page_title: Vibraphone
section_title: Bars
hierarchical_section_title: Vibraphone / Construction / Bars
caption_attribution_description: Cutaway view of vibraphone internals
context_page_description: The vibraphone is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is usually played by holding two or four soft mallets and striking the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a vibraphonist, vibraharpist, or vibist.
  The vibraphone resembles the now obsolete marimbaphone and steel marimba of which it superseded. One of the main differences between the vibraphone and other keyboard percussion instruments is that each bar suspends over a resonator tube with a motor-driven butterfly valve at the top. The valves connect together on a common axel, which produces a tremolo or vibrato effect while the motor rotates the axle. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal similar to a piano. With the pedal up, the bars produce a muted sound. With the pedal down, the bars sustain for several seconds, or until muted with the pedal.
  The vibraphone is commonly used in jazz music, in which it often plays a featured role and was a defining element of the sound of mid-20th-century "Tiki lounge" exotica, as popularized by Arthur Lyman.
context_section_description: Vibraphone bars are made from aluminum bar stock, cut into blanks of predetermined length. Holes are drilled through the width of the bars, so they can be suspended by a cord. To maximize the sustain of the bars, the holes are placed at approximately the nodal points of the bar, i.e., the points of minimum amplitude, around which the bar vibrates. For a uniform bar, the nodal points are located 22.4% from each end of the bar.
  Material is ground away from underside of the bars in an arch shape to lower the pitch.  This allows the lower-pitched bars to be a manageable length. It is also the key to the "mellow" sound of the vibraphone (and marimba, which uses the same deep arch) compared with the xylophone, which uses a shallower arch, and the glockenspiel, which has no arch at all. Vibrating rectangular bars have three primary modes of vibration. The deep arch causes these modes to align and create a consonant arrangement of intervals: a fundamental pitch, a pitch two octaves above that, and a third pitch an octave and a major third above the second. For the F3 bar that usually forms the lowest note on a vibraphone, there would be F3 as the fundamental, F5 as the first overtone and A6 as the second overtone. As a side effect, the arch causes the nodal points of the fundamental vibration to shift closer towards the ends of the bar.
  After beveling or rounding the edges, fine-tuning adjustments are made. If a bar is flat, its overall pitch structure can be raised by removing material from the ends of the bar. Once this slightly sharp bar is created, the secondary and tertiary tones can be lowered by removing material from specific locations of the bar.  Vibraphones are tuned to a standard of A = 442 Hz or A = 440 Hz, depending on the manufacturer or in some cases the customer's preference.
  Like marimbas, professional vibraphones have bars of graduated width. Lower bars are made from wider stock, and higher notes from narrower stock, to help balance volume and tone across the range of the instrument. The bars are anodized, typically in silver or gold color, after fine-tuning and may have a smooth or brushed (matte) finish. These are cosmetic features with a negligible effect on the sound.
caption: Interior of vibes exposed, showing deep arch and tuning marks in bar bottom, resonators, disks, damper bar and pins for holding bars
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