Music Workshop

Drum Workshop | Teambuilding

You may have seen us instructing the contestants in ‘The Generation Game’ to play the steel drum in a video on our Gallery page. The show’s producers knew that playing a steel drum or ‘pan’ is a lot of fun and, having seen one of our entertaining music workshops, paid us the compliment of inviting us on to one of their biggest Christmas specials!

Everybody just loves having a go at hitting a drum, and many people have in the past had access to do so in the likes of African or Indian drum workshops. However, given the opportunity to play tuned percussion instruments like steel drums they take that enthusiasm up to another level. The steel drum is a unique instrument, in that because it is both a percussion instrument and it is tuned, a good music workshop tutor can have total novices playing something fairly recognisable (!) in a relatively short time. We are more and more frequently being called upon to provide the opportunity for our audiences to be interactive with our particular range of fun, educational, and inexpensive steel band music workshop services.

These drum workshops can be tailor-made to suit any group of people regardless of age or ability and indeed can prove to be particularly beneficial to those with disabilities and special needs. We have full public liability insurance cover and our talented and experienced steel band tutors have all been CRB checked.

We have a lot of experience of going in to schools, in particular, where we give the children an opportunity in our music workshops to learn a little about the colourful history of steel drums or ‘pans’ and how they are made and tuned. This may be done in individual classes, year groups, or indeed assemblies involving the entire school.

We will then, of course, demonstrate how they are played choosing the right tunes which our audience can identify with so as to encourage as much audience participation as possible. Primary school children should enjoy ‘Incey Wincey Spider’, but trust us, ‘Match of the Day’ goes down much better at a secondary boys’ school!

Of course, we'll also briefly demonstrate musical rudiments like scales to make our audience's experience as musically educational as it will be cultural and entertaining.
So we’re always looking for a nod of approval from the school’s Head of Music, as well!

Then it's time for our young audience to have a go themselves and get to play in their own steel band!

How this is organised very much depends on the numbers of children involved and how much time is available.

We offer 2 basic music workshop formats- one where we have just a couple of steel drum tutors and at least 15 steel drums and another where there are 3 or 4 steel band members who would just bring their own steel drums to teach the kids on.

The first steel drum workshop package is more suited to handling larger classes with little ‘performance’, as such, required from our tutors. The second package is more suited to high quality presentations including performances, but with smaller workshops. That being said we like to tailor our drum workshops to the specific requirements of each particular client, so there is a lot of flexibility shown within each format.

Steel band team building

We also organise team building sessions for clients, be they public organisations or private companies. Many steel bands offer drum workshops, but few know how to organise team building effectively, and many don’t understand the different demands of this special kind of music workshop.

Whilst a regular steel drum workshop demands that our tutors handle all of the instruction, our team building experience ensures that in these sessions work colleagues will have to learn from each other too, recognising the skills in each other that will best achieve the common musical goals that we set them.

Groups are selected randomly by our tutors and they will be encouraged to select captains and organise themselves into those best suited for the 4 roles of playing melody, harmony, bass and percussion. And, of course, teams will compete against each other!

We know how to foster the motivation, communication, support and trust within a team that is required for this particular exercise and a winning team, fairly judged by the participants themselves, will emerge, but everybody participating will benefit from the experience. So, everyone’s a winner!

Solid Steel’s workshops & team building goals

Put quite simply, the aims of our music workshops are to encourage from every ‘student’:-