Akiela Hope

Pan has al­ways been the source of en­joy­ment and rev­el­ry among the cit­i­zens of T&T, and now with the evo­lu­tion of the E-Pan the en­joy­ment is height­en­ing. Imag­ine stand­ing in front of a mam­moth crowd en­grossed in a mu­si­cal com­pe­ti­tion of steel. The crowd sway­ing, the per­form­ers danc­ing, and the pan's glaze from the lights re­flec­tion, make things come alive. Hav­ing win­ning songs such as; Woman on the Bass (All Stars), Bat­tle Zone (Sil­ver Stars) or even Mu­si­cal Vengeance (Phase II), all played on the E-Pan. This is just a small im­agery where pan can lead in the near fu­ture. Salmon Cu­pid, the in­ven­tor of the E-Pan, is an Am­bas­sador for T&T, and a Cana­di­an based, Trinida­di­an born pan teacher. He has played with bands such as St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive Steel Or­ches­tra (The Green Ma­chine), and Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra.

Even be­fore Cu­pid be­gan play­ing pan, he re­al­ized it was some­what of a chal­lenge to gen­er­ate a good acoustic sound from pan bands, when ac­com­pa­nied by a mi­cro­phone. He then set out to bridge that gap; not know­ing how and when it will be done, but hav­ing the fore­sight of this in­ven­tion. "Turn­ing the tra­di­tion­al steel pan in­to an elec­tron­ic for­mat in­volved a lot of cir­cuit­ry and a com­put­er, which was built from scratch. Pan tones are just one of the tones that the E-Pan is ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing, and a lot of soft­ware had to be writ­ten. The E-Pan is just an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of the steel pan," Cu­pid said in an in­ter­view with Gayelle the chan­nel. "The E-Pan can play any par­tic­u­lar tone from dif­fer­ent mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, such as the Vi­o­lin, Gui­tar, Trum­pet, Pi­ano etc. It changes oc­tave, and has an oc­tave con­trol switch and ped­al which al­lows the play­er to go up to Tenor and down to bass.

"Be­fore, pan sticks were re­quired to play the tra­di­tion­al steel in­stru­ment; most play­ers used two sticks while those that were more skilled used four. Now with the E-Pan you can sim­ply use your hands," he ex­plained. "You can al­so use head­sets to avoid dis­turb­ing oth­er pan­nist, while you im­prove your craft silent­ly. There­fore, in a class­room set­ting, you can have a com­plete or­ches­tra and the teacher who can al­so wear a head­set will be hear­ing every­one. The E-Pan has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the play­er press­ing a but­ton on the in­stru­ment to ac­cess dif­fer­ent tones of tuners of their chioce. This fea­ture al­lows for our tuner's steel­pan tone and colour to be pre­served," he added. "The in­ven­tion of the E-Pan is a his­tor­i­cal step, in the his­to­ry of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment and T&T, and was not de­signed as a re­place­ment, but as an ad­di­tion to the fam­i­ly of the tra­di­tion­al steel pan.

The de­vice is a tech­no­log­i­cal mas­ter piece, and it will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way steel pan is learnt. The pan which is not made of steel but most­ly rub­ber padding is an elec­tron­ic mir­rored ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al steel pan. With years of tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the E-Pan which was a 25year old idea, from Mr. Cu­pid, is now com­plete and patent­ed world­wide. One of Cu­pid's biggest aims and ob­jec­tives is to put Steel­pan on the map on a larg­er scale. His dream is to see steel­pan re­ceive Gram­mys. Since de­vel­op­ing the E-Pan, he has al­so been able to use his in­ven­tion as a plat­form to en­cour­age young peo­ple to pur­sue their dreams. Cu­pid has done pro­duc­tion ver­sions for the Tenor E-Pan and the Dou­ble Sec­onds E-Pan and at present is work­ing on the Dou­ble Gui­tar E-Pan.

DE­SIGN AD­VAN­TAGES

En­ables mu­si­cian to play in the con­ven­tion­al way with­out hav­ing to re­learn an­oth­er method to mas­ter the new in­stru­ment, al­so elim­i­nat­ing the need for stud­ied stage po­si­tion­ing and main­tain­ing prop­er in­to­na­tion

No need for re-tun­ing, rust­ing and pre­ma­ture re­place­ment

Durable, com­pact and light-weight to fa­cil­i­tate ease of trans­porta­tion

De­liv­ers con­sis­tent sound and tonal qual­i­ty

Eas­i­er for stage set up and po­si­tion­ing than reg­u­lar steel drums

Can be pro­duced in sev­er­al en­hanced ver­sions to cov­er the com­plete or­ches­tral range of a con­ven­tion­al steel­pan en­sem­ble

Pro­vides ac­cess to the sounds of just about every mu­si­cal in­stru­ment which is built-in to the in­stru­ment

For more in­for­ma­tion about the E-Pan please vis­it www.napeinc.com