Some thoughts about Pan as an Instrument.
(Sorry for the long read...)
Quite often I hear people talking about a particular pan being a "good pan", or a recording being a "great recording".
It's normal to be impressed by the sound of a pan under the hands of a top player, or to enjoy the musical content of a recording, but as pan tuners we need to be able to separate those things from the actual sound that an instrument is making. There's a huge amount of energy being expended around what microphones to use for recording and where to put them and so on, but the simple fact is that that pan is relatively easy to record provided the source of the sound (the actual pan) is a quality instrument.
When I step back from the pizazz of a good performer and really start to analyze the sound of the pan being played or recorded, there are a few things I like to listen for:
- Is the pan truly in tune?
- Are there any notes that are "wobbling"?
- Is the timbre across the entire range of the pan consistent, or at a minimum does it at least change consistently across the whole range of the pan?
- Are any notes "breaking" or "barking" ?
- Does the instrument have a reasonable dynamic range, or do notes start distorting and pitch-bending at higher volumes?
- Do any notes have "gurgles" on them?
- Does every note produce a distinct, discernable pitch?
- Does the pan "buzz" ?
If I get a chance to actually work on a pan, then there are a few more things I'm going to look for:
- Is every note easy to adjust?
- Do all the notes adjust the same way?
- Is the pan physically smooth?
- Does every note have a good, crisp "feel" or response?
- How many notes rely on the player finding the exact "sweet spot" in order to produce a note?
- Does the harmonic structure stay consistent (or change uniformly) across the range of the instrument?
- Does every note on the pan actually work, or are there some notes that can only have a Fundamental in tune but nothing else, not even an Octave?
- Does the pan have a pronounced "Skirt Tone" ?
These sound like a lot of things to consider. But consider this: on a concert grand piano, does one even have to ask any of these questions? When was the last time some of the notes on a concert grand didn't really work? Does a pianist ever have to find the sweet spot on a piano key in order just to get even a mediocre sound out of that note? If the pianist runs up the scale of the instrument, are notes with bright timbres interspersed with notes with darker timbres?
Of course, in the context of a Grand Piano, these questions sound ridiculous and rhetorical, but on Pan.... well, it is widely accepted that "This is just the way Pan sounds".
This "just the way Pan sounds" mindset is a huge barrier to getting Pan accepted into the mainstream. Until Pans can be played alongside other mainstream instruments without a need to apologize for or defend their deficiencies, our artform will continue to struggle for acceptance.
Let's take a closer look some of these points.
How to analyze a Pan.
It might be useful to read this post when you have a pan in front of you that you can play and listen to.
To really analyze an instrument, find a truly quiet place with little or no ambient noise. Ideally, stand about 10ft away from the pan, and have someone slowly and deliberately play each note on the pan several times before moving onto the next note. Play each note all over the note surface and see how the sound changes. Move up and down the scale a half-step at a time, or play a major scale (see the examples below).
Listen how each note sounds in relation to the neighboring notes. Describe in words the timbre and feel of each note as it is played. I use terms like "Bright, Dark, Splatty, Growling, Gurgling, Pitch-Bending/Unstable, Choked, Dirty, Clean" to refer to the sound of the note.
Regarding the feel or responsiveness of a note, I use "Spongy, Flabby, Splatty, Choked, Loose, Crisp, Tight, Pooky (meaning the note has a tiny sweet spot)"
Repeat this exercise at varying volumes. Make the first pass at pianissimo, and gradually work your way up to forte.
It can be useful to perform this exercise with two instruments side by side too.
The point is to listen critically to the timbre and response of each note on the pan
Is the Pan in Tune?
This sounds like a rhetorical question, but there are more than a few recordings out there where the pan is NOT in tune, including some by internationally regarded artists.
In the 1970's and 1980's, and even into the 1990's, the artform "got away" with pans not being properly tuned, since Pan was a bright new shiny toy in the music world. Today, in the 21st century, it's time we stopped hiding behind the novelty factor and started to accept the often valid criticism leveled against the sound of Pans by those who play instruments that are highly in tune and well evolved.
Wobbling/Out Of Tune Pull
(Note - I'll post an example video here at some point)
This a widespread problem with Pan in general. It's a phenomenon that most often affects Octave Pairs - for example, C4 and C5 on a C Lead Pan, or the G3 and G4 on the rim of a Double Second, or the Eb3 and Eb4 on the rim of a Cello. However, there are other scenarios where it rears it's head too.
