The basic mode of playing Steelpan is to select one of the 3 available mallets (as explained above) and then trigger them on the keyboard within the blue keyrange.

Pictured below is the basic keyboard layout:

Round Robin

The recording of each type of mallet includes a great many round robin samples. In normal playback these will cycle through, each time they are played. If you want to, you may exclude certain round robin variations from the cycle using the upper MIDI keys from G5 to F#6. Each key represents an individual round robin sample. Play a key with low velocity to turn that variation off (key will turn yellow), high velocity to turn it on (key will turn red).

The MIDI key at B4 will reset the round robin cycle to the beginning.

Click to enlarge

The Interface

All of the controls for Steelpan are featured on the main Kontakt UI. These include: hand / wool / rubber mallet selection, EQ controls, microphone mixing, RR selection and tuning, convolution reverb and tremolo.

Mallet Selection

Click on the graphic of either hand, wool or rubber mallet to choose the method that the steelpan is struck. Hand playing has the softest timbre, wool is a medium strike and rubber produces the hardest and most defined tone.

3 Band Equalizer Controls

The EQ section, shown here, allows you to quickly and simply tweak the levels of the low, mid and high frequencies. Simply click and drag. Cmd / ctrl click to reset. The EQ settings apply simultaneously to each of 3 different mallet selections.

Tremolo

A common technique when performing live on a steelpan is to create a fast tremolo between two different notes. This can easily be emulated with Sonokinetic Steelpan.

Hold one note in the playable range and then press another. A tremolo crescendo will be played until you release the notes.

Turn the tremolo function on / off by clicking the button shown here. You can also activate tremolo with your MIDI sustain pedal (CC #64)

Microphone Positions

The Steelpan instrument was sampled with 3 different microphone positions: Close, Overhead (OH) and Far. This section of the interface gives you control over the mixing of these positions.

Simply click and drag to adjust the levels of the 3 dials.

Cmd / ctrl click to reset.

Impulse Response

Steelpan comes preloaded with a convolution reverb sampled from an actual space to simulate a realistic environment. This control makes it easy to quickly dial in some realistic reverb without too much fuss. Adjust the wetness and size of the reverb by click-dragging on the dials shown here.

Ctrl / cmd click to reset the levels to default.

From the Kontakt configuration window (shown below) you can adjust many other aspects of the reverb including wet/dry levels, pre-delay, dampening and width. You can also swap out the preloaded impulse response for one of your own.