| Project by vipond33 | posted 675 days ago | 2205 views | 28 times favorited | 14 comments |  |
 |
My daughter is in a movement and music class, song and dance too I suppose, with the music component performed entirely on xylophones. The teacher is trained in the Orff system, a method that teaches music much like learning a new language, something that young kids absorb easily. Xylophones are great instruments, piccolo to bass they are simple tools that allow even the youngest to master a simple tune or compose. My daughter liked it a lot so I thought maybe I would buy her one – till I saw the up to $1000 price tag. Now I know what you’re thinking, ”Build it and make this post come true!”. OK OK, so I thought and pondered and searched and was lucky and found a detailed set of plans here:
Right, super, this looks good, cutting list and all! How hard could it be? what could go wrong? Plenty it seems.
To build it I had a small dead straight piece of quartersawn ash for the soundboard and a length of rosewood for the keys and grips. Orff is very picky about their materials – rosewood is classic, so fair enough, I’m out of the gate.
In the soundboard the bottom must rise to create different volumes of air for groups of keys to resonate and is carefully divided for tone separation. The plan, surprisingly or not, called for butt joints at the ends ??? but who am I to question Orff? I did use a simple trick to re-enforce them though. Brass screws were driven in short, the heads nipped off and then filed flush. Solid and pretty.
The keys had to be very precise dimensions with nodal points (drilled holes to you) placed accurately and with curved undercuts.The shape of the top surface was also critical. I managed to do it with a tilting head shaper, screwing each piece onto a carrier.
After the build it was time to tune the keys by sanding, or removing minute amounts of material from the underside arc and the ends. Looking around the net I found a staggering amount of information available to do this, so after leaving the names of my next of kin I waded in. Well now, the writers of many of these pages used sophisticated tone generators and setups to vibrate the keys, scientific analyzers to decipher it and enough math and graphs to make the average calculator choke. They were talking about first, second, third, fourth order harmonics and beyond. Bewildered, and after hours of reading, I gathered the simplest of instructions and fled.
As a side note, it is interesting that there are only three ways to produce a pure tone for help in tuning. You can use a tone generator, a tuning fork, or you can just whistle. I think it’s rather amazing that we have pure tones within ourselves. Try it.
.
In the end it sounded ok, not perfect, but I gave up trying. It was very frustrating and strange, as a woodworker, to not be pleased with just the looks of a piece but needing to hear the wood as well. Will I ever make another musical instrument? Not in this lifetime, for I think that instrument makers are blessed with a certain skill at birth, my hat is off to them and now I understand the price.
24”x10 1/4”x5 1/2”
About 35hrs.
Build on LJ’s.
gene
-- gene@toronto.ontario.canada : dovetail free since '53, critiques always welcome.
| Pin It |
14 comments so far
WayneC
home | projects | blog
9589 posts in 2295 days
#1 posted 675 days ago
This is really pretty, any chance of a video of it in use?
-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov
Brett
home | projects | blog
471 posts in 956 days
#2 posted 675 days ago
Excellent! Very beautiful and I bet that it sounds fantastic. I love the last comment that you made “and now I understand that price.” So true.
That is a project to be proud of.
-- Hand Crafted by Brett Peterson John 3:16 http://www.TheCrookedNail.blogspot.com
MShort
home | projects | blog
1397 posts in 1616 days
#3 posted 675 days ago
That is a very sharp looking xylophone. Beautiful woodwork.
-- Mike, Missouri --- “A positive life can not happen with a negative mind.” ---
489tad
home | projects | blog
1021 posts in 1209 days
#4 posted 675 days ago
Nice job. It looks great. Why not try another, you seem to have the patients for it.
-- Dan I.G.N.
Maveric777
home | projects | blog
2592 posts in 1274 days
#5 posted 675 days ago
Cool!
-- Dan ~ Texarkana, Tx.
CharlieM1958
home | projects | blog
14936 posts in 2416 days
#6 posted 675 days ago
It looks great, and I really enjoyed reading the build story.
Even though I’ve played piano, guitar, and a few other instruments to lesser degrees for over 40 years, I had no idea what went into building one of these “simple” instruments. I always assumed it was all about the length of the keys…. period.
Thanks for the post!
-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"
Cosmicsniper
home | projects | blog
2155 posts in 1356 days
#7 posted 675 days ago
This is awesome…need to do this one.
Yes, a lot of detail in a true xylophone to get that pure tone, though there’s nothing wrong with building one for the kids where none of the other harmonics are eliminated. Sadly, if you were to sell these, most many people would NOT understand the difference between what you built and the Fisher Price version.
It would be cool if you recorded your instrument and let us hear it!!!
-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com
TopamaxSurvivor
home | projects | blog
13179 posts in 1873 days
#8 posted 674 days ago
Nice work. Sounds like it was a lot of trouble to get it right! Welcome to LJ!!
-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence
itsmic
home | projects | blog
1417 posts in 1316 days
#9 posted 672 days ago
Very Nice, I would love to try one of these, Yours looks to be perfect, thanks for all the info and pics, looks great
-- It's Mic Keep working and sharing
lightweightladylefty
home | projects | blog
2086 posts in 1910 days
#10 posted 671 days ago
Gene,
I have always wanted to make a musical instrument but could never understand how to get a high tonal quality. Whenever I have inquired, I have never gotten adequate answers. I really appreciate your explanation and maybe you have just told the truth I needed to hear . . . ”instrument makers are blessed with a certain skill at birth.”
The xylophone is indeed beautiful and, based on its appearance, you are probably being too hard on yourself regarding the sound. Thanks so much for sharing all the details with us.
L/W
-- Jesus is the ONLY reason for ANY season.
Broglea
home | projects | blog
654 posts in 1288 days
#11 posted 665 days ago
Yikes. I had no idea what went into something like this. At the end of the day, you learned something new and now have a beautiful instrument. Like some of the previous comments, I too would like to hear it.
vipond33
home | projects | blog
1331 posts in 695 days
#12 posted 640 days ago
Yikes too! Where are my manners? This is a very late thank you for your wonderful comments, I truly appreciate them. There won’t be an audio or video post on this for a while as the instrument is back on the bench in pieces. Yes I’m having another go at the sound shaping. Stay tuned! Ha.
-- gene@toronto.ontario.canada : dovetail free since '53, critiques always welcome.
rance
home | projects | blog
3865 posts in 1358 days
#13 posted 640 days ago
VERY Nice build. I was surprised at the cove bit used in the cutouts on the bottom of the notes. I would have guessed a straight cut. Was that specified?
-- Backer boards, stop blocks, build oversized, and never buy a hand plane--
florentin
home | projects | blog
65 posts in 517 days
#14 posted 489 days ago
Wow! What an awesome job on this xylophone!!!
-- http://www.florentintise.com/
Have your say...