Out Of Tune Pull (OOTP) occurs when the higher note of an Octave Pair sounds, well, out of tune. However, if the lower note is damped (say with a magnet) the high note will sound clean and crisp. As soon as the magnet is removed from the low note, the high note will suddenly "wobble" and sound sharp and/or flat (yes: and/or).
If one uses a strobe to analyze a note exhibiting OOTP, the display will lose clarity and appear to jump around. It won't show the note as being sharp or flat, but instead shows an indeterminate pitch.
As soon as a magnet is placed the on the low note, the strobe becomes crystal clear when the high note is played. Remove the magnet, the strobe acts crazy again.
The issue can occur in reverse too - sometimes the lower note will sound better when the higher note is damped. This is particularly true when the higher note is in the range Bb5 and above. Sometimes the C5 on a Lead Pan sounds terrible until the C6 is damped. This can have a knock-on effect where the C4 sounds bad because the C5 sounds bad because the C6 is causing OOTP. As soon as the C6 is damped, the C5 suddenly starts working and as a result the C4 sounds better.
No amount of tuning is going to fix this problem.. THIS IS A GEOMETRIC ISSUE, and sometimes inherent in the actual layout of a Pan. To fix it, one has to change the physical shape of the pan or the notes. I'm writing an entire post devoted to this, and I'll post a link to it here when I publish it.
Timbral Consistency
One of the hallmarks of any great instrument is that there are no notes that stick out as "good" or "bad" notes. All the notes sound pretty much the same.
It may be true that as one runs up or down the scale, the timbre changes between the high end and low end, but this change is gradual and uniform.
It's also true that the timbre might change as the instrument is played louder or softer; but again, this change is uniform across the instrument.
It's quite common for pans to have a few dull/dark notes and a few bright ones. I'm often told "Hey, I'm sending you my C Lead for tuning, can you fix the B on the rim? It sounds kind of wooden. I'd prefer it to sound like my G." This is never a conversation that occurs with other instruments.
Achieving timbral consistency on a pan can be a challenge, but usually comes down to three things - note structure, note size, and note placement.
That wooden sounding B4 often is simply too big - resulting the in the Second Octave being flat. By shortening the note, it's possible to raise the Second Octave, making the note brighter. This problem often affects the Bb4 and even the A4 on Lead Pans. At the other end of the scale, the low notes sounding thin and raspy is usually due to the notes being too small. To sum up : Size Matters.
Regarding Note Structure, quite often a note is not "pulling" to the higher octave note. For example, the F#3 on a Double Second might not be getting any help from the F#4. This can occur even when both notes have Fundamental, Octave, Fifth, and Second Octave. The cause of this is that the note is too symmetric. Notes need to be tuned asymmetrically in order for the mallet to excite the Octave and pull to the higher note. I'll make a post about that at some point.
Another issue revolving around Note Structure is the amount of "air" inside the note. A very inflated note will often not properly connect to its octave-note. Running the air out of the note results in a physically flatter panel that vibrates better and tends to pull more easily to the higher octave.
Note Placement dramatically affects the potential consistency of a pan. Apart from the issues with Out Of Tune Pull, note placement can result in notes having NO pull to their higher octave notes. This is especially an issue on pans where rim notes are running tangentially , and the higher octave for the rim note is placed directly in front of the rim note. In order words, there are some layouts where it may not be possible to achieve real consistency across the instrument. I'll make a post explaining this in more detail coming up.
Dynamic Range : Barking Notes
Many pans have quite a limited dynamic range. Time and again we're warning beginners not to over-play their pans, partly to prevent them going out of tune, and partly because the instrument just sounds bad when played too hard. Of course, in the next breath we show them the excitement and energy of Panorama, but that's a whole separate discussion....
The notes that suffer the most from "barking" are usually the lower notes on any instrument - the C4-E4 on a Lead, the E3-Bb3 on Seconds, and the C3-G3 on Guitars. On many Bass sets, the entire instrument barks as soon as it's played with any volume. One of the main reasons for this is that the low note panels are undersized on many pans.
The layouts we're playing today evolved in the 1940's and 50's. At that time, tuners were only attempting to tune the Fundamental on note panels, and so there was much more leeway to find a structure that was stable since they could essentially disregard the overtones. There's a great video by Pete Seeger called "Music From Oildrums" that gives solid look at the techniques being used and sounds being created in 1956.
Today, we're trying to impose a whole range of constraints on notes - at a minimum we're looking for Fundamental and Octave, usually a Fifth, and the Second Octave if possible. This means that our options to just force a note into a particular stable physical shape are somewhat limited.
