Abstract
With a history tied to post-emancipation traditions and origins in Trinidad, the steelpan musical instrument has had a significant influence on the Caribbean community and its culture. It has even spawned its own brand of jazz called pan-jazz, where it features as a central instrument, merging Caribbean rhythms and melodies with jazz techniques. As steelpans are manually tuned, different steelpans, or even different notes within one steelpan have a unique timbre, a particular characteristic that encourages creative exploration within jazz harmony and improvisation. To attribute factors responsible for the steelpan’s timbre, mathematical modeling of notes as mode-localized nonlinear oscillators has proven to be quite insightful. In this talk, we discuss how digital sound synthesis of these mathematical models can lead to a deeper understanding of steelpan timbre as it facilitates the generation of sounds in relation to several changing parameters, helping to define a relevant parameter space for a steelpan sound. The approach underscores the importance of nonlinear mode coupling and mode inharmonicity for defining steelpan timbre.