Michelle Loubon

In prepa­ra­tion for the an­nu­al?Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, steel­band arrangers would usu­al­ly spend long hours at pa­n­yards per­fect­ing their mu­si­cal ren­di­tions. Now, new­ly-de­vel­oped soft­ware will al­low them to fine-tune their pan arrange­ments us­ing au­then­tic steel­band tones be­fore they even hit the pa­n­yard.

The soft­ware, de­vel­oped by St Au­gus­tine elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing grad­u­ate David Chow, 24, can be played on key­boards and MI­DI in­stru­ments through a com­put­er. His In­digisounds Dig­i­tal Steel­pan sam­ple (steel­band soft­ware) li­brary was de­vel­oped with sup­port from Prof Bri­an Copeland, who re­ceived the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go medal for his work on the G-Pan, with whom he worked as a re­search en­gi­neer. Chow al­so worked with pan man­u­fac­tur­er An­tho­ny Dun­can to de­vel­op the steel­band soft­ware con­cept in­to a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able prod­uct.

"I?called it In­digisounds be­cause the steel­band is in­dige­nous to T&T," Chow ex­plained. "It is soft­ware that plays all the ranges of the steel­band that can be played on the key­board. In­stead of be­ing phys­i­cal­ly around the pan, you can hear some­thing as close as pos­si­ble to au­then­tic steel­band notes. You get to make use of stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy which en­ables all the steel­band sam­ples to be played."

The work was done us­ing the tenor, dou­ble tenor, dou­ble sec­onds, triple cel­lo, fourth cel­lo and quadro­phon­ic. Chow al­so in­clud­ed "en­gine-room"?sounds com­plete with cow­bells, tri­an­gles and iron.

Chow said:?"You can hear the 'voic­ing' of the pans. You can hear the har­monies of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. You can hear the clash and it can give a mod­u­lat­ed sound. In­stead of go­ing to the pa­n­yard with the song in your head like Boogsie, you would have an idea what will be played. It would be a lot eas­i­er to com­mu­ni­cate with the play­ers.

"It is the clos­est you would get to play­ing the ac­tu­al pan. You can place the steel­band tones and repli­cate a steel­band ac­cord­ing to its de­sired range." Com­ment­ing on the soft­ware's abil­i­ty to pro­duce fine steel­band mu­sic, he said:?"You can make a full steel­band.

You can play the en­tire or­ches­tra be­fore the band plays it.?When it comes to the dou­ble tenors, you could sep­a­rate it. You could make a whole change in the way in which steel­bands de­vel­op their mu­sic. It's like a gen­er­al ar­rang­ing tool."

Chow turned the steel­band soft­ware in­to a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able prod­uct by link­ing up with an es­tab­lished Ger­man com­pa­ny, Na­tive In­stru­ments. "You can­not cut out and paste my sam­ple. You can't take some­one's work and make mon­ey out of it. Once you buy my sam­ples you on­ly have ac­cess to two com­put­ers, so no one can boot­leg."

Chow said he got in­volved in e-com­merce so the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket would be able to ac­cess the In­digisounds soft­ware, which is tar­get­ed at a se­lect au­di­ence-peo­ple in­volved in mu­sic pro­duc­tion. "Be­fore this there were not good steel­band tones. You would cap­ture the 'dirt­i­ness' of the pan...a gal­vanised sound. This was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to merge the sci­ence and cre­ativ­i­ty in­to one," said Chow, whose mar­ket­ing tag line for the soft­ware is "Pan at your fin­ger­tips."?

Chow said his men­tors in­clude his fa­ther, Al­fred Chow, Prof Copeland, ace pan­nist Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, and arranger, Le­ston Paul. He worked with Sharpe and Paul on the al­bum Trib­ute to Mighty Spar­row (Slinger Fran­cis­co). Com­ment­ing on the soft­ware, Copeland said:?"It's like a steel or­ches­tra play­ing. You can record the dif­fer­ent parts of the mu­sic sep­a­rate­ly. It is more than just fa­cil­i­tat­ing. The arranger can change the tune much quick­er."

Arranger Le­ston Paul de­scribed the soft­ware as "a ster­ling achieve­ment." "I?have seen the growth and de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy over the years, from the ana­log to dig­i­tal. A project like this could have been done in Japan or Ger­many but it was done by a Tri­ni. Just like peo­ple re­fer to me as a mu­si­cal ge­nius, I think he is a "mu­si­cal ge­nius"?in his own right. "He has made us proud with his tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion. With young peo­ple like Chow, pan in­no­va­tion is in good hands."

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, con­tact DAC Acoustic Ser­vices via e-mail at con­tact@in­digisounds.com, or sales@in­digisounds.com, or call 868-787-8346.