Im feeling a lot better after being my dogs chew toy. Ive started cutting my pieces and have made the box. The hard part now is going to be sanding the inside of the keys and forming them curved so that they resonate sound better because mr. Pittman and the percussion specialist at the school of music pointed out that these elements were key in tuning the instrument. The box is very brittle however im going to have to make the structure more study.

Despite it not being advisable to, i tried doing some cuts so that I can at least get started on my project heres where im at thus far.

Materials

Pine seems to be the more affordable of the 2 types of wood suggested by Mr. Peerman. Im gonna start with the largest key being about 3 feet tall and each subsequent pieces beings 2 inches shorter.

I will have to purchase the materials from Home Hardware due to proximity more than anything. Got into a hiatus because my dog had bit me right on the middle finger….how ironic. So I will have to hand in my project a little late. Im gonna use this time to hopefully get as many materials as possible.

The Beginning Stages

Here are some examples of what I wanted to mimick with my project. However on a much smaller scale because of cost constraints.

I reall hit the ground running with this concept I did not want to work with any other instruments. My real problem here was the simplicity of the idea. I had to make it more complex than just a six key xylophone. Thanks to Trevor Peerman of the music department I was able to get my hands on a glockenspiel and get his insight on materials. He said that using a wood like pine or oak to get better resonance and rope under the keys to get more reverberation.

Im toying with the idea of putting horns on the ends of my keys heres what I’ve hammered out….get it…the pun…yeah its not that funny….was hard as hell…looks like more of an S&M nipple protector than anything…

After hearing about this project and seeing  some of the things that other artists created I felt inspired and went on a drawing rampage. 🙂 I originally thought of making a sitar type instrument or a xylophone with horns on the end of it. I feel like this project is right up my alley because I have a running theme of music in my projects.