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AlphaTauri wrote:Eh...the longest bar's about a meter or so in length, and I haven't put them on a base yet. It (the entire xylophone) is probably going to end up being so bulky that I'll have to shove it through the emergency exit if I want to fit it on a bus.

transporting large marimabas/xylophones/pitched percussion instruments were a PAIN because the bus was so crowded and our bus driver was so picky and annoying about "safety hazards". We were late to the competition because of the tricky bus-loading and him.

For those of you building percussion instruments, how are you getting the lowest bars to sound clearly? When I strike anything below ~G2 with a mallet (read: bouncy ball shoved on the end of a wooden dowel), I hear the sound of the mallet head striking the bar, but not so much the sound of the bar itself. Would softer mallets help? I know percussionists often vary their mallets depending on the pitches of the notes, but would doing this have enough of an effect to get the pitches to sound clearly?

AlphaTauri wrote:For those of you building percussion instruments, how are you getting the lowest bars to sound clearly? When I strike anything below ~G2 with a mallet (read: bouncy ball shoved on the end of a wooden dowel), I hear the sound of the mallet head striking the bar, but not so much the sound of the bar itself. Would softer mallets help? I know percussionists often vary their mallets depending on the pitches of the notes, but would doing this have enough of an effect to get the pitches to sound clearly?

Try using Flip Flops or bendable shoes, like Converse; At least if you are using a tube-type thing, like PVC Marimbas.

AlphaTauri wrote:For those of you building percussion instruments, how are you getting the lowest bars to sound clearly? When I strike anything below ~G2 with a mallet (read: bouncy ball shoved on the end of a wooden dowel), I hear the sound of the mallet head striking the bar, but not so much the sound of the bar itself. Would softer mallets help? I know percussionists often vary their mallets depending on the pitches of the notes, but would doing this have enough of an effect to get the pitches to sound clearly?

we're having the same problem!!!! basically the G is still okay, but everything below that is just smacking noises

If I can't come up with a good solution soon, I'm just going to write the music in such a key that I can avoid the lower part of the range as much as possible. >.>

If you are striking metal bars, you need something that is heavy enough to make the larger bars vibrate while soft enough that the sound of the mallet hitting the bar isn't louder than the sound the bar produces.

The students I worked with tried lots of things (using a wooden ball that had the felt strip from velcro around the outside, using wooden balls that were coated with glue-like material among others). Finally, as a computer teacher, I suggested using the balls that computer mice used to keep track of the mouse movements. The heavier balls get their weight from a steel inner ball that is inside a hollow rubber ball. While it took several attempts to figure out how to drill a hole in the ball for the handle to fit into without destroying the rubber, once that was figured out they worked very well.

You can find mouse balls at http://www.mouseballz.com/. The nice thing is they give you the size of the mouse ball, whether it is all rubber or has a steel center, and the mass of the ball. If you PM me I can give you the instructions for drilling a hole into which you can insert a dowel as a handle without destroying the rubber surrounding the center and without going through a ton of drill bits (the steel used for the center is extremely hard).

Nope, I'm striking wooden bars (with bouncy balls shoved on the ends of wooden dowels).

pmb3 wrote:Hi! I am making a flute for the wind instrument for my team. [...]
I don't think anyone has had major problems with this yet. I just feel like something is not right here. Am I missing something?

Hi pmb3, I don't think you are missing something. The instruments' ranges are very low this year, for both wind and percussion. One thing you might want to consider is making one top-notch flute that hits all the mandatory notes. Then play around with fingerings to see if you can hit some of the chromatics or higher notes. Of course everyone wants to hit those low notes that are scoreable but not mandatory. Hit what you can of them.

My daughter is making a flute and decided to go short and sacrifrice some of the lower scoreable notes for the sake of a nice clear sound.

if you make a lower flute, be prepared to spend a lot of time on keywork. We have a couple of homemade keys on our flute but most of our holes are covered with fingers. We found that the elastic bands used in orthodontics make good "springs" for these keys.

Online there are calculators that help you come up with the hole placement.

Hi, I'm only a sophomore and this event wasn't featured at last year's competition in my state, so I'd like to know how costly it would be for me to be rendered incapable of playing the scale due to the limitations of my instrument (went with a hank drum for something unique and to produce more ambient sounds).It's in the correct range and everything else, so if anybody could tell me how badly that'll affect me that would be great.

You've got to be able to prove you can play the scale. If you have the range it shouldn't be a problem unless I'm reading that wrong. But if you can't play the scale, you'll miss out on all of those points, or all of those points but one if you just play one note.