Mallet Instrument With Wooden Bars

For non-percussionists

A guide to the mallet instruments

Matt Springer, 11/05

Are y'all mystified about what these percussion instruments are? Fifty-fifty if you don't recognize some of the names, yous've heard them all earlier. Hither is a quick tutorial.

The four main mallet percussion instruments, also known every bit keyboard percussion instruments, are the glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba, and vibraphone. They are all played by using mallets to strike bars in the pattern of a piano keyboard, but they differ in their size, tonal range, material (metal or forest/fiberglass), and resonators (hollow tubes below the bars that amplify the tone).

I have put some representative audio clips on this site (all-time with a fast connectedness); you may demand to download the free Quicktime player for Mac or Windows. In improver, you can hear examples of these four instruments played together by checking out the streaming audio of my 2 published mallet percussion ensemble arrangements at their corresponding information pages:

Four Pieces from the Gayane Ballet Suite (by Aram Khachaturian)

3 Grieg Dances (music of Edvard Grieg)

Glockenspiel (orchestra bells): Non to be confused with the lyre-shaped glockenspiels of sometime-fashioned marching bands, which are held vertically in one mitt and played with the other hand using a single mallet, the 2- to 3-octave glockenspiel used in orchestras and in modernistic marching bands and drum & bugle corps is played horizontally similar the other mallet instruments. The bars are made out of steel or aluminum, usually do not accept resonators, and are typically played with metal or plastic mallets. The audio is a pure, high bell tone (this instrument sounds two octaves college than written in nearly cases). The glockenspiel figures prominently in The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas, and numerous other orchestral pieces.
Xylophone (pronounced "zylophone"): This three- to 4- octave instrument uses wood or fiberglass confined with very short resonators, emphasizing the mallet hit but with no lasting resonance after. The sound is a loftier-pitched wooden "clink" audio when played with plastic or forest mallets (i octave higher than written in most cases), with a slightly more mellow audio when played with rubber mallets. Gershwin'south "Porgy and Bess" and several Copland pieces accept famous xylophone parts, and the instrument'southward more comical side is responsible for the Bugs Bunny theme. Information technology is likewise well-suited for ragtime music.
Marimba: The marimba looks very similar to the xylophone, with wooden or fiberglass bars, but the bars are longer and lower-pitched, and the resonators are much longer, giving the tone a long-lasting and cute resonance. It is usually played with yarn-wound mallets, although safety mallets are sometimes used, and the depression notes tin can go as low every bit an octave and a half beneath center C, making this the everyman mallet instrument (bass marimbas also exist, with incredibly low tones and resonators that become all the way to the ground and curve support again). Information technology is usually a bit over 4 octaves. The modern marimba is based on African and Latin American instruments of the same name, and when a two-note interval is rolled, it results in a very recognizable Mexican sound. The marimba only started appearing in western orchestral music in the later 20th Century, and solo/ensemble pieces for marimba are growing at an explosive stride. Information technology besides has been used frequently in jazz and pop music (from Starbuck to Frank Zappa). For some reason, it is ideally suited for the music of Bach, and I have stated before that Bach would have written for the marimba had he just known of its existence.	Sound excerpts: Starbuck - Moonlight Feels Right Smadbeck - Rhythm Song
Vibraphone: The vibraphone has metal keys, only different the glockenspiel, the notes are tuned in a middle range and accept resonators like to those of the marimba, making information technology a more melodious instrument. It is unremarkably played with yarn-wound mallets. The vibraphone gets its name from its unique quality of having an electric motor continuously opening and closing the tops of the resonators, giving it a haunting vibrato when the motor is turned on. Despite this, the vibraphone is well-nigh often played without the motors, resulting in a pure tone. This instrument is too unique in that it has a pedal that, when pressed with the human foot, allows the tone to resonate for several seconds afterwards the bar is hit. When the pedal is released, a jump-loaded felt pad presses confronting the bars, stopping the tone. Besides known as the vibes, this instrument has been a mainstay in large band jazz for decades (Lionel Hampton was a well-known jazz vibes thespian). It figures prominently in "Absurd" and "Maria" from Westward Side Story, is sometimes used in late 20th Century orchestral music, and is a lovely solo instrument likewise. For an eerie special result, the bars can be bowed with a well-rosined bass bow.

Two other related instruments, not used in my own arrangements, are the crotales, which are metallic discs bundled in a keyboard orientation that accept a very space-age audio, and the familiar chimes, which are non technically a mallet keyboard musical instrument but consist of long hung metallic tubes in a keyboard orientation, hitting on the summit with hammers.

The mallets: The audio also depends greatly on the kind of mallet used to hit the bar, whether information technology is fabricated of metal, wood, plastic, or safety, and whether the material is bare or wound with yarn or string. The instruments can be played with one mallet in each paw but are oftentimes played with two mallets in each hand, gripped in such a way that each mallet tin can move independently and 4 notes tin be played at a time. Some pieces fifty-fifty telephone call for iii mallets in each paw!