Xylophone

I’m a Huge Fraud

Max · April 18, 2018 · Xylophone · Lack of Analysis, Marimba, Music, Xylo · No Comments

I really hope that title, although true, doesn’t get taken out of context later in my life. I’m a huge fraud, but given some context I think we can all get a good laugh out of it.

Last year in the middle of the summer I started my YouTube channel Xylo-A-Day to ensure that I would essentially practice everyday.

Every day I upload content to that channel.

Every day I lie to the public.

There are 287 videos posted at the time of writing this blog that are all complete and utter lies.

It’s not a xylophone, it’s a marimba (specifically, a Musser M31).

I know, I know. I apologize.

But here’s the thing, I didn’t realize that it was a marimba. And I know that sounds a little far-fetched, considering that I have been playing mallet instruments since middle school but let me explain myself.

The high school where I learned to play used Yamaha instruments not Musser.

Here is a Yamaha Marimba:

Image result for Yamaha marimba

Here is a Musser M31 Marimba (The instrument I have):

Image result for musser m31

And here is a Yamaha xylophone:

Image result for yamaha xylophone

At this point you are either in two fields:

Maxwell, the difference is so obvious! Look at the resonators!
Those are different instruments?

And as a person who has had 6 years of mallet instrument experience by the time I got out of high school, I’m ashamed to say that somehow after a year of playing on a marimba I’m just now realizing that it is a marimba.

All throughout my time playing mallet instruments I was always a little upset when people would call every mallet instrument a xylophone. I’ve become my own worst nightmare. For a year, I’ve been running a channel on the premise that it is in fact a xylophone.

Hindsight is 20/20. Now that I look at it I can’t believe I ever thought it was a xylophone. But I understand what led me to that assumption.

Here is list of all of the blunders that led me to believe for a whole year that I’ve been playing a xylophone:

When I was told about it in the first place, I was told it was a xylophone.
Bar Width, I didn’t know marimbas could have fixed width bars.
- A Yamaha Marimba increases bar width and length the lower the pitch gets.
- A Yamaha Xylophone has a fixed width and the bar itself gets longer.
- A Musser M31 marimba has a fixed width bar and the bar itself gets longer.
When I got it I completely spaced on the fact that resonators are not supposed to be that long for a xylophone. That one is fully on me.
It isn’t in great condition. It’s not necessarily in bad condition, but the lower frequencies cause the resonators to rattle a lot, so I prefer not to play them. This meant I mainly played and heard the higher end of the marimba, which is more xylophone-ey than marimba-ey.
In the euphoria of receiving a mallet instrument I played it without question, which means that up until last Sunday I never looked actually looked up the model of the instrument. That one is fully on me as well.

So does this mean that I am going to name change Xylo-A-Day? Am I going to change it to Marimba-a-Day?

Nope.

My plans with the channel is to one day have a variety of mallet instruments, so Xylo-A-Day is here to stay. I still really want to play a vibraphone on the channel and whenever I get one and upload those videos I wouldn’t change my name to Vibra-A-Day.

At the very least, I plan to reflect from here on out that it is in fact a marimba and not a xylophone. You can still expect me to put xylophone tags everywhere since most people don’t know what a marimba is anyways.

And last but not least thanks to Cris the Experience for making me question everything that I hold dear.

Screen Shot 2018-04-17 at 9.46.56 PM.png

I Made Another Video of Decent Quality

Max · April 9, 2018 · Xylophone · Accomplishments, Gaming, Music · No Comments

Yesterday, I made another quality video. It involved the Zelda Chest Opening Theme, dry ice, and a cooler.

This semester I tasked myself with uploading at least 5 quality videos amidst the never-ending onslaught of daily videos, which mainly consist of only <30 second folk songs. I’ve only uploaded a few that I thought of high enough quality to check off my to-do list, one of which was the GameCube Startup Theme.

From that video I learned a few things. I learned I could edit my videos just slightly more than usual and come up with profoundly greater looking videos. The GameCube Startup Theme only consisted of me playing one riff and then overlaying the GameCube startup video. It was short and sweet and it looked alright, so I decided to upload it to Reddit to see if I could get any exposure for the channel. Most of the time I submit to subs that can be associated with the videos:

Zelda theme week on /r/Zelda
Super Mario Bros on /r/Mario
Sound of Silence on /r/ArrestedDevelopment

I couldn’t submit to /r/gaming though because at the time I didn’t comment enough to pass the threshold created by the sub to post. So I was left with /r/YouTubeHaiku, which specializes in short YouTube videos.

And it was a jackpot, in terms of my channel at least.

Most of my videos on my channel average at around 5 to 6 views after a few days after uploads, unless I advertise it on the Twitter or post it to an appropriate subreddit, which then can vary the results from 40 – 100ish views.

The GameCube Startup Theme garnered 1000 views in a single day, brought my view count to 4000, making that video account for about 25% of all the views on my channel… which had well over a hundred videos.

So there it was, the flash in the pan. The lightning in a bottle. The fluke. I couldn’t think of anything else to upload that would be of such short length and such high quality. Until a week ago when I came up with the idea of using the Zelda Chest Opening Theme.

It was an iconic sounding riff, it had an iconic animation associated with it, and I could put a little gag at the end, all of which are needed for a successful video. I now even knew of a place that would be highly accepting of my video.

To give credit where credit is due I got the sheet music from NinSheetMusic.org they are super awesome and as the name implies, have sheet music for Nintendo games.

