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| Freddy Harris III plays the steelpan six-bass in Brooklyn. |
WHEN STEELPAN VIRTUOSO FREDDYHarris III heads to his gig, he doesn’t just bring a bass player—he brings eight of them. And they’re not playing the kind of bass you are imagining.
Harris is the director and arranger of the Sesame Flyers, a steelpan orchestra based in Brooklyn, New York. The band is made up of steelpans in all shapes and sizes, from lead “tenor” pans to the lower-pitched “guitar” and “cello” pans that handle chords and inside lines. Rather than use bass guitars, Freddy’s orchestra gets its low end from the mighty bass pans—batteries of booming 55-gallon oil drums hammered and tuned into fully chromatic instruments. To pull off their bass lines, players twirl their arms and whip their bodies around like cartoon octopi, striking notes behind their back while simultaneously dancing to Caribbean beats.
According to Harris, the steel bass sound is one of the world’s best-kept secrets. “The tone is ridiculous,” he says. “The steel drum is an instrument that comes with its own natural reverberation. When you hit a note on the steel bass, you don’t just hear the note—you hear the 3rd, 5th, and octave if you listen carefully. All of the harmonics are really present.”
Today, steel drum orchestras can be found in cities such as New York, London and Toronto, but they are rooted in the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The first steelpans were created there in the mid 20th century by musicians who repurposed the plentiful steel barrels left over by the local petroleum industry. In the earliest steel bands, bass duties were held down by a simple instrument called the dudup, a big drum with two undefined dummy notes that was used to drive the rhythm. Since then, steelpan in Trinidad has blossomed into a complex musical culture and symbol of national pride. At Carnival time, orchestras with up to 100 players face off in competitions for up to $2,000,000 in prize money. Meanwhile, the steel bass has evolved into a versatile instrument. Pan makers have experimented with a number of different bass layouts, including four-, nine-, and twelvebarrel variants, but the six-barrel “six-bass” has become the industry standard, laid out in 5ths and 4ths as shown in Fig. 1.
Replies
Well it gives me great pleasure to see the layout of the 6 bass made years ago in Guyana of a different setting , many thanks for the Diagram Freddy 111,,indeed there is nothing as true Steelpan,,Natural Pan,,,keep on doing your thing,,,,God Bless.
I would like to find out if the note lay-out is the same as the G-Pan. When I visit New York this year for Labour Day [ Gods willing] I would be paying special attention to Sesame Flyers bass lines, just to see how Freddy come up against Boogsie and decease Bradley, the two greatest arrangers of bass music.