the.com/xylophone
a row of wooden teeth that turned the forest into a melody you can hit
means A percussion instrument made of tuned wooden bars arranged like a keyboard, struck with mallets to produce musical notes.
from Coined in the 19th century from Greek xylon, 'wood,' and phone, 'sound' or 'voice' — literally 'wood-voice.' That same xylon turns up in words like xylem (the woody tissue of plants), while phone echoes through telephone, microphone, and symphony. So the name is exactly what it claims: the sound of wood, given a Greek wardrobe.
- name
- Greek for wood-sound, literally
- family
- struck idiophone, cousin to the metal marimba
- rosewood prized
- density tunes the pitch before any carving
- orchestral debut
- long mocked as bones rattling in folk dances
- bar physics
- undercut wood lowers pitch by thinning the middle
yamaha yxg-100 — professional orchestral xylophone with 3.5 octave range, standard in concert halls since 1970s
balafon — west african wooden xylophone with gourd resonators, traditional instrument in mali and guinea
vibraphone — electric xylophone variant with metal bars and motor-driven resonators, invented 1916 by red norvo