September 2009


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It looks like a steel pan, it sounds like a steel pan, and it travels like a tenor pan, but the PHI is no steel pan. PHI stands for Percussive Harmonic Instrument and is more akin to an electronic synthesizer; so why does this new instrument have this strong pan character?

It was part of a marketing strategy to brand the instrument so as to immediately invoke Trinidad and Tobago, the home of the steel pan. There are other reasons, such as the desire to make it a modern version of the pan in the hope that it would appeal to this and the next generation. Apart from that, the circular shape lent to more versatility when compared with the linear structure of the conventional synthesizer.

The PHI is the latest development to emerge from the Steelpan Research Lab of the Faculty of Engineering at The UWI. The last was the G-Pan, currently being patented, for which Engineering Dean Prof Brian Copeland has received a national award.

The PHI has been ten years in the making, since its conception by Keith Maynard, Prof Copeland, Earl Phillips and Marcel Byron. In 2000, Byron began developing the ideas and two years later, the MIDI Pan emerged. MIDI, the acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is the communication facilitator of electronic music synthesizers.

With their pan foundation, the collaborators wanted to take something indigenous into modern technology with all its enhanced capabilities for sound reproduction, mobility, ease of access, recordings and interface, the MIDI Pan evolved into the PHI, and became the first pan not to be a pan.

Speaking at the Lab, now physically located at the Trincity Industrial Estate at Macoya, one member of the young team directly engaged in its development, Jeevan Persad, explained that the PHI, can reproduce all the notes of a pan and indeed, can be played with pan sticks, but its range as a synthesizer makes it possible to sound like virtually any instrument.

Designed with a 36-note layout in 12-note concentric circles, the interface follows the spider-web layout of the 4ths and 5ths tenor. This makes it easy for pannists to adapt. But you don’t need to be a pannist to feel at home with it, you don’t even need pan sticks, your fingers will do the work of selecting either preset modes or simply switching from one instrument to the other then caressing the white interactive panels to deliver sound ranging from pan to string, wind and percussion instruments, and more..

Inside the studio, where continuous testing goes on, Randall Ali demonstrated the range, pointing out how simple it was to operate. Once you have a power supply of 115V, you can plug in and play, using headphones or PC speakers, and if you have software such as Cakewalk or Sibelius, you can easily record your compositions. If you have Ableton or Logic Studio, premium industry-based software, once you connect your PHI, you can record, mix, produce and distribute your own music.

Earlier, with a charming mix of youthful enthusiasm, science, and knowledge of trends in today’s techno music and home studio markets, members of the team, including the marketing duo of Anushka Mahabir and Allende Lee Lung, had taken turns making the case for the PHI as the super instrument for their generation.

Later, Marcel Byron, the lead developer and an inventor himself, supported their reasoning.

“The local music industry is lacking that kind of experience and technical know-how to actually produce and mix songs,” he said. “We are opening that whole realm to the pannist. It’s like giving them a bigger tool chest of opportunity. Now the pannist can move beyond the pan and become like a one-man band.”

He recounted how Len Boogsie Sharpe put together three songs in two and a half hours, recording each instrument himself, at the studio, and how the possibilities excited him.

The shift from the MIDI Pan actually came about through patent issues, so they decided to refocus the patent and make it more general and applicable and relevant to the steel pan. The evolution to the PHI was gradual.

“The MIDI was an exact replication of what the [conventional] steelpan was, just with current technology applied to it. The PHI has extended the possibilities, a lot of the ideas, features and capabilities incorporated into the PHI were not even thought of in the MIDI Pan,” said Byron, who coordinates all activities of the team involved in its production, research and development and marketing and distribution.

“The third ring in the middle came about because we didn’t have the limitations of working a piece of steel and trying to fit everything in a small space. Since it was electronics, you could actually do everything you want to do inside there. That’s how we came up with the 36 notes.”

With all this technology, and the potential it offers, one imagines it will be an expensive investment when it hits the streets.

“It is a fraction of the cost of a recording studio,” said Byron, “around US$3,000, and that is in the same ballpark as a high-end synthesizer.”

The enterprise is not simply about making money though. The group has been taking the PHI out to communities; their short-term targets are Embacadere, Enterprise, Patna and Pinto, and wherever they have gone, they’ve created a stir.

“They are amazed, because of what you can do with the instrument, they realise it is not a pan, and they can play everything. By the time they realise the full potential of the instrument, you see the WOW effect, regardless of where you go,” he said.

The community outreach programme is in partnership with the Citizens Security Programme, out of the Ministry of National Security.

“The idea was that steelpan came from the communities and it was responsible for reducing a lot of crime [decades ago], and it gave the pannist an avenue to go out and travel and express themselves. It is the same idea, there is so much crime and violence, we were trying to provide an alternative to young people by introducing them to a new instrument, and an alternative way of expressing themselves,” said Byron.

The pannist inspired the PHI and now the PHI is inspiring pannists—as it was in the beginning, so it is at the end.