Steel Pan Tuning Handbook

Steel Pan Tuning
- a Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning

- the one and only book of it's kind
- now on the Internet!

Presented here in full format, including pictures and drawings.

Web presentation done by the author, with courtesy of the publisher, Musikmuseet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Printed version of the handbook written by Ulf Kronman. Stockholm, December 1991.

The handbook was converted to web format by Ulf Kronman. Stockholm, July 1995, and PDF format in August 1998.

This book is dedicated to the rhythmic people of Trinidad and Tobago and their master tuners.

Cover design and layout of printed edition by Logomotion

The web material and the PDF is copyrighted to the author, but may be copied and distributed for non-commercial use as long as the source of the material is stated.

Steel Pan Tuning - a Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning by Ulf Kronman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

About the author

Ulf Kronman, 38, is a Swedish physicist and steel pan player. He has studied at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and now pursues post-graduate studies in acoustics at the institute.

In 1979 Kronman went to the Caribbean and fell in love with the steel pan - a unique instrument and the only genuinely new invention in acoustic musical instruments during the twentieth century. He became a proponent of steelband music in Sweden and a founding member of the Stockholm steelband Hot Pans.

In 1987 he started to systematically investigate the manufacturing process and the acoustics of the pan, using advanced facilities of the Department of Music Acoustics at the Royal Institute of Technology.

Kronman has combined his keen interest in the making and tuning of pans with his knowledge of acoustics to produce this book - a thorough and detailed documentation of the steel pan and how to make it and tune it.

Make: Magazine - Steel Pan Tuning

Sean Michael Ragan gives a very positive review of the Steel Pan Tuning handbook in an article in the Make: Magazine.

Some quotes from the review:

In fact, even as I was out in the backyard brutalizing everyone’s eardrums, Swedish physicist and musician Ulf Kronman was just putting the finishing touches on a book that, today, remains the seminal work on the practical aspects of steel pan manufacture. Steel Pan Tuning: A Handbook for Steel Pan Making and Tuning was first published in December 1991, based on fieldwork Kronman did in 1989 and 1990 with steel pan tuners Lawrence “Egar” Mayers and Rudy Smith.

... you will not find a better reference than Kronman’s book. For me, at least, it’s hard to imagine a better reference. The practical section of the book covers everything from choosing the 55-gallon drum to fine tuning the pan, finishing it, and mounting it on a stand, and the appendices are filled with meticulous measurements of real pans of many types and the original tools used to make them. A detailed theory section addresses the acoustical physics of a steel pan ...