Darcy James Argue wrote:
Carl,
What I was wondering was more along the lines of "are there any
xylophone-specific issues that make a four-mallet technique less
practical on xylo. than on other mallet instruments, like vibraphone
or marimba"?
With regard to playing technique, aside from generally using harder
mallets and a faster attack and little if no use of dampening sustained
tones, there is no difference. However, the xylophone has a much
shorter ringtime and the sound at the point of the attack is brighter,
bringing out the non-harmonic partials. It is then be a matter of taste
to decide whether that timbre is as suitable as that of a marimba or
vibraphone (in which harmonic spectra are better sustained by their
quarter-wave-length resonators) to playing more than a single melodic
line, let alone a four-part texture.
Daniel Wolf
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