Imagine designing your own marimba...Take the best aspects from all the different instruments you've played. Incorporate beautiful exotic hardwood crafted to meet your vision of aesthetics and range. Then buy it for less than a mass-produced instrument. This is the mission at Planet Marimba.
Here are interesting factors to consider when building an instrument that's right for you:
- Hinges in the rails make it easier to fit in a small car and rails without hinges ensures a lifetime of rails without sagging
- Don't be limited by the normal size of our modern marimba. Planet Marimba instruments span the entire range of the piano. [88 keys]
- Short bars make softer notes speak in the low range. The drawback is that shorter bars are also thinner and therefore easier to crack.
- Longer bars need a little more force in the mallet to make them speak, but they will last longer.
- I've always wanted to make a curved marimba, just like the old curved organs I see in theaters.
- Larger diameter resonators creates an environment where the bar will not overpower the tube underneath it. Using too small of a resonator will cause a distortion, much like distortion in an electric guitar.
- Bar width is a big consideration. Wider bars move more air, but it's also much more difficult to play.
- Large bars = large sound, narrow bars = smaller intervals
- Custom frame design
- Portability considerations
- Exotic wood
- On a limited budget
- On a limitless budget
Planet Marimba can also help you customize your existing instrument. Would you like a new frame, wider keys, or an extended range? Send us your old bars and have a new instrument built using the existing keys. Or have an additional octave built as a separate instrument to expand the range of your keyboard.
|
