FINAL DECISION

Building a marimba or a vibraphone is an expensive pursuit; not to mention a time-consuming one. The glockenspiel is the simplest of the tuned percussion instruments, consisting of a set of rectangular cross-section metal bars supported horizontally on a frame. It is much smaller in size than the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone and does not require resonators (the case acts as the resonating chamber).

The glockenspiel, or orchestral bells, comprises a series of steel bars of graduated length (2.5-3.2 cm wide and 6-9 mm thick), arranged in two rows chromatically. Its range is customarily from G5 (f = 784 Hz) to C8 (f = 4186 Hz), although it is scored two octaves lower than it sounds. To obtain the maximum resonance the bars are supported on felt or similar insulation, or suspended at the nodal points. It is usual for the ‘back row’ to be raised.

The glockenspiel is played with a variety of mallets: ebonite, wood, plastic, and brass for a loud, bright sound and mallets with soft rubber heads for soft passages.  When struck with a hard mallet, a glockenspiel bar produces a crisp metallic sound, which quickly gives way to a clear ring at the designated pitch. Because the overtones have very high frequencies and die out rather quickly, they are of relatively less importance in determining the timbre of the glockenspiel than are the overtones of the marimba or xylophone, for example. For this reason, little effort is made to bring the inharmonic overtones of a glockenspiel into a harmonic relationship through overtone tuning. 

References:

Fletcher, Neville H., and Thomas D. Rossing. The Physics of Musical Instruments. New York: Springer, 1998.

Olson, Harry Ferdinand. Music, Physics and Engineering. New York: Dover, 1967.

Rossing, Thomas D. Science of Percussion Instruments. Singapore: World Scientific, 2000.