Teaching and Learning Steelband:

A Caribbean Perspective

The process of teaching and learning steelband music in the Caribbean is unique and has many lessons for North American musicians trained in the Western canon. While many Caribbean musicians are trained in western music notation and some Caribbean steelbands use sheet music, by and large steelband music is taught and learned by rote here, and this pedagogical approach is true of legacy, school, and church steelbands throughout the country’s entire steelband scene. Despite the fact that steelpan note layout patterns are based on western music harmony and music structures, the instrument is not typically taught in the leveled approach common in the United States and the UK.

In large legacy steelbands, various agents collaborate to facilitate the teaching and learning process. Arrangers create the music and teach it to section leaders and captains, captains drill the various sections of the steelband, and individual players fill out the ranks, and directors organize all of the people and administrative parts of the organization. Within this loosely hierarchical system, arrangers assume a heightened importance as they are responsible for the actual creation of the musical arrangements for any given steelband. Their level of social standing is further heightened by the lack of sheet music available. Regardless of capabilities, players need arrangers to learn the composition, there is little individual agency in this regard.

In small steelbands, such as church steelbands, the director is often the arranger and takes on an added responsibility of working with the steelband and church leadership to select music for performance and arrange it suitably for performance. The organizational structure of church steelbands results in the director/arranger being solely responsible for creating and delivering the music for teaching and learning.

Many Caribbean societies enjoy robust technology infrastructure and access to smartphones or digital technology is common. Within church steelbands, digital tools such as smartphones are utilized regularly in the rote teaching and learning process. Steelpan players regularly video record one another working on new music material and use these recordings as notation for learning parts. Arrangers/directors often record parts for players missing from rehearsal so these absent players can catch up and practice individually without the immediate reliance on leadership for notes and musical content.

Many steelband arrangers and experienced players also live abroad in Caribbean diasporic enclaves and there are several instances in which Caribbean church steelbands use arrangers living abroad to create music for various worship service performances. An excellent example of this phenomenon is Cedar Hall Moravian church of Jennings Village, Antigua. The steelband’s arranger is Ralph Foster, who currently resides in the UK. Foster creates unique score notation and sends the scores digitally to the church steelband via the encrypted smartphone app WhatsApp.

“I am Anointed” WhatsApp Notation, Ralph Foster (right)

Foster’s methodology for arranging tunes for steelbands balances technology and traditional methods of learning, yet it is similar in many ways to countless other steelband arrangers across Antigua (and the greater Caribbean). Using performance practice and institutional memory, the Cedar Hall steelband realizes the arrangement and makes recordings for Foster, playing parts or entire sections of the piece for Foster live via WhatsApp phone or video chat and then solicit feedback directly from the arranger in real time. Leveraging technology in this manner facilitates efficient teaching and learning despite the absence of formalized western music notation. The process encourages individual steelband members to take their own notes in paper notebooks as well, thus completing a teaching/learning feedback loop that supports creativity and rewards individual agency within the team (steelband) setting.

Steelband member sketch book, Cedar Hall Moravian (right)

Unique Notation

Despite the fact that Antiguan church steelbands have traditionally learned music via the rote tradition, there are countless examples of steelbands and individual steelpan players using short-hand or newly designed methods for notating their music. Notable Caribbean steelband arranger Ray Holman was/is fond of writing down chord changes in jazz/popular music shorthand, the late Jit Samaroo famously wrote out the melody of the lead steelpans for his “Pan in A Minor” using traditional western music notation; however, countless steelbands utilize various methods of non-western notation in order to capture and document their steelband music. The historical precedents of steelbands developing unique notation are many and spread across the Caribbean diaspora. This methodology of non-typical notation typically relies on the score notation to only be a representation of the pitch names and thus requires rote singing or demonstrating of the associated rhythms.

Although rote learning is the predominant style of teaching in Caribbean steelbands, some steelbands rely on these unique modified notation systems for teaching and learning to supplement (and at times become the primary mode of delivery) the typical rote style of music delivery. Toria Wallace, for example, leads the steelband program at Spring Garden Moravian church (Antigua) where two steelbands comprised of youth and adult members rehearse and perform in worship service regularly. Wallace scores her arrangements via traditional western music notation via her laptop computer, delivers the notes for the new music to the steelband by rote, but encourages steelband members to take notes and create individualized scratch symbols to notate the music in a way that makes sense on an individual level. The process has the look and feel of the American shape-note singing notation, though it has no tangible connection to the latter vernacular tradition. Regardless, by encouraging steelband members to create their own music notation to remember arrangements, Wallace empowers the individual players to become even more invested in the music while ensuring that retention and/or retrieval of older repertoire is much more efficient and long lasting.

