You've given me my newest favorite woodworking phrase: "Retroactive precision" it is as good as "percussive maintenance"; which would be appropriate in this case.
I built one for my grand kids and had a great time learning the tuning process. I used a spindle sander and learned to tune the upper harmonic. I found that if you tune it (the harmonic) up an octave and a 5th, the sound is a lot better. Has more body to the sound, but it takes some doing and a good ear. The tuner only hears the fundamental, but if you listen close, you will hear an upper "note". You can control them by taking more from the edges of the concave underneath. I got way deeper into the weeds once I started learning about it than I originally intended, but it was a fun summer project. Wound up with 10 notes that sounded pretty good. I used pegs with the hole drilled at the node and these little round fuzzy feet I found at lowe's that have glue on one side and are used for things like feet for band saw boxes or jewelry boxes etc. One on each side of the peg. Worked great. I'll have to try the hardwood flooring as I have some ash left over from my house. Yours sounded good. Love your channel!
Beautiful project for a child! Your engineering know-how and intuition guided you well Sir! In case you’re interested, those note are from the bottom up: F#, B, E, G#, B, D#. So… The top 3 notes make a G# minor triad. The next three notes ( E, G#, B) render an E major triad. Together, the top FOUR notes form an E major seventh tetrad. Adding the B below that maintains the E major quality, it’s just with the 5th in the bass. The low F# could be considered a 9th, compared to E. Voicing the 9 on the bottom of major chords is interesting because it is so ambiguous… a beautiful sound! This would be a delightful tuning for wind-chimes too!
To accurately find the nodes, sprinkle salt or sugar granules in the approximate area and watch them all converge and focus in a line while you gently tap with a mallet and voila - the location of your node!
Great build Matthias. You can also easily find the nodes by putting salt on the bar near the nodes then striking it. The salt will collect in a straight line across the bar right on the node.
This reminds me of my dad - when we were kids and he had a scrap bit of steel pipe he worked out the lengths to produce a nice pentatonic scale and built wind chimes out of it.
What a wonderful toy you have made for your kids. It is not so much the toy itself, but the amount of patience and logic that you have employed, that warrants the appreciative comments that you get. Good for you Matthias!!
Also, removing material from the centre will lower the pitch but you don't have to shorten them to raise the pitch - you can remove material from the ends by drilling shallow holes, and this will prevent the node from moving.
First woodworking video in a few months to get added to my saved list. A great idea and a resfreshing change from the usual shop jigs and outdoor furniture videos that are all over RU-vid. Thanks!
Matt, that sounds a lot better than I thought it would. It actually sounds "warmer" then the toy metal xylophones. Beautiful project. Did you put your name anywhere underneath it - an artist signing his work so that the next generation will know who built it ? That looks like an heirloom that would be passed down from generation to generation. Great video.
@@stratoside4765 Could the xylophone be an heirloom? Absolutely. A family heirloom doesn’t have to be an expensive object. It can have meaning and intrinsic value for many reasons. Objects that you couldn’t sell for a nickel at a garage sale can be priceless to family members. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have only 2 items from my parents. One is a cheap ceramic wall décor item, purchased in the 1950 - 1960’s. Nothing special about it. But it is priceless to me and I will pass it down to my children when I am no longer here. The value is in the connection it has, to a shared family history - to a time that links the past to the present. Maybe the xylophone will end up like so many toys, it will disappear from memory and be discarded to make way for new items. Maybe Matt will recycle it as his children grow older. Who knows? I was just imagining a person in the future picking up the xylophone and wondering - who made it, who played with it? Maybe I am being overly sentimental. Just a thought.
@@cliveclapham6451 Those were likely Orff Instruments that we still make use of today. They were named for the composer Carl Orff who is most known for his piece Carmina Burana and more specifically "Oh Fortuna." They are excellent tools for music instruction
I bought a cheap glockenspiel that supports the bars using a square "rod" of foam sheet material. (Like a strip cut off the edge of a sheet, with the width the same as the thickness.) It is held in a V grove so that the bars sit on the corner of the foam, not on the flat. It works really well -- the thing sounds great. The method of holding them down is basically the same as what you did here, except with a washer that is glued to the screw (or rivet) so that it doesn't rest on the bars.
This was so you. It was so good to see. Investigation, observation, innovation, thing you can bang on to make music. And anticipation of the destructive potential of little ones. And retroactive precision.
Nice job, Matthias. Generally speaking, the node point is 22.4% of the total length away from the end. That is how tubular chimes work anyway. I assume the same would apply to wood blocks.
I was gonna ask- how did you come up with that number? Since I'm more of a visual learner I'll give the ol' salt trick a go. My dad and I actually made one of these things out of pine scrap when I was a kid and without knowing nodes or anything it actually worked pretty darn good. Now I have some rosewood cutoffs and "node knowledge" I an try it again with my grandson.
Hey! Inspiration between two of my favourite youtubers! Wintergatan was inspired by Matt’s marble machines, Matt is inspired by the zylophone tinkering by Wintergatan 👍🏼
Excellent kids toy Matthias! Everyone knows how much kids love to bang on things. You're videos are always informative & I always learn a little something along the way..................
nice, I remember seeing Pask Makes doing a proper full marimba build. really want to do a big build like that one day, but this scale looks a lot more approachable for my current skill level
There’s a channel that I don’t think I saw in your subscriptions called Pask Makes. He has some amazing woodworking videos, including a marimba build. If you haven’t already heard of him, or his scrapwood challenge, I highly recommend you check him out. Great video!
yeah man, it's easy to remove too much when tuning. i make flutes and wind chimes, to tune them... you have to be VERY careful as to not remove too much. do everything like this, file/sand one pass, test. it's tedious. you CAN add material back, but it's not ideal. I love the project, it sounds great! Plus the sweet angled box joints, nice touch man. :D
I took a class in college called the physics of music and it was amazing. Breaking down how vibrations travel and how to mathematically determine the modes and nodes of a specific note determined by density of the material. I wish I had kept the textbook. I think the professor, dr. Worman wrote it, titled also, the physics of music. No internet search has yielded productive results. :(
you being inspired by wintergatan sounds rather dangerous, since wintergatan was inspired by your marble machines what's next? in order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion 😂
Slick! Is the pitch-length relationship like the pitch-fret spacing relationship in a guitar? I think that's 13th root of 2 difference each half step. It WOULD be difficult to empirically get correct. But yours sounds quite nice. A Christmas gift? You have to let us know how he likes it - and how long it takes for him to drive you and Rachel crazy with the "plinking."
It's good to see you building again. My Dad and I made a xylophone about 40 years ago. Simple wood frame with a strip of green felt glued to the top. The sound bars were scraps of metal trailer tie down straps held in place by two nails in oversize holes. I still have it in storage somewhere.
Great work as usual! Although it’s too bad you felt you had to have the felt washers screwed down into a deeper hole. The notes sounded more resonant to me when the washers were closer to the surface.
That sounded pretty good by the time you were done. Seeing what you had to go through, now I know why toy xylophones sound so awful. It is not easy to get it right!
I take back my comment from your last video! This was neat and it's got me thinking about doing something similar. That's what got me into watching you years ago! Great job!
Excellent work especially understanding about pitch and non-vibrating nodes! Your solution for attaching the bars was very good. Thank you for sharing this with us!
