Prologue

Soooo...I'm *blogging*!!!  Never thought I'd be on one of these...or even type that first sentence.  First time for everything, I suppose!

Anyway, I'm here on Blogger in order to journal the progress I make in the next several weeks (or possibly months) on a special project that I have begun working on this summer.  I knew this project would be very special to me, and I decided that while I don't normally do the blog/journaling thing, I would definitely want to return to the thoughts I have here at the beginning processes of this project, as well as to the many entries I will post here.  I'm no expert in this medium, but I do hope all who read this will be entertained and perhaps even learn something as we go along.

Those of you who know me likely know I am a musician.  If you were to ask me what I play, I would tell you that I am primarily a drum set player, but that I also play guitar at my own leisure.  As a percussionist back in high school, I actually had to learn how to play several instruments, including rudimentary-style concert snare drum, marching percussion instruments, assorted auxiliary percussion instruments, timpani, and something that many percussionists cringed at (at least at my high school), mallet instruments.  Mallet instruments are arranged as all keyboard instruments are (piano, organ, etc), but are played with yarn, rubber, metal or plastic mallets in order to produce a tone from a bar of wood, fiberglass, metal or possibly some synthetic material.  The most common instruments in this category are the bells, the xylophone, the vibraphone, and my personal favorite, the marimba.

When I was younger and played only bells, I didn't enjoy mallet percussion very much.  But when I got into high school and was able to play on the vibraphone and the marimba, I found a lot more enjoyment in making music with them.  The marimba had a deep, earthy tone that  I fell in love with pretty quickly. Here was an instrument that produced amazing bass tones at the low end, and clear (but not unbearably piercing) high tones on the upper end.

I don't know exactly what it was that attracted me to the marimba so much, as most students just saw it as the big ol' wooden thing at the back of the room that was really hard to haul around in the band trailers and that no body really knew how to play that well.  All I knew was that I really loved the way it sounded when I finally learned how to play a piece on it.

After high school, I basically lost my regular access to a marimba, as I didn't play with Wingate University's ensembles on a regular basis and I didn't own one of my own.  Somehow I got into my head that if I loved the instrument so much, I would find one that I could regularly practice on and become a solid marimba player with.  I began searching online for marimbas to purchase, but I knew that I wanted a full-sized instrument that would look and sound beautiful.  Turns out that my expectations were a bit high...any five-octive marimba that isn't abused is easily eight thousand dollars, which I simply didn't have.

Then, the best idea EVER hit me.  Marimbas are just well-crafted bars of hardwood, with resonators and a stand that won't fall over.  What if....Yessssssssss.....What if.....

....I were.....

...to build my own?

BOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!  YES!  I would BUILD my own marimba!

....How exactly do I do that?

Well, it's true that marimbas are actually pretty simple in design, but making one sound good is tricky business.  The bars must be perfectly shaped in order to be tuned to an exact pitch, and one small mistake could be expensive to correct.

Nonetheless, this is the big project that I have been reserving this blog for.  To build my own instrument for practice and for performance would be an incredibly rewarding challenge.  I would be able to take back up a passion that I, at one point, thought would just simply have to be lain to rest.  I will be using this blog to post notes of my progress, pictures of each step, as well as my own thoughts and things I've learned about the technical side of instrument making.  I sincerely hope that all who read and follow this blog will enjoy what pops up here, and please...if you want to comment or link this page somewhere... DO SO!!  I'd love to hear what you guys think!

So far, I have not begun to build anything yet.  I placed an order for the lumber I will use to make many of the bars, and that big load of beautiful padauk should arrive tomorrow in a big UPS truck!  I'm incredibly excited to begin working on this project, and I look forward to seeing what it has in store for me!  :D