Xylophone

About the Sound and Character

The sound of the xylophone is dry, woody, clicking, bright, and sharp, cutting cleanly through dense orchestral textures. It imparts a playful, skeletal, or comical flavor to music.

Structure and Features

It consists of a series of wooden bars of varying length and thickness tuned to specific notes of the chromatic scale and arranged like a piano keyboard. The bars rest on a frame over sound-isolating pads. The musician strikes them using two wooden or plastic mallets.

Genres

• Symphonic classical music (Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre)
• Orchestral miniatures and marches
• Percussion ensembles