Vibraphone beaters

Hi All!

I'm currently composing a piece for mixed ensemble including one percussion part. It would be cool if the player could interchange between vibraphone, glockenspiel and woodblocks.

I've read that the vibraphone is normally played with felt or wool beaters. is it possible to play it with wooden beaters so that the glock and woodblock could be played without changing beaters? would it sound too dry or produce too much contact sound?

the glock doesn't seem to like soft beaters and I really want a crisp sound on the woodblock.

attached is one of the cross instrument examples that I'm not sure if it would work. the top line is woodblock and bottom one vibraphone.

any suggestions?

P.s. one side question: whats the max span of 2 beaters in 1 hand for vibes?

You might get away with using vibe mallets on the woodblock, but it would sound heavier and less bright than the usual drumstick (definitely not crisp like you are indicating you want... it'll sound "clunk-y").

Using vibe mallets on a glockenspiel would most likely be ineffective... you'd get more noise from the impact than from the actual note. It would sound muffled, like a celesta being played several rooms away.

As far as the span, it depends whether the vibraphone is built with graduated bar sizes or a fixed bar size. With a fixed bar size, a greater distance is possible. Keep in mind that you probably wouldn't be able to specify what type of vibraphone.

I personally wouldn't write an interval of more than an octave, or possible a tenth, for two beaters in one hand. In my experience, it becomes more difficult to control the placement of pitches when the hand is so far spread.

hi wwrr,

thanks for the input! seems that i have a bit of problem solving to do now =P I actually tried the mallets at my school, but unfortunately they don't have a vibraphone, so I have no idea what beaters could be used on it.

so would wooden beaters be okay on the vibes? because it seems to both work with wblock and glock.

thanks guys!

No, the vibe mallets are almost always yarn or cord wrapped. The hardest I've ever seen used on a vibraphone is a soft rubber mallet.

Maslanka has a vibe player use xylo mallets on the vibes, but it's a very harsh sound, not characteristic of the vibes at all.

Biggest span? Maybe a tenth. My Lady White (also by Maslanka) goes to a tenth. It's a scallop but we can work it up.

As far as changing? If you only needed two glock notes, we could use two mallets in the hand for vibes and two for glock. As it is, I'm not sure.

Have you considered using different mallets in each hand?

Addition: A percussionist should confirm this, but spontaneously I'd rather use too soft mallets on the woodblock and glockenspiel, than too hard mallets on the vibraphone--in part for the sound, but also to a large extent for the health of the instrument. In other words... hard vibraphone mallets.

thank you all for the replies! I've sort of sorted it out.

because at one point the vibraphone is playing 3 note chords just after a woodblock and glock passage it's really hard to get around if the same beaters can't be used.

now i actually edited the music so there's only a 2 note chord(? or part of a chord?). this should make things easier if the played had a felt and hard in each hand.

btw eldkatt, maybe its only my school's crappy glock, but i tried every soft to med. mallet (metal, wood, rubber-> only very quiet ring)and the glock doesn't respond to any of them.

this is really challanging.... as it is my first time to look into the percussion part i'm writing. would you guys suggest any score reading or books? any that i could possibly borrow from conservatory libraries?

again thank you for the input~

Yeah...you never use wooden mallets on vibes. That's like almost like using a clarinet mouthpiece on a trombone.

Metal mallets usually work very well on block, so maybe it is your school's instrument....

If you were really adventurous, you could have one hand with three mallets in it (two for vibes, one for woodblock or glockenspiel...). Or you could just add another player :)

~Kal

While I've personally never experienced clarinet mouthpieces on trombones (but I'm sure it exists) using oboe reeds on brass instruments is not that uncommon ;)

Regarding vibes, maybe some really hard rubber (still softer than wood) might work? Also keep in mind that sometimes you can also play with the handle of a mallet. Using a vibra mallet and then playing with its wooden handle on a woodblock might work too.

hm. i actually tried clarinet mouthpiece on trombone before. it fits snugly in. you would have a range of a fifth deep down, and would have fun trying to get harmonics out =P

Using a vibra mallet and then playing with its wooden handle on a woodblock might work too.

The problem with that being it's not very loud...

hm. i actually tried clarinet mouthpiece on trombone before. it fits snugly in. you would have a range of a fifth deep down, and would have fun trying to get harmonics out =P

Kinda my point. It works, but it's not very practical. Plus, it scratches up the bars....