Other steelbands create unique methods of music notation that are instituted steelband wide by the arrangers. These unique notation systems are often based in western music theory and harmony, but do not utilize western music notation and instead focus more intently on lyrics (often scripture or psalms) balanced with rote teaching to deliver new musical arrangements to their steelbands. An excellent example is the notation system of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran church developed by Jacqui Phoenix and Lorenzo Hodge. The steelband program here has two parts, an intergenerational church steelband that performs at worship service and two school steelbands comprised of students from the large primary/secondary school operated by the church. In these steelbands, printed sheet music of their unique notation system is distributed to the players and the steelband is taught from this notation.  

“Freedom and Dignity” arranged by Lorenzo Hodge (right)

Hodge is literate in western music notation and a longtime member of legacy steelbands in Antigua such as Hell’s Gate. Phoenix has a long history of gospel singing and earned a certificate in Church Music from Martin Luther College (New Ulm, Minnesota) in the early 2000s. The pair rely on software programs such as Sibelius and Melody Assistant to score their arrangements before translating this to the unique music notation utilized by the steelband. Their notation groups together the letter names of individual pitches and often pairs this with the song/hymn text. The notation does not indicate the tessitura of pitches and relies on the base range of given steelpan families (lead, double second, cello, bass) to suggest specific ranges of the letter names. “Cellos [steelpans] are like voices, l use them for Angels sometimes,” notes Hodge who further equates the timbre and range of human voices to specific steelpan voices and ranges. “When I arrange hymns, I like to give baritone voices parts to the low pans, and then thirds and harmony to the double seconds. In church, steelbands need to sing like people.”

Teaching Rhythm and Strums:

One of the most common rhythmic pedagogical tools found across the Caribbean is for steelbands to use words (in this case scripture phrases) to approximate rhythmic ostinatos played by harmony and bass steelpan voices in church steelbands. These ostanatos, when played by harmony steelpans such as double seconds, double tenors, and cellos, are known as strums—after the strum of a guitar or quatro. These strums are essential to the harmonic musical function of any steelband and teaching them is an important aspect of any steelband pedagogy. There are approximately ten basic types of calypso guitar strums and of these six basic types of stum patterns are common in Antiguan (and Caribbean for the matter) steelbands which are summarized in the chart below. 

The various strums themselves produce different rhythmic feels depending on the context of given steelband arrangements. Steelband leaders often teach these strums using word phrases and in church steelbands these phrases are almost always psalms or scripture. Notating these stock rhythmic steelpan strums in western music notation can be hard to understand for those not accustomed to the screed, not to mention that western music notation can only be used as an approximation when it comes indicating certain rhythmic feels. The rhythmic deliveries of “Hosanna” or “I Love God” and “I’m Lutheran” are common phrases used to teach strum rhythms at all levels of schooling and steelband experience as, once again, an intergenerational teaching methodology.

While the strumming patterns are fairly universal across the Caribbean, the associated rhythmic words are unique and should be considered interchangeable so long as the syllabic composition of the word parallels the strumming patterns in question.

Typical Steelpan Strum Patterns (right)

Strum #2 from the above chart is perhaps the most applicable example of church steelbands teaching rhythmic strumming patterns using words. As noted above, psalms and other biblical versus are the preferred source of lyrics for teaching common strumming patterns found in the double seconds or cello/guitar steelpan sections, but simple phrases are also germane to the practice. Strum #2 uses the phrase “I’m Lu-ther-an” which equates in western music notation to “(1) & (2) & (3) & 4” and Strum #3 displays “(Hal) le-lu-jah” which equates to “(1) & 2 & (3) & 4 &” assuming the downbeat (1) is silent, setting up the syncopation. This rote teaching strategy is effective for novice and experienced musicians since it employs a common denominator (familiar liturgical language) to approximate the rhythm, thus breaking down notation barriers for musically literate and illiterate players. In all, the notation is a basic roadmap of the arrangement that requires significant additional instruction from the steelband leader/arranger. Even the individual steelpan players less formal personal notation is normally only used as a memory aid.  

Score Notation Notes

St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church Steelband (Antigua)

“I am Anointed” WhatsApp Notation, Ralph Foster

Steelband member sketch book, Cedar Hall Moravian

“Freedom and Dignity” arranged by Lorenzo Hodge