Making Marimbas at Pence Middle School

This week is marimba making week at Wilbur Pence Middle School in Dayton, Virginia.  The project is to build, with the help of Music Teacher, Janet Hostetter's Orff Ensemble students, a new Bass Marimba.  She plans to add it to the collection of classroom Orff instruments she's been collecting over the last 3 years.

The process begins with a trip to the local home hardware store and the purchase of all the supplies needed for the project.  PVC pipes for the resonator tubes, end caps, elbow joints, glue, nails, self-drilling screws were just a few of the supplies that needed to be gathered.

Then it's a  trip to a local cabinet shop, in this case, Mill Cabinets in Bridgewater, for the wood and to order the frame.

The woodworkers at the shop made the frame, and milled the mahogany wood for the bars to the correct thickness and and width. 




Each bar was then cut to the correct length, nail holes were drilled, and a center cut was made as a tuning guide.

After the bars were all cut and measured they were given to students for tuning.  Each student was taught to use a mallet and chisel to remove wood from the center of each bar. Then they used an electronic tuner to check the pitch of each bar.

The frame, having been assembled at the cabinet shop, is now ready for resonator pipes.  After the pipes are installed, screw eyes, rope and nails will be installed so that the tone bars can be mounted after they've been tuned.

The tuning process takes about four days working for approximately 90 minutes a day.  The students are asked to tune the bars to within a half step of the correct pitch.  Then it's up to the teacher to finish each bar by carefully removing small amounts of wood until the correct pitch is achieved.

Two classes totaling 27 students worked on the new Bass Marimba.  Spirits are high as the anticipation of a new, dynamic, fun-to-play instrument takes shape.