Elemental Design
Basic Xylophone Building
Xylophones were probably one of peoples' first musical instruments,
and the feel of playing them is most firmly entrenched in our
primal core. I've seen babies barely able to pick up mallets know
just what to do with them.
Just about any one can make a xylophone out of just about anything-
i.e. old shoes, cut up tires, bones, V.W. hoods, etc.... (official
definition has a xylophone made of wood, so I guess we'd have
to call them shodaphone, blimpaphone, bonaphone, volkphone, and
et ceteraphone.) The main trick is just mounting whatever it is
in a way that it will vibrate minimally hampered.
For the sake of simplicity, I'll describe the how-tos of
building a wood xylophone, but the same techniques could be applied
to any material. These instructions are intentionaly very
general to promote creativity. For more detailed info there's
some great books on basic instrument
making.
Xylophone Tuning
First you take a chunk of wood (straight, clear, dense grain is
ideal, but I've gotten neat sounds out of pretty gnarly looking
stuff) and cut it to a length that suits. Too long or too short
won't resonate very well, so experiment. Now, find the nodes by
either measuring 22.5% of the length in from the ends or sprinkling
some salt along the top and tapping it lightly- the salt will
collect at the nodes. Support the wood under the nodes with something
soft, like felt, foam, or balled up socks. Tune it by cutting
it shorter to heighten the tone, or gouging under the middle to
lower the tone. You can also raise the pitch slightly by thinning
the ends, and lower the pitch by making a simple saw slice or
gouge in the middle. The ideal shape for a xylophone bar is something
like this:
This general shape gives you the clearest deep tones, but shaping
it thus can be a lot of work and isn't necessary to get a decent
sound out of any but the very low tones.
To check out possible tuning options check out "tunings"
page.
Xylophone Mounting
After you're done tuning all the keys, you'll want to re-figure
all the nodes and mount the keys at those points. If you gouged
a lot under some keys, use the salt method to find the nodes,
because gouging moves the nodes outward. As long as the keys are
supported by something soft and are not bound in a way as to restrict
their vibration, mounting possibilities are limited only to the
scope of one's imagination. The most commom methods are: drilling
an over-sized hole at the nodes with a nail or peg holding the
key in place, or wrapping twine around the key at the nodes and
fastening the twine.
Xylophone Mallets
As for mallets: hard mallets tend to bring out the high end and
soft mallets the low. Super-balls, rubber-band balls, etc. work
well for soft mallets, and there's lot's of options for harder
mallets.
Imagination is our best resource. Go with it!
Go to:
xylojim@tidewater.net
Jim Doble
Elemental Design
PO Box 565
Union, Maine 04862
USA
(207)785-2212