A wonderful weekend.  On Friday morning we completed C2 and C#2, the massive bass notes for Paul’s marimba. I feel like we may be 1/2 way done at this point, but it is hard to tell… we have never built a marimba :-)  Paul has been tracking our progress, and we have put in about 75 hours so far.  If you look at our Progress-O-Meter you will see that we have finished two important steps:  cutting the blank bars (in red) and rough-shaping the bars to about 1 whole note away from final pitch (in green).  The next step will be to lay out all the bars and mark the “nodes” (see the salt test from a previous post).  We will then average them all and draw two straight lines across each row, indicating where the holes will be drilled for the supporting string. We will final sand the top and sides of each key with 220, 400, and 600 grit paper and apply several layers of rubbed oil for the finish.  The last step for the keys will be final tuning, sanding the arch until the fundamental and harmonics are in (near perfect) pitch.  Wow.  We continue to sketch out ideas for the frame… but that can wait.  Our prime objective is to finish 61 keys (pun intended).

One of our more beautiful keys

Laying out the keys (wrong side up), to get a feel for her final size

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This week is Paul’s spring break.  He is working on his percussion auditions for Birch Creek summer camp during the day, and I’m making it home early enough for us to make good progress on the marimba.  Last weekend we cut the last of the bars (except for do-overs that we may still need to correct…).

We are now moving down the scale from C4.  We just completed E3, and have only 16 more bars to shape.  The harmonics remain perplexing.  We have moved to using a good microphone and professional software to analyze the tones.  The iPad app we were using for the higher notes is out of it’s league.  As Paul put it… “The wood is still in charge”.  True.  We are slowly getting more proficient at shaping, but the lower notes also take more work. The result, however, is mind-bogglingly beautiful.  The wood is so rich, so stunning, it will be difficult to watch Paul strike the keys forcefully with a hard mallet.  We cannot wait to drill the holes and do final 600 grit sanding, for then we can oil the bars with natural oil and resins, and stand in awe as the grain and deep color is finally revealed.  Oh, the patient waiting…

Some pictures from last weekend’s final key cutting:

Remember “The Cat in the Hat” and the pink dress?

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We have had a lull.  I was in Japan for a week, then Oregon, and after two weeks we finally had part of a weekend to catch up.  Unfortunately, we won’t make much progress for another week.  Tuesday night Paul is playing a solo in the Wind Symphony concert. Paul earned his solo spot by winning the best percussion solo at Naperville North’s solo and ensemble contest with Musser’s Etude in C major.  He has since recorded his solo, so he can use it for his audition tape that will be sent to Birch Creek summer music camp.  Then… Jazz Band leaves Wednesday for New Orleans.  He won’t return until 3:00pm Sunday.  He is learning the life of a musician all quickly.

The QuickTime video below takes a while to download.  Patience?  The video clearly answers the question “Why build a marimba?”.  Despite the look of total intensity in Paul’s eyes, he absolutely loves playing it. He cannot imagine going the summer without one.  He plays the school marimba each day at lunch and 2 or 3 times a week after school.  He has also started imagining putting together an album of Chopin Nocturne pieces over the summer.

So the only thing we had time for today was a quick Continue reading →