In love with the sound of steel
In 1992 whilst out for a walk in the city centre of Bern Switzerland, a beautiful warm sound caught my attention. As i followed the sound, i found two men busking with their instruments. They were Trinidadians playing their national instrument, the Steelpan.
Although i had heard this instrument played before by local Swiss people, this was different, these two men had their very own authentic way of playing it. The warm sound, the harmonies and rhythm captured my attention instantly and i couldn’t resist walking up to them to find out a bit more about them.
It turned out that they were based in Switzerland as well, both teaching the art form, performing and occasionally busking as well. My enthusiasm and intrigue for this instrument and the music was quickly apparent to them and, after i visited them a couple of times, they decided to take me out “on the road” with them. I became the 3rd man in their group. I was basically thrown straight into deep water as i learned to play the Steelpan “live” in front of Saturday afternoon crowds. Crowds that helped put pressure on me to learn “on-the-go” and quickly avoid making the same mistake twice as i attempted to keep up.
Fast forward 9 years and i was now a Steelpan music instructor running two steel orchestras and also taking part at the world Steelband festival in Trinidad and Tobago competing with our own 60-piece-orchestra against the worlds top bands!
In 2006 i finally decided it was time to learn how to make and tune Steelpans. This wasn’t an easy task because you couldn’t just go to the library and pick up a manual on how to tune steel.
I visited several gifted Steelpan craftsmen in three countries and spent a year hammering and trialling away before i had cracked the secret of how to produce an instrument with an acceptable tone that could be recognised as coming from a proper, well-tuned instrument!
Here’s the orchestra that took part in Trinidad’s World Steelpan Festival
From Steelpan to Handpan
Apart from playing gigs in a Steelband trio with my new friends, I also had the good fortune to be introduced to two very special people in the world of Steel pans…Sterling Betancourt MBE and Russell Henderson MBE who were based in London in the UK.
These men were Steelpan pioneers, actively involved in the creation of the original Steelpan instrument and it’s whole art form. Sterling was part of TASPO Steelband, who played at the Festival of Britain in 1951. This was the first ever Steelband to bring the sound of steel to the UK all the way from the Caribbean (see the video below):
Sterling and I developed a great musical friendship despite the age gap between us, and I ended up playing in his trio for several years. It was a fantastic opportunity, and an amazing experience going from originally hearing the sweet sound of steel on the streets of Switzerland to playing music with the very people who invented the instrument!
The Handpan sound is softer, more gentle and I found it started influencing my Steelpan playing too. Here’s an instrument i made which I’m playing with foam on the mallets giving the effect of warmer, more mellow tones with less accent on the over tones.
Moving forward to 2009, living in London, having moved to the UK from Lausanne in Switzerland, I was teaching Steelpan music in Primary and secondary schools in and around London.
One day I received a phone call from an entrepreneur who was looking for someone who could tune Steelpans. He wanted to establish a Handpan manufacturing business and needed someone who could make and tune these instruments. I explained that while I was aware of the Hang, as I’d seen it being played in the streets of Bern and elsewhere, I wasn’t sure how close the tuning method was to the Steelpan, however, I like a challenge, so I agreed to be the Handpan maker and tuner for his business.
It was 2012 when i first put hammer to steel to create a Handpan.
It took me another year to learn how to make and tune a Handpan, and although much of it was related to Steelpan production techniques, i had to “unlearn” a lot in terms of tuning as searched for that mellow warm tone associated with the Handpan where much of its higher overtones are suppressed.
On the 1st January 2014 we launched our first instrument. I’ve worked with several people in the UK and in Switzerland and haven’t put my tuning hammers down since!