New Drums and Puncheon Rum

Me and Ben playing congas and the iron

Playing our old drums for the last time
From L to R: Abby, Leah, Linda, Me

     This week began with picking new drums to learn. This time, I chose to play the quads. The quads consist of four drums that hang on stands like most steel drums but have a bass voice like the 6 bass drums I played in middle school. I liked the double seconds, but so far I enjoy the quads much more. I like playing the background bass music that helps keep the tempo, and I think it's fun to flail around across the four drums. Also, I think that I feel the music more on these drums than I did on the double seconds. Anyway, once we got familiar with our new drums and learned some chords and scales, we began learning some new music. One of the songs we began working on was In De Minor, a song that is popular among the steel bands this carnival season. As I mentioned before, these bands learn the music piece by piece, building on each piece until they have learned the whole song. They don't read music, so sheet music for songs is hard to come by. Fortunately for us, Harvey plays with the Supernovas, one of the bands learning the song for Carnival, so he was able to learn the music and write it out for us. The melody is slightly difficult because a lot of it is off beat, but we've been practicing for the past couple days and it is starting to come together nicely. We will hopefully record it later this week. We also began learning the song Jamaican Farewell today. It's not too difficult, and we will probably be recording that song soon, too.  

     Aside from the actual steel pan playing, we are still learning a lot about music and theory. I now understand how to determine the notes in the different major scales, how to modulate keys, and how to find the relative minors and majors of different keys. We also have learned a little bit about percussion. Harvey had each of us play rhythms on the drum kit, the congas, and the iron. He also explained the differences between rhythms used for rock, blues, calypso, and soca music. I am learning so much more about music than I expected in this class. It has definitely renewed my passion for music and makes me want to begin playing some of my instruments again. (Mom and Dad, I hope you get the piano tuned before I get home!) Though the class is really fun and enjoyable, it isn't all play. We've had to read about carnival music, and we had our second quiz on our readings and music theory yesterday. I think we still have a couple more before the end of the month. We also have had to do a bulk of our work for history class this week. Today, we had to turn in a 3 page research paper that accounts for 40% of our grade. Also, beginning Friday each of us has to do a presentation on a chosen topic of Caribbean history, another major part of our grade. Fortunately, all the work for that class is essentially done once we present. But it is also a reminder that winter session is almost over, which is sad because I am having a lot of fun and have made so many great friends over the past 3 weeks. Though this trip was very expensive, I am so happy I decided to go. It has been an amazing experience thus far, and I know the next week and a half will be just as great.

Learning new drums

     Aside from school, there hasn't been too much going on. Monday night and some of yesterday evening were mostly devoted to working on our papers. We did have Karaoke night at Xanadu last night, though. The other girls and I sang Spice Up Your Life by The Spice Girls together. (I was Scary Spice. She's my favorite.) I didn't do any solo sessions because I recognize the fact that I am an awful singer. I was considering rapping some Nicki Minaj, especially since she is from Trinidad, but then Abby and I decided to go swimming instead. Tori and Leah and some of the boys decided to join us, and we had fun swimming, dancing, and trying to replicate Trini music videos in the pool. We also met and hung out with the Xanadu employees and some of Mr. Wayne's family and friends at Karaoke. Some of the employees decided that this was the perfect opportunity for us to take our first puncheon shot. Up until this point, we only had puncheon in mixed drinks or rum punch. And from this point forward, I will probably only have it in mixed drinks or rum punch. The shot was terrible, not necessarily because of taste but because it burned the entire way from mouth to stomach. By the encouragement of the locals, I decided not to chase it. Big mistake. I was immediately scrounging for anything to wash it down with and get rid of the burning sensation in my mouth. Even though the shot was terrible, I'm glad I got to try it because it's something you have to do while in Trinidad. I just won't be taking another one any time soon.

Tyler and Zach singing Backstreet Boys - Larger than Life

     So those were the events of the past couple days. Tonight, we are heading to some pan yards again. This time the bands should be practicing in full force, so I'm sure that will be awesome. I'll let you know how it went in my next post. Thanks for reading, and look out for my next post. If I can figure out how to do it, maybe I will post some videos of our band and some of the legitimate bands soon. So keep an eye out for that too, but try not to be too disappointed if I can't get it to work. Thanks again for reading, and thanks to those who have been sharing my blog on facebook and social media!