Vibraphone
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The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the mallet subfamily of the percussion family.
It is similar in appearance to the xylophone and marimba, although the vibraphone uses aluminum bars instead of the wooden bars of those instruments. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal similar to that used on a piano. When the pedal is up, the bars are all damped and the sound of each bar is quite short; with the pedal down, they will sound for several seconds.
The most common uses of the vibraphone are within jazz music, where it often plays a featured role, and in the wind ensemble, as a standard component of the percussion section.The first musical instrument called "vibraphone" was marketed by the Leedy Manufacturing Company in the United States in 1921. However, this instrument differed in significant details from the instrument now called the vibraphone. The Leedy vibraphone achieved a degree of popularity after it was used in the novelty recordings of "Aloha 'Oe" and "Gypsy Love Song" by vaudeville performer Louis Frank Chiha ("Signor Frisco")
This popularity led J. C. Deagan, Inc. in 1927 to ask its Chief Tuner, Henry Schluter, to develop a similar instrument. However, Schluter didn't just copy the Leedy design, he introduced several significant improvements such as making the bars from aluminum instead of steel for a more "mellow" basic tone, adjustments to the dimensions and tuning of the bars to eliminate the dissonant harmonics in the Leedy design (further mellowing the tone), and the introduction of a damper bar controlled by a foot pedal enabling it to be played with more expression.[1] Schluter's design was more popular than the Leedy design, and has become the template for all instruments called vibraphone today.
However, when Deagan began marketing Schluter's instrument in 1928, they called it the vibraharp. As its popularity grew other manufacturers began producing instruments based on Schluter's design, marketed under a variety of names, including Leedy, who marketed their new instrument as the vibraphone and abandoned their old design.The initial purpose of the vibraphone was to add to the large arsenal of percussion sounds used by vaudeville orchestras for novelty effects. This use was quickly overwhelmed in the 1930's by its development as a jazz instrument. As of 2008, it remains primarily, although not exclusively, a jazz instrument.
The DVD Lionel Hampton: Jazz Legend King of the Vibes chronicles the 73 year career of Lionel Hampton, the original jazz vibraphonist.
The popularity of the vibraphone as a jazz instrument can primarily be credited to one man, Lionel Hampton. The story, perhaps apocryphal, is that "Hamp", a drummer at the time, was playing at the NBC radio studios, where he discovered a vibraphone that was kept on hand to play the musical motif identifying the NBC network, the "NBC Chimes". After the gig, he spent a considerable amount of time exploring the instrument, and fell in love with it.
Later (October 16, 1930), Hampton was recording with Louis Armstrong & His Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra, and the studio they were working in happened to have a vibraphone. Hampton showed Armstrong what he could do, and they decided to add vibes to one of the tunes ("Memories of You"), creating the first known jazz recording using the vibraphone.After this, Hampton decided to concentrate on the vibraphone, eventually joining the Benny Goodman Quintet, and later leading his own big bands and achieving great popularity.As of 2008, the vibraphone marketplace is remarkably active, considering the specialty nature of the instrument. The major players include Musser, Yamaha, Adams and Ross. Bergerault, Premier, Studio 49 from Gräfelfing, Germany and the Saito Gakki Company of Japan continue in operation. In addition to the "mass" producers of vibraphones, custom manufacturers, notably vanderPlas Percussion of The Netherlands, are also active.
The major components of a vibraphone are the bars, resonators, damper pad, motor and a frame to hold them all together. Vibraphones are usually played with mallets. Vibraphone mallets usually consist of a rubber ball core wrapped in yarn or cord and attached to a narrow dowel, most commonly made of rattan or birch (other materials, such as nylon, are sometimes used). The two-mallet approach to vibes is traditionally linear, playing like a horn. Two-mallet players usually concentrate on playing a single melodic line and rely on other musicians to provide accompaniment. Double stops (two notes played simultaneously) are sometimes used, but mostly as a reinforcement of the main melodic line, similar to the usual use of double stops in solo violin music. In jazz groups, two-mallet vibraphonists are usually considered part of the "front line" with the horn players, contributing solos of their own but contributing very little in the way of accompaniment to other soloists.
The four-mallet vibraphone style is multi-linear, like a piano. "Thinking like a pianist, arranger, and orchestrator, the vibist approaches the instrument like a piano and focuses on a multi-linear way of playing."[8] In jazz groups, four-mallet vibraphonists are often considered part of the rhythm section, typically substituting for piano or guitar, and providing accompaniment for other soloists in addition to soloing themselves. Furthermore, the four-mallet style has led to a significant body of unaccompanied solo vibes playing. One notable example is Gary Burton’s performance of "Chega de Saudade (No More Blues)" from his Grammy-winning 1971 album "Alone at Last". [9]
Pitch bending: This technique allows the pitch of a ringing bar to be smoothly lowered, or "bent", downward, by a half-step or so. To do this, the player replaces one of the normal mallets with a hard-headed mallet such as a hard plastic xylophone mallet or a brass glockenspiel mallet. The player presses the special mallet onto a ringing bar at the nodal point, and then slides the mallet out towards the middle or edge of the bar. This causes the mallet to start vibrating with the bar, adding its weight to the system and slowing the vibration. The player must be very careful in placing the hard mallet onto the bar in order to avoid a rattling as the mallet and bar come into contact.
Bowing: In addition to striking the bars with mallets, the bars can be made to sound by drawing the bow of a string instrument along the edges. Since bars are fairly massive compared to strings, better results are obtained by using bows from the larger string instruments, at least a cello bow and often a double bass bow. Often a player will use two bows, one for the white bars and the other for the black. With bowing, the player is able to excite the bars directly to the pure ringing tone and eliminate many of the transient dissonant sounds that are present immediately after a mallet strikes.
Five or six mallets: In order to achieve greater density of sound and richer chord voicings, some vibraphonists have experimented with three mallets per hand, either in both hands for a total of six mallets or in just the left hand for a total of five. Results can be interesting, especially five-mallet playing where the left hand "comps" in three note voicings while the right hand plays melodic lines, similar to the popular piano technique.[13] However, the grips tend to lead to limited musical possibilities, with little ability to adjust the interval between the outside and middle mallets and difficulties in playing hand-to-hand lines, and therefore use of five or six mallets is rare.Other techniques: The vibraphone solo, "Mourning Dove Sonnet," composed by Christopher Deane, utilizes a four mallet grip with two cello (or bass) bows held where the outer mallets would be, with a yarn mallet for the main melodic playing and a plastic mallet for pitch bending in the inner positions.
Vibraphones had a large part in the music production of the popular broadway show of West Side Story. The American classic by Frankie Valli, “Can’t Take My Eyesy Off of You” also feature the spunds of the vibraphone.
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