Vibraphone

A vibrato built with machinery

Most accounts place the vibraphone in the United States in the early 1920s, and the maker usually credited is the Leedy company of Indianapolis, where Hermann Winterhoff worked on the idea of adding a vibrato to tuned metal bars. A college collection dates the invention to 1921. Earlier experiments with moving resonators were reportedly too noisy to succeed, and the version that worked used rotating parts inside the tubes. Exact dates and the sharing of credit among individuals and firms vary between sources.

A rival firm, Deagan, soon offered its own model under a different trade name, vibraharp, and is commonly said to have refined the design. The two names long coexisted, although today’s players call every such instrument a vibraphone. Dance bands and jazz groups adopted it fast, and composers in the 1930s began to write for it in concert music.

Bars, tubes, discs and a pedal

A standard vibraphone carries thirty-seven aluminum-alloy bars laid out in the piano pattern, natural notes in front and sharps and flats behind. Early instruments used steel, and aluminum later replaced it for a mellower tone. Each bar is suspended on cord through its nodes, the points that scarcely move when the bar vibrates, and is tuned by carving away metal from underneath. Under every bar stands a metal tube cut to match its pitch.

What makes the instrument distinct is the machinery. An electric motor turns rods fitted with flat discs, and as the discs rotate they open and close the tops of the tubes. The motor’s speed is adjustable, and it can be switched off. A foot pedal works a felt-covered bar beneath the keys, the damper, which either presses against the bars to stop them or lifts away to let them ring.

Why the notes seem to shimmer

Metal bars behave differently from wooden ones. A struck aluminum bar rings for many seconds, so without damping the notes pile on top of each other like a held chord on an organ. The tone is soft at the edges and rounder than the clang of a glockenspiel or the crack of a Xylophone, which is why vibraphonists can sustain lines in a nearly singing legato.

The pulsing effect comes from the rotating discs. As a disc passes across the open top of a tube, it alters how strongly the column of air below the bar reinforces the note, so the volume swells and fades in rapid cycles. Slow motor speeds give a gentle wobble, and faster settings give a nervous shimmer. Many players play with the motor off for passages where they want a pure, steady sound.

Three octaves and a long decay

The usual instrument spans F3 to F6, three octaves, and the music is written at sounding pitch without transposition. Some makers build extended-range models, but the standard size remains the reference point for most repertoire. That range is narrower than that of a concert Marimba, and composers often write chords spread across the middle of the compass rather than at its extremes.

Timbre changes with register and with mallet choice. The low bars ring slowly and hum; the upper bars are bright and glassy and die away faster. Yarn-wound mallets produce a warm, broad attack, while harder cord or rubber heads sharpen the onset and add bell-like overtones. Some players draw a double-bass bow across the bar edges, which produces a sustained, eerie tone with no struck attack at all.

Hands, feet and the question of silence

Vibraphonists typically hold two or four mallets, and four-mallet playing allows chords, voiced in close harmony, plus independent lines. Because the notes sustain, a player’s most important decisions are about silence: when to lift the foot, when to press a palm or finger on a bar to end a note, and how to keep successive harmonies from blurring together.

The pedal plays a role similar to the sustaining pedal of a Piano, though the two are not interchangeable in how they are used. On most vibraphones, pressing the pedal lets the notes ring, and lifting it damps them. Fast damping and careful half-pedaling create rhythmic punctuation and clean phrase endings, and some players add dynamic shading by changing the motor speed during a piece.

Variants of the vibrating bar

Makers have produced vibraphones in a range of sizes, from compact portable models with fewer bars to extended instruments that add notes at the bottom or the top. Bar finishes also differ, from bright polished metal to darker anodized surfaces, and players sometimes describe small differences in projection between them. Such judgments are subjective, and the underlying tuning is shared by all standard instruments.

Historians of percussion describe the vibraphone as an offshoot of earlier metal-barred marimbas, which used steel and lacked its motorized resonators, although accounts of that lineage differ in detail. Electronic versions, whether sample libraries or keyboard imitations, reproduce the sound without the physical motor. In contemporary classical writing, the same core instrument can be treated as a melodic voice, a harmonic pad or a source of unusual bowed textures.

From dance floor to concert stage

Jazz gave the vibraphone its public face. The Musical Instrument Museum credits Lionel Hampton with bringing the instrument into jazz, and his phrasing and showmanship helped it move from novelty status to a main solo voice in small groups. Later players developed more harmonic, chord-based styles, and the vibraphone became a regular partner for piano, bass and drums in the quartet format.

In concert music the instrument appears in orchestral scores, in chamber ensembles and in percussion groups alongside marimba and Timpani. Composers value its capacity to sustain pitch without a bow or breath, and its blend with harp, celesta and strings. A smaller solo repertoire exists, including pieces that combine the vibraphone with electronics or with bowed techniques.

Looking after metal and motor

A vibraphone is mostly metal, but it still responds to its environment. Covers keep dust off the bars and discs, and players wipe away fingerprints with a soft cloth, since oils can leave marks on the finish. Bars are tuned by carving, so any retuning is left to an experienced technician rather than attempted at home.

The moving parts need attention too. The motor, drive belt and pedal mechanism are checked periodically for wear, noise and smooth operation, and many makers publish maintenance guidance. Because the damper is felt, it can compress over years and may need replacing. The frame and the resonator tubes are lifted carefully during transport so that bars, cords and discs do not bump or shift.

Details worth knowing

• The earliest vibraphones used steel bars; aluminum later became the norm because of its mellower tone.
• A gold-finished Deagan vibraphone made for Lionel Hampton is described by the Musical Instrument Museum as the only example built to the company’s most deluxe trim level.
• The instrument’s two historic names, vibraphone and vibraharp, are associated with two different American firms.
• On a standard instrument, the lowest bar is F3, the F below middle C, and the highest is F6.

Terms used in this entry

anodized

Given a hard protective surface layer by an electrochemical treatment of the metal.

damper

A felt-covered bar that presses against the keys to stop their ringing.

half-pedaling

Partly releasing the pedal so the damper lightly touches the bars, shortening rather than ending the ring.

idiophone

An instrument whose own body vibrates to produce its sound.

legato

Smoothly connected, with no audible gap between notes.

node

A point on a vibrating bar that barely moves, used as the place to support it.

resonator

A tube under a bar that reinforces the bar’s pitch through vibrating air.

vibrato

A regular fluctuation in loudness or pitch that gives a note a wavering quality.

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References

1. Grinnell College Libraries. vibraphone · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/2395
2. Philharmonia Orchestra. Percussion. philharmonia.co.uk/resources/instruments/percussion
3. Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). New Historic and Iconic Instruments Coming to MIM’s Special Exhibition. mim.org/new-historic-and-iconic-instruments-coming-to-mims-special-exhibition
4. Percussive Arts Society. The Vibraphone: Past, Present and Future. pas.org/publication-articles/the-vibraphone-past-present-and-future

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.