Marimba, xylophone, and vibraphone: how to tell them apart

The marimba, the xylophone, and the vibraphone are percussion instruments with bars laid out like piano keys. The player strikes the bars with mallets. The xylophone has wooden bars and a bright, dry sound. The marimba has wider wooden bars and a deep, warm sound. The vibraphone has metal bars, a pedal, and a sound that rings and wobbles.

The differences at a glance

	Xylophone	Marimba	Vibraphone
Bars	Wood, narrow and thick	Wood, wide and thin	Metal
Range	High	Wide, with low notes	Middle
Mallets	Hard	Soft, wrapped in yarn	Medium, wrapped in cord or yarn
Sound	Bright, dry, and short	Warm, deep, and round	Smooth and ringing, with a wobble
Special part	Short tubes under the bars	Long tubes under the bars	A pedal, and spinning discs in the tubes
Heard most in	The orchestra	Solo concerts and music from Central America	Jazz

Players call the three of them mallet percussion, or keyboard percussion.

What they share

Each bar is cut to give one note. A long bar is low, and a short bar is high. The bars sit in two rows, the way the white keys and the black keys of a piano do.

A tube hangs under each bar. The tube is tuned to the note of its bar, and it makes the note fuller and louder. The tubes are called resonators.

The xylophone

The xylophone is the bright one. Its bars are hard wood or a man-made material, and the player uses hard mallets. Each note is a sharp click with a clear pitch, and it dies away at once.

That short, dry sound cuts through an orchestra. Composers use it for bones, sparks, and jokes. Read the xylophone and glockenspiel for kids.

The marimba

The marimba is the deep one. Its bars are wider and thinner than a xylophone’s, and its tubes are long. A large concert marimba covers five octaves and is more than eight feet wide.

Players use soft mallets wrapped in yarn. Many hold two mallets in each hand, so that they can play four notes at once.

Where it comes from. Instruments with wooden bars are old in Africa. Africans who were taken to Central America as slaves brought the idea with them, and the marimba took shape there. It is the national instrument of Guatemala, and it is a tradition in southern Mexico too. There, three or four players often stand side by side at one large marimba.

The vibraphone

The vibraphone is the newest of the three. It was invented in the United States in the 1920s. Its bars are metal, and they ring for a long time.

Two parts make it different.

The pedal. A long strip of felt rests against the bars and stops them. Pressing the pedal moves the felt away, and the notes ring on. It works the way the right pedal of a piano does.

The spinning discs. At the top of each tube sits a small disc. An electric motor turns the discs, and they open and close the tubes. The sound swells and fades in a steady wobble. That effect is called vibrato, and it gave the vibraphone its name.

Players often call it “the vibes.”

How to tell them apart

By eye. Silver bars and a pedal mean a vibraphone. Wooden bars with long tubes, on a wide frame, mean a marimba. Wooden bars on a smaller frame mean a xylophone.

By ear. A sharp, high click is a xylophone. A soft, deep, round tone is a marimba. A long, glowing ring is a vibraphone.

A fourth relative, the glockenspiel, has small steel bars and rings like tiny bells.

Pieces to hear

Xylophone: “Fossils,” from The Carnival of the Animals, by Saint-Saëns. The xylophone clacks like rattling bones. Read the Carnival of the Animals guide.

Xylophone: “Sabre Dance,” by Khachaturian. The xylophone hammers one note over and over with the brass. Read the Sabre Dance guide.

Marimba: Concertino for Marimba, by Paul Creston. Written in 1940, it is an early concert piece that puts the marimba in front of an orchestra.

Marimba: a marimba band from Guatemala or from Chiapas, Mexico. Listen for several players on one instrument.

Vibraphone: recordings by Lionel Hampton or Milt Jackson. Both were jazz players who made the vibraphone a solo voice. Read jazz band for kids.

Starting to play

Percussion students in a school band learn mallets as well as drums. Many start on a small set of bells or a practice xylophone at about ten. The notes are laid out like a piano, so a child who has had piano lessons knows where the notes are.

Younger children meet these instruments in music class. Read Orff instruments for home and percussion instruments for kids.

Things to do together

Wood or metal? Play one clip of each instrument. Your child calls out “wood” or “metal,” and then names the instrument.

Hard and soft. Tap a wooden spoon on a cutting board. Then wrap the spoon in a sock and tap again. Talk about how the sound changes.

Short and long. Tap a wooden block and then a metal pot lid held by its knob. Count how long each one rings.

Watch four mallets. Find a video of a marimba solo. Watch how the player holds two mallets in each hand.

Print and play

Print the instrument families listening chart and the piano keyboard chart, which shows the same layout of notes.