G l i s s a n d o  S t e e l O r c h e s t r a

At Glissando's panyard the pans were made on site.  The process of making a pan is very labour intensive as, apart from some mass produced pans which are suitable for children to learn on, all the work is done by hand.  Pan making is an art, no two handmade pans are quite the same and Parris has many years experience of making pans.  The result is that the pans have been developed through trial and error over the years, not only by him but also other pan makers, have evolved into the best designs with the best layout available.

A typical tenor pan covers more than two octaves (from the low D to the top F#, a range of 28 notes). Since the pitch of a note depends on its surface area, it follows that the pan must have enough surface area to contain the notes plus the inevitable spaces in between. It's therefore necessary to beat the flat circular end of the pan into a deep convex shape and doing this, while stretching the metal evenly, requires a lot of metal beating, patience and the ability to put up with a lot of noise.

All steel pans, from Tenor to Bass, start off as part of a steel barrel or drum		It's a labour intensive job, the first step being 'sinking'. This is the process of creating a convex surface big enough to hold all the notes.
The shape of the dish must be precise, so it's marked out in rings each of which must be beaten down to a particular depth.		Having beaten the whole bottom surface to stretch the metal the depth of the centre is being measured.
The outer notes are marked out using a spring steel strip aligned with outer and inner marks.		Templates, whose shape has been determined from experience are positioned by eye to make best use of the space available.
Once their positions are determined the inner notes can be marked out.		The marked out lines are used to position a centrepunch which is used to beat out the edges of the notes.

These pictures show only the start of the processes needed to make a pan but the last photograph shows what is recognisably becoming a musical instrument. Other processes which are necessary include tempering, where the pan is heated over a large gas burner (charcoal fires were originally used for this), tuning the notes, cleaning and rubbing down the pan before it is chrome plated and final tuning after the chroming has been done.
Tuning a pan is a combination of art and science in that although an electronic meter can be used to measure the pitch of a note, changing the pitch of one note can often alter the pitch of other notes around it either because the surface area or the tension on the steel has changed. Thus tuning is an art involving more factors than can be scientifically measured. When pans are played hard, as is sometimes necessary to be heard in the Carnival procession this can beat the pans out of tune so that after Carnival there are likely to be a dozen or more pans which need re-tuning.

Tenors, double seconds, cellos and sometimes quadrophonics are normally chrome plated, while the 4 pan tenor bass and 6 pan bass pans are normally painted as their number and size doesn't warrant chrome plating.

As can be seen from the pictures on either side, the finished pans (double tenors in this case) are beautiful objects as well as being accurately tuned musical instruments.