The upshot of this is that many of the popular layouts we're using in 2022 are flawed at their core. The pioneers who laid them out did not have the modern tuning regimen in mind when they did so - they were simply inventing the instrument at the time. It's naïve to think that they were concerned with whether a particular layout would allow the Second Octave to be tuned, at a time when they were only tuning the Fundamental.
The proof that these panels are undersized is threefold -
- It's often a challenge to get the Fundamental and Overtones down to the right pitches. This is not something that occurs in the mid-register of most pans.
- Often, the Second Octave is sharp and will remain sharp no matter how much the panel is manipulated. It turns out that the Second Octave is related very closely to the LENGTH of the note panel.
- Low notes tend to drift sharp more easily that mid-register notes when the note panel is "shaken". The panel has had to be loosened in order to get the pitches down, and the trade-off is a lack of stability.
Couple this with the fact that barrels these days are increasingly made with thinner steel, and suddenly we're in a world where low notes have a very limited dynamic range.
There are some workarounds for this, and I'll discuss them in another post. However, there is no substitute for making the notes the correct size on steel of the correct thickness. This was the main driving force towards the use of thicker steel and oversize barrels when I worked at Panyard between 2001 and 2006.
Gurgles
The term "gurgles" refers to a less-than-pure timbre that note panels make, usually when there's high frequency beating going on. The sound that this makes is along the lines of "vrrrrt!" on the initial attack when the note is struck.
This often affects notes in the range A4 and upward. There are a couple of sources of gurgles
- Incorrect Harmonic tuning. For example, a G5 might have G6 as the octave, and G6+70c as the harmonic. Usually, the Harmonic needs to be a whole step above the Octave for this to go away.
- Interference from adjacent notes. For example, the E5 on a Double Second might be affected by the Harmonic on the side of the adjacent C5 - the E5 Octave is E6, but the C5 Harmonic might be E6+40c, or even E6. The C5 Harmonic needs to be tuned to Eb6 (a step below the E5 Octave), or F6 (or higher). It should NOT be tuned to D6 since at this point it starts to make the C5 sound bad.
- Interference from the Octave of a rim note Harmonic. Consider the E5 on Double Seconds again. Often it's placed close to the Bb3. Now, the Fifth on the Bb3 is F5, and the Octave of the Fifth is F6. If the Octave of the Fifth is flat, we have F6-40c adjacent to E6, and this can cause the E5 to sound bad; in turn this can affect the E4 as a knock on effect.
Most of these can be addressed through tuning. I'll post a more detailed discussion of this later.
Discernable Pitches
This sounds almost crazy, but yes - does the pan produce discernable pitches? Can the pitches be clearly and repeatedly isolated on a strobe tuner with no ambiguity?
This challenge exists especially on Bass Pans, where there is a huge acoustic issue facing the artform. We've come to accept that the low notes on Basses need to be played together with their higher Octave-Note in order for the listener to deduce the pitch of the low note.
This is not necessary for any other instrument, and there's no good reason why we should endure it with Pan. It is perfectly possible to build and tune Bass Pans that have crystal clear low notes that are not dependent on their Octave-Note in order for the listener to discern their pitch.
Buzzing Barrels and Singing Skirts
An unfortunate side effect of making pans from industrial containers is that industrial containers were never designed for making musical instruments.
A common problem across the artform is pans that have a buzz. While certain tuners dismiss buzzes as irrelevant, the fact is I've yet to meet a player or director who didn't complain about it.
The most common cause of buzzing is not debris caught up in the crevice near the rim between the skirt of the pan and the bowl of the pan. It is instead the actual connection between the skirt and the bowl - the folded over crimp or bead that is the rim, commonly known as the "chime". The chime is usually sealed with a rubber or silicone gasket which is inserted before the skirt and head are crimped together.
This chime is designed to be watertight up to a point - barrels have to undergo various stress tests based on what they are going to hold. Among these tests is one where the container is filled with liquid and dropped from height (say off a forklift) to see if it will remain watertight or if the chime will burst, and how much deformation the chime can withstand.
When pans are sunk, there's a large amount of gradual deformation of the chime - typically it slowly unravels as the head is hammered down into a bowl, and then is locally deformed further by the areas that are the back of the channels between the rim notes. On some pans, especially Basses, the chime is not even close to circular once the pan is ready for tuning. This deformation allows for movement between the head and skirt,
A secondary factor is that once the pan is sunk and shaped, it's common to burn it to anneal the steel. This burning process tends to destroy some of the gasket between the head and skirt, leaving a metal-on-metal interface that is ripe for buzzing.
