer. That was invented at UWI years ago.There's a band in Arima called Rhapsody, they have a number of these electronic pans(syhthesizers}

This reply was deleted.