Originally posted by cartesio 
A weird instrument, maybe a xylophone.by
Marco Marco, su Flickr
Technically that would be called a
glockenspiel = it has metal bars rather than wooden (xylo = wood). Glockenspiels are generally smaller and can be fitted with a harness for use in a marching band. The Shriners commonly use glockenspiel dominated marching units because the instruments are relatively easy to learn. There are many variations on instruments that involve striking a tuned bar with small "hammers" (= a rod with a wooden, rubber or hard felt head that may be ball or cylinder shaped) including metallophone and vibraphone. There are also a variety of tuned-bars-struck-with-hammer instruments from Asia that go deep into antiquity. Arguably, a hammer dulcimer could be included in this family of instruments, as well as pianos and clavichords as these involve strings, nowadays all metal, that are struck to produce sound, but not a harpsichord because their strings are plucked to produce sound.
BTW: Notice in the image that there are two rows of bars on the glockenspiels, one continuous and the other with two bars, a gap, then three bars, then a gap, then two etc. These correspond, respectively, to the white keys and the black keys of a piano = the whole notes and half notes of the standard Western musical scale. Asiatic instruments use a different tone sequence musical scale.
Last edited by WPRESTO; 03-29-2021 at 02:55 AM.
Post #5212 by todd
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