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Dumb question about xylophones


marsbars

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Hey,

Lately i've been trying to figure out what a xylophone actually is.

My dad had an array of metal bars that you would hit with mallets.

We reffered to this as a xylophone, but it seems that a xylophone is wooden.

So i guess that would make it a glockenspiel? 

More confusion: wickipedia defines a xylophone as having wooden bars, yet

it shows the NBC "xylophone" (or whatever it is) as having metal ones.

Anyone care to clear this up for me? :blink:

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Xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, are all members of the percussion ensemble with definite pitch, and played with mallets.

 

Xylophone: set of wooden bars. Until some years ago, it had no resonators, but today most of them have.

Marimba: set of rosewood bars thinner, longer and wider than the xylophone's. The resonators have always been part of it.

Vibraphone: metal bars, uses vibrato or tremolo produced by an electrically driven series of fans located on top of the resonators tubes. It also uses pedal.

Glockenspiel: steel bars. Usually played with brass mallet.

 

(Taken from Adler's book on Orchestration).

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On 4/9/2017 at 5:19 AM, Luis Hernández said:

Xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, are all members of the percussion ensemble with definite pitch, and played with mallets.

 

Xylophone: set of wooden bars. Until some years ago, it had no resonators, but today most of them have.

Marimba: set of rosewood bars thinner, longer and wider than the xylophone's. The resonators have always been part of it.

Vibraphone: metal bars, uses vibrato or tremolo produced by an electrically driven series of fans located on top of the resonators tubes. It also uses pedal.

Glockenspiel: steel bars. Usually played with brass mallet.

 

(Taken from Adler's book on Orchestration).

 

^^^Yep What he said

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