To some extent it's possible to limit or remove buzzes by even further deforming the chime, or adding a weld to the chime, but there are no guarantees that it will permanently disappear. Lately I've had some success by running a wooden wedge on the inside vertical face of the chime to try and pin it back so that there isn't much of a gap inside the chime.
However, in the long term the only real solution to this is to manufacture a barrel specifically for making pans, that has no chance of buzzing due to the way it's designed.
When I worked at Panyard, we came up with such a system in 2001, and called it the Solid Hoop. We shared this in person with a number of people, some of whom saw the advantages and some of whom were married to tradition. It's gratifying to see that this system is slowly gaining traction with builders who are serious about making quality instruments. I'll add a post at some point on how to make your own Solid Hoop barrels, literally from scratch.
The Solid Hoop is a real solution to the buzz problem, but even Solid Hoop pans can still suffer from "skirt tones".
Skirt tones are one of the last major frontiers in pan research. A skirt tone is exactly what it's called - a strong, well defined tone that is generated by the skirt of the pan. In many instances the skirt tone is not a major problem, but when it is a problem, it's a real headache.
The skirt tone is a problem when it is tuned close to the same pitch as one of the rim notes on a pan. It will affect that note in a few ways:
- by increasing the sustain of that note in a way different to the rest of the pan.
- causing the note to sound out of tune, since the skirt tone can be very audible and conflicts with the note
- causing the note to have a very short sustain and sound "hollow" - the skirt saps a lot of energy from the note and prevents the note from exciting its Octave Pair.
Skirt tones can affect every voice in the ensemble, but is most frequently found on Leads and Basses.
The real issue with skirt tones is that there seems to be no way to change or eliminate them. Among techniques I and others have used that seem not to influence the skirt tone in any way:
- Physically deform the skirt by deliberately hammering dents into it
- Burning the skirt with a blow torch
- welding metal pieces to the skirt
Things I've tried that have limited impact on the skirt tone (dampening it but not changing the pitch):
- Adding large magnetic rubber strips to the skirt
- Adding Gorilla or Duct tape to the skirt
- Adding self-adhesive door trim to the bottom of the skirt.
These techniques all have some effect on the amplitude of the skirt tone, and very little influence on the pitch. An unfortunate downside of these is that the rim notes as a whole resonate less when the skirt is massively damped.
I believe the way forward with this is to abandon the use of thin steel for the skirt of the pan, and to find a way to make skirts out of wood or some composite material.
Easy, Consistent Adjustment
As a novice tuner I often heard it said that there are different techniques required for different voices in the ensemble. This always struck me as odd, since the note panels obey the same laws of physics regardless of what instrument they're on, and so the adjustment from note to note should be pretty much the same.
It is an absurd notion that one has to hit a note panel with a hammer, see whether it went sharp or flat, and then go from there to put it in tune. When did one ever have to turn the tuning peg on an acoustic guitar and see whether the string went sharp or flat? Stringed instruments work uniformly instrument to instrument, string to string, and there is no good reason why pans cannot do the same.
One of the reasons many aspiring tuners give up is due to the fact that it is often NOT true on many pans. Eventually the number of "special cases" becomes so high that it becomes overwhelming and people just walk away from trying to master this.
It is possible to build Cello, Second and Lead Pans where all the notes adjust in exactly the same way.
A good pan is easy to tune, and might not go very far out of tune in the first place.
Often, the first time I encounter an instrument, I will take the time to ensure that every note is working in the same way. This may take more time to do "upfront" but in the long term there's a significant payoff as the pan is easier to tune and generally more stable.
Sweet Spots & Crisp Feel
I've often been asked if I could "enlarge the sweet spot" on a particular pan.
The notion of "sweet spots" is something that many players have come to accept. Pan is pretty much the only instrument where we even have this discussion. As mentioned earlier, no performer would accept that a piano key has sweet spots, and that these spots are different on different keys.
In general, pan notes that have sweet spots are the result of poorly constructed instruments. It's not about spending more time tuning the pan, it's about building it right in the first place. Notes with sweet spots are harder to tune and more prone to go out of tune.
It's possible to build pans (even as a novice) where the note panel can be struck pretty much anywhere near the center and the note will sound and feel great; even playing far from the center still yields a respectable sound.
In Closing
If you've made it this far you deserve a medal. There's a lot material to read here, and a lot to think about. Most players are not aware of any of these issues, and many pan builders are not taking them into consideration either.
To take the artform forward, as tuners we need to actively address each and every one of these points; and to retrofit as many fixes as possible to pans that exhibit any of these deficiencies.