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Thought Process
One of our projects was to build our own instruments from scratch and create a band out of them with 3 other classmates. the instrument I created was a xylophone. My original plan was to build a harp like string instrument but with the time period we were given and a not very thought out plan I decided to settle with the simple xylophone. To get the right octaves I had to create keys that were a specific length. To find the length I took the wavelength of the note and multiplied it by 0.707. The notes I used for the instrument include C6 (creating a 17.7 inch long key), D6 (creating a 16.1 inch long key), E6 (creating a 14.1 Inch long key), F6 ( creating a 13.3 inch long key), A6 (creating a 12.2 inch long key ), B6 (creating a 10.6 inch long key), C7 (creating a 9.4 inch long key), D7 (creating a 9 inc long key), E7 (creating a 7.8 inch long key), F7 (creating a 6.6 inch long key), and G7 (creating a 5.9 inch long key).
Building The Instrument
When creating the xylophone I tested different natural frequencies of wood pieces to find which wood sounded the best, I did this by throwing a piece of the wood into the air and hitting it with a mallet to hear how it sounded. My original idea was to suspend the xylophone keys with wooden planks, like traditional xylophones, but I found that having it attached to the wood muffled the sound that the keys admitted when they were hit. So instead the xylophone is suspended in a wooden frame by fishing line to allow the sound waves emitted by the xylophone to travel further and resonate in the air. Each key for the xylophone is drilled through the center and connected with string that attaches to the wooden frame, also allowing the sound waves of the instrument to travel further in the air. I then created a pair of mallets using a dense and heavy material to create a louder sound as it hit the keys of the xylophone.
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