Lemmy doesn’t seem to have any popular woodworking subreddits, so I thought I’d post here. Just deleted my reddit account and want to contribute some content here!
Building your own musical instrument sounds like a daunting project at the beginning but one with very satisfying results. :)
Not knowing much about marimbas or woodworking, I’m super curious about the actual hand-tuning process! Is it carefully trimming the boards down? And how much do the tubes (?) at the bottom affect the tuning vs the wood pieces on top?
So each of the keys is cut to specific dimensions (I just stole these from an existing Marimba) where deeper keys are larger and higher keys shorter, then you cut an arch into the bottom of the key. The arch is where the real tuning comes from, the size of the key just gets you into the general neighborhood.
Each key has 1 primary tone and 2 overtones (actually way more, but these are the 3 that the human ear can actually pick up on), and each of the tones is tuned by specific regions of the arch, so if you trim material from the center for instance, it will affect the primary tone. I tuned my marimba so that the 2 overtones were the fourth harmonic and the tenth harmonic, which is standard for marimbas, and is what gives it it’s unique deep sound.
The tubes are called resonators - they’re sort of natural amplifiers, without them, the whole thing sounds like you’re just smacking wooden blocks (which you are, to be fair), but with them you get a very powerful, room filling sound. Each one is “tuned” to the resonance of the key it sits under!
If you’re interested in the specifics this is the blog I used to learn the process http://www.lafavre.us/tuning-marimba.htm
Thanks for all the great details and the link! I imagine tuning must be a bit nerve wracking and involve lots of constant testing, since carving the wood down is pretty irreversible.
Yeah it was definetely a bit stressful at times, thankfully you can only ever screw up one key at a time though! And there’s a bit of correction to be done by trimming the edges off the key
The tube length is related to pitch but it doesn’t control the pitch. The reason they’re all different lengths is because different length tubes resonate at different frequencies. So the tube under each “key” (is that what they’re called?) is designed to resonate specifically at the pitch produced by that key.
Not popular but you have to help change that. Crosspost from here into it.
Done!
I saw, I just was pressing back and I got worried you had already done it before I made my comment. Was worried I looked like an idiot!
That looks absolutely amazing!
Thank you so much for posting. Could you please play something on it and upload it here? Would love to see it in action
Incredible! Great work, it sounds absolutely beautiful
WOWIE that looks and sounds great, nice job!
Wow incredible work! 👏
Seconded!
That is fucking insane and gorgeous and looks super fun to play. I just went to an outdoor market where there was a youth marimba band and I was blown away at the African (Nigerian?)-inspired music they were playing.
Yeah it was a lot of fun to build, and it’s a blast to play! I used to play in high school, so its been fun to get back into it
This is insane. If I had the space and patience, I would totally make something like this.
Did you follow some sort of guide on the web or did you wing it?
Any chance we can hear it? =D
Awesome! Thank you.
The colours are amazing. Incredible.
Beautifully done! What did the wood cost in total?
It was probably around $500 for the wood in total. Hard to say exactly, I didn’t keep close track and I had a fair bit left over
Probably could have done it for cheaper if I was more careful about what I bought and did the whole thing in bulk from the beginning
Incredibly cool! We’ll done mate!
Holy hell thats gorgeous craftsmanship.
This is absolutely amazing, I listened to the video sample you posted too and it sounds great!
Looks (and sounds) amazing!
This is incredible work!
How difficult was it to tune? Did you have to tune each individual key, one imagines?
It was very time consuming! The key tuning process alone took most of the half year, and I screwed about quite a few keys over the course of the project - The nice thing though was that it broke the large, intimidating project into very manageable chunks. One key would take anywhere from 30m to 2h depending on the size of the key and my own skill as it developed throughout the process, so I could generally bust one out in the evening, or half a dozen over a weekend. It was very satisfying to watch my pile of keys grow!
I wrote down some basics of the process here
Hope you find a good woodwork community! I’ll add my thumbs up in the meantime - really impressive
It’s absolutely gorgeous and I’d love to hear what it sounds like. Beautiful work OP.
Ask and ye shall receive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT2N5gYGXcI&list=PLu9DCtN-rIM-_xMkEDFimQJixW-cdu89J
