Making a pan involves swinging a sledgehammer to pound down the end of an oil drum into a shallow concave bowl, which forms the playing surface. That is grooved with a metal punch to define the areas of individual notes, which are raised slightly in convex curves. … Notes are arranged around the playing surface in rings.

How does the steel pan make sound?

On the face of it, a steelpan doesn’t look that complicated: It’s an instrument made out of a single drum that produces sound by hitting different sections of it with drum sticks.

How does a steel pan produce different notes?

But it is not as simple as in a string, because in a steel pan, notes of equal size can have different pitches, due to varying height and shape of the dent. … The acoustic “size” of the note is not set by the boundaries defined by the groove, but rather by the ending of the dent arch.