The trouble with the label "marimba band" is that most of the instruments we play are technically xylophones. Orff xylophones to be exact. Stranger yet, our Orff (who was German) xylophones are actually made in France! We play music that is in the style of Zimbabwean marimba music. It gets more twisted, all of our "Zimbabwean" music is written by a guy from Seattle. That's right: we play Zimbabwean music by a guy from Seattle on German instruments made in France. How's that for a "multi-cultural" lesson plan?
Our school is actually lucky enough to own one home-made marimba that was made by last year's HXB elementary students with the help of a local dude who does that sort of thing. It is indeed the nicest sounding instrument in the room. I say, "Great idea! what could be more band-geeky that building your own instrument?" I think back to my college days while the double reed players (and lets face-it, they are some of the geekiest in the band, are they not?) spent hours in and out of rehearsal hunched over their mandrills, plaques, hollow ground reed knifes and the like making reeds for every situation that they might encounter in a performance. My students instead will be hunched over chunks of African hardwood with safety glasses, mallets, and chisels to tune the marimba bars.
I made a small marimba at home for practice a couple of weeks ago. It actually looks an awful lot like an Orff soprano xylophone, but has a bit of a rounder tone with longer sustain (I presume it is because the bars on this instrument are much longer than the bars on my classroom xylophones that produce a similar pitch. My students were impressed, although some seemed more impressed with the marimba's resonator box which was made of scrap plywood I had sitting around the basement rather than the fact that it took a fair amount of patience to tune the 13 bars to the correct pitches!The next step is to build the real deal with the students help. About half of my current students were in the group last year and assisted in the first build. I'm going to be a bit more ambitious than my predecessor as I am doing it all without the help of her expert (I'll save a load of $$ that way) AND my plan is to build 2 instruments instead of just one. If I can build a couple of instruments each year it will only take me a a couple of years until we can all play on our hand made marimbas and save the Orff instruments for class (which is good, because they take a bit of a beating with the enthusiastic playing of the marimba band).
We'll still be playing Zimbabwean style music from Seattle on instruments made locally, but at least the design is authentic and the wood if from Africa.
