Vibraphon

vibraphone, also called Vibraharp, or Vibes, percussion instrument that has tuned metal bars and is similar in shape to a xylophone. Felt or wool beaters are used to strike the bars, giving a soft, mellow tone quality.

So you can make it really custom unlike you can easily with a piano pedal. Now over here the vibraphone has a really special feature.

The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a vibraphonist, vibraharpist, or vibist.

Tuning of the vibraphone Unlike its cousin, the glockenspiel, this is a non-transposing instrument, generally written at concert pitch. However, composers occasionally write parts to sound an octave higher.

The four spaces in the bass. Staff read a c e g. The five lines read g b d f a these also have their own acronyms. But you can make up your own as you go along.

Each bar of the vibraphone has a resonating tube underneath the bar that amplifies the sound. Inside each resonating tube there is a fan disc that is attached to a motor and spins so that the resonating tube is alternately closed and opened. The opening and closing of the resonant tube creates the vibrato effect.

When a harp string is plucked, it vibrates with a certain frequency, compressing and decompressing nearby air* and making sound waves of the same frequency. The frequency of the vibration in the string is set by the length of the string, the tension in the string, and the material it is made of.

When a string is plucked the string drives energy into the soundboard and the soundboard responds by vibrating.

The vibraphone can produce a variety of timbres, from dark and mellow to shiny and bright. The sound comes from a series of tuned tone bars being struck by mallets, with a general range of three to four octaves, depending on the model.

transposing musical instrument, instrument that produces a higher or lower pitch than indicated in music written for it. Examples include clarinets, the English horn, and saxophones. Musical notation written for transposing instruments shows the relative pitches, rather than the exact pitches, produced.

Sound production The vibraphone consists of two parallel rows of bars. Each bar produces a different pitch; the shorter the bar, the higher the pitch. The bars are arranged in the same way as the keys on a piano; the low notes (= long bars) are on the left, the nigh notes (= short bars) on the right of the musician.

Musical instruments create sounds by making something vibrate. For example, guitars make sound when their strings vibrate. Most instruments are “tuned” to make a range of sounds of particular frequencies, which we call notes. These notes are made in a particular sequence to play a piece of music.