The next step was recreating the iconic animation, which in my mind consists of Link reaching into a semi-mysterious glowing chest and then pulling out the item that he found. Then I needed the parts:

Link – Myself
Semi-mysterious – A fog effect created by dry ice
Glowing – A phone flashlight
Chest – The cooler I bought along with the dry ice
Item – A piece of paper that says ‘consider subscribing’

This was the result.

The rig inside the cooler was pretty funny itself. It consisted of a block of dry ice leaned towards the door, on the side of cooler closest to the camera. I would pour hot water on it to create the fog effect which then created the issue of the dry ice now becoming ever so slightly wet.

This meant that the paper could not be put directly on the dry ice or it would get wet. My solution was to place a block on top of the dry ice to create a flat surface after I poured the water on it. This created a dry surface that a paper could be placed on then easily found in fog.

Then I needed light. I had a flashlight but it wasn’t strong enough so I needed to use my phone’s light. This turned out to be risky because I couldn’t just put my phone on the bottom of the cooler due to the hot water. My solution was to place my phone on a small coffee cup, which I then placed into the cooler after pouring in the water.

With all those elements put together I was able to create the video, which upon looking at the stats, is getting pretty successful. I’ve almost doubled my subscribers so far thanks to the gag at the end and it has also garnered at least a thousand views.

I can’t make any promises, but I’m hoping to try to release a semi-quality video every week or so (something that is of considerable length i.e. >minute) and a quality video (something of good editing) every month or so. I’m also hoping to have a Metroid Theme Week, much like the Zelda theme week of a semester ago.

I’m excited to see where the future takes Xylo-A-Day!

Sound of Silence and Higher Quality Xylophoning

Max · August 17, 2017 · Xylophone · Meta, Xylo · No Comments

Today I released Sound of Silence on my YouTube channel Xylo-A-Day, there should be a link to the channel in the sidebar if you want to give the channel a look.

When I started that channel I figured it would be tough to do a song everyday. It was. There is an entire period where I was out of town and then sick and didn’t make a video. But even before that, it was tough to play a song everyday. When I tried to stockpile songs, the songs I would choose would be too tough to sight read (which is how I end up producing most of those videos). Sometimes the recording would be too loud, sometimes it would be too soft, the xylophone wouldn’t be sitting on the stand right, the resonators would make a crackling sound because they aren’t sitting right, or any number of other inconveniences.

Finally though, most of those problems are solved. I found a book with simpler, but still catchy melodies that I could sight read and stockpile. I was able to keep the resonators still so they wouldn’t crackle. I figured out the perfect (close-enough) microphone level, and I can keep it there between sessions. Everything is starting to look up for the channel.

So what’s next?

First, I changed the layout of the channel, so it now looks more professional. I added some nice looking channel art (or at least nice for the time being). I made a twitter account which has a link in the sidebar of this blog and the channel on the YouTube channel. I am going to start adding more professional and longer pieces like Sound of Silence. I also intend on starting to do theme weeks where I play from a certain soundtrack for a whole week.

I don’t really have any other plans for the time being, it is just exciting that I have gotten this far. I can’t wait to see what that channel turns into this coming year.

Xylophone and the Next Great Endeavor

Max · June 19, 2017 · Xylophone · Blog, Meta, Xylo · No Comments

It’s storytime boys and girls so buckle up.

When I was in high school, I was in fact a band nerd. More than that, I was a percussionist, so I played everything that wasn’t a wind instrument. And even more detailed, I mainly practiced mallet instruments. If you remember the little toy multi-color xylophone you played with as a child, then imagine that but 10x bigger, that is what I played in band.

I was in band for 6 years and during that time I had the opportunity to get pretty decent at vibraphone, marimba, and xylophone. Then when I graduated from high school and I went to college I had the opportunity to be in college band. I decided against it though because I really wanted to focus on my degree rather than still be the band kid I had been for the past few years of my life.

This decision has filled me with just a little bit of regret ever since.

Mallet instruments aren’t cheap. Because of that the only realistic way I could have kept practicing and playing would be by playing in the college band. And since I hadn’t been in college band I haven’t been able to play… until recently a very strange thing happened.

A month or so ago I was at work and I was talking to one of my co-workers about high school band. If you want to know what the easiest most fluid subject you can talk about to any band kid, it is band. Turns out my co-worker was a band kid, and he played euphonium, he then asked what I played. I explained to him that I was a percussionist and I mainly played the mallet instruments, and how I really wish I was still playing but those instruments cost a lot of money so I don’t play anymore.

This is where it gets interesting. Once I explained what I used to play he told me how his dad was a band director and percussionist. Then he went on to say that he thinks there might actually be one in his garage that he is trying to get rid of and if so, I could have it.

Turns out, that is exactly what happened. A couple of weeks ago he handed me the frame and keys and resonators to a xylophone and explained that there wasn’t a stand for it. That’s fine, I can easily build it.

And with that I built the frame.

And when the frame was built I put it into my closet (which is surprisingly spacious).

And now I have a xylophone I can readily practice on and hopefully master, which brings me to my next big endeavor.

For at least the rest of Summer starting next week I am going to try to upload a video a day of xylophone. All the videos are probably going to be short melodies that I’m getting from a book of melodies, and hopefully by the end of Summer I will be much better than I am now. The link to that YouTube channel is here.

It’s a strange thing, because I know if I was watching a movie and this happened to the protagonist I would be in utter disbelief and probably call the movie unrealistic. But here I am now, the newest owner of a xylophone.