Another suggestion: If the parts aren't too close together, the player could simply set down the vibe mallets and pick up the other ones....Just write something like "To Woodblock", etc....

~Kal

You can play the woodblock with either hard or soft mallets. The timber will be different, but it will still work. The issue is finding mallets that work for both the vibes and the glock, which basically don't exist, as far as I've seen. I'm sure there are specialty mallets out there but they may not be that good. In this case, I believe the bst option was to reduce the total number of mallets needed to 4 (two hard and two soft), as the original poster did.

hm. now i've got woodblock mallets and vibraphone mallets, both in each hand to facilitate passages like measure 46-59.

this is my first serious percussion part... before it was only cymbals and timpani here and there. what do you think?

btw i can't quite get sibelius to switch from single line staff to 5 line, any ideas?

i know it could be technically done. when i copy cues of the percussion line to, say, flute, the 5line flute staff changes to single line to accommodate the percussion line.

thank~

opps forgot the score.

percussion2008-06-23.pdf

First, if you want a 'gong' of indefinite pitch, call it a Tam tam. Gongs are pitched, Tam Tams are not.

Second, there's no need to specify the range of the vibraphone. Most vibes have the same range, if the player is using an alternatively ranged vibraphone, they will figure out if it will work or not by playing through the piece.

Instead of calling the Glockenspiel GLSP, maybe try GLOCK. GLSP confused me at first.

This is for two players, right?

First, if you want a 'gong' of indefinite pitch, call it a Tam tam. Gongs are pitched, Tam Tams are not.

yeah.. i read about that. don't they have gongs with richer overtones that produce a harsher tone, closer to indefinite pitch?

& its for one player. I don't think its impossible to play though =P would it?

Well, yes, there are gongs with less precise pitches than others. Also, if you don't strike them in the middle, their tone won't be so clear (but the quality of the tone suffers too). The type of mallet you use might also make a difference.

You can also play both a gong and a tamtam at the same time, which produces a great, rich tone. They mix together rather well. But why not just use a small tamtam in the first place? (But be very careful about overusing tamtams. They produce an awesome sound effect, which is very striking, but for that reason it can easily sound like just that: A cool sound effect. And if you overuse that, it might get annoying. Unless you treat the tamtam entirely differently and really make it a core of your piece, like in James Tenney's "Never written a note for percussion", or Stockhausen's "Mikrophonie".)

I think it looks all playable, but I'm no percussionist. There are a few confusing measures though, like 52/53 and again 148/149. It's clear after a while that it's a simply eighth rhythm between the two hands, but first it looks a bit confusing to see those spaces between the notes. Personally I would write out all the rests when you are on two staves. Or even better, write them as notes on a single beam across both staves:

cool links.. =) i'm still figuring out how to do that in sibelius, maybe you can't? I know it could be done in finale.. but just made the switch as i'm not that reliant on playback.

re jamie: yeah, i actually handwrite my score GLK instead of GLSP, but thats the only option that comes from sibelius' symbols. not too bad considering there's none from finale =P

I just noticed that I accidentally linked to the Stockhausen piece under the Tenney title too, I corrected it now to link to the Tenney piece. Simple concept, but fascinating.

As for crossing staves in Sibelius, do a google search for "cross-staff beaming sibelius" and you'll get some solutions.

hm... i looked up on sibelius reference long ago about cross staff. it seems to only have it for the same instrument, piano or marimba etc. not for different instruments. maybe it would only work in finale? =(

Well, they probably cited examples from those instruments only, since that's the kind of literature where it's most common, but I don't think there are any limitations regarding the kinds of staves it works on. However, IIRC you can only do it with immediately adjacent staves.

well. i'll quote from sibelius reference page 74, "Beams"

*clear throat*

"Note also that...Notes can only cross over to another staff in the same instrument."

it just simply wouldn't respond to any cross staff command to staves that are not the same instrument. and you can't get around it like u normally would(create piano staff and blah blah blah) as one staff is a 1 line percussion staff.

just one of the few stubborn things that sibelius just won't let you do. =P

Sorry, each time I see this topic on the main page I think "Vibraphones are people too!" or like, analog to "Wife beater."

Stop beating the poor vibraphones, they did nothing to you!

lol