Xylophone

The xylophone is a member of the struck idiophones (Hornbostel–Sachs 111.212). Listen to 2 recordings and learn how it makes its sound.

Listen to the xylophone

Xylophone Leads (Antti Luode)

3:10CC BY 3.0by Antti LuodeWikimedia Commons

3:10

Xylophone Madness (Antti Luode)

3:19CC BY 3.0by Antti LuodeWikimedia Commons

3:19

Tip: press play to see the sound's live frequency spectrum in blue over the waveform.

How the xylophone makes its sound

In the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which classifies instruments by how they produce sound, the xylophone belongs to the struck idiophones: the body is struck directly – bells, gongs, xylophones and cymbals.

More broadly it is one of the idiophones, where the solid body of the instrument itself vibrates, without strings or a stretched membrane.

Players shape its sound through technique and materials; the resonating body filters the raw vibration, boosting some harmonics and damping others.

From Wikipedia

The xylophone (from Ancient Greek ξύλον (xúlon) 'wood' and φωνή (phōnḗ) 'sound, voice'; lit. 'sound of wood') is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.

The term xylophone may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term xylophone refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a xylophonist or simply a xylophone player.