General Music Chat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGD9i718kBU

xylophone, marimba, vibraphone ?? it's all the same.. pick your poison!..right Willie? LOL

Casio VL-1 saves the day.

....as a marimba?????

nope, not vibes....on the recording that's either a marimba played in it's upper register or an xylophone played in mid register. and in the video the guy is standing behind a xylophone. i always did like that tune.


their music often bordered on being kinda cheesey, but the group Starbuck often featured marimba and vibes on their tunes.

here's their best known tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Re8SbGkCQ0

off camera the mallet guy plays vibes for most of the song and you finally see him around 1:50 when he solos on marimba.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Re8SbGkCQ0

does anyone know where i can find me one of them there velour jumpsuits? yeah, like if any of you hosers DID KNOW....there's NO WAY you'd ever tell me! (and who could blame you?)

xylophone, marimba, vibraphone ?? it's all the same.. pick your poison!..right Willie? LOL

Casio VL-1 saves the day.

depends on yer perspective.... since there ARE people who don't know the diff between a trombone, trumpet,and flugelhorn and who would say the same....."all the same".

had the Psychedelic Furs album back in early 80's "Forever Now" because liked the tune "Love My Way".. played it many times on my Dual turntable.. but never realized back then it was Todd Rundgren playing marimba on that tune until today 35 years later..or so says wikipedia

now the guy in the video I provided playing the xylophone is who? is that a young Todd Rundgren? or is this video just staged?

their music often bordered on being kinda cheesey, but the group Starbuck often featured marimba and vibes on their tunes.

here's their best known tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Re8SbGkCQ0

off camera the mallet guy plays vibes for most of the song and you finally see him around 1:50 when he solos on marimba.

I still have that album on vinyl. SOme of the other songs were quite good (and not so cheesy)!

now the guy in the video I provided playing the xylophone is who? is that a young Todd Rundgren? or is this video just staged?

what gave it away? the water they're standing in? the fact that the guitars aren't plugged in or there's no drummer present?

actually only some of them are standing in water.. it's an optical illusion me thinks..

I am sorry, I truly thought it was a vibraphone because of the beautiful tapered "skirt" on the front, that is just plain beautiful workmanship on that xylophone..

are you sure the instrument in the video is not a xylophone but rather a marimba? look at those resonators? xylophones do not have resonators do they? just asking..

are you sure the instrument in the video is not a xylophone but rather a marimba? look at those resonators? xylophones do not have resonators do they? just asking..

It looks like a vibe to me. But the sound in the audio? That's keyboard/synth marimba.

ok in the video...that's a PREMIER marimba.

vibes would have a sustain/damper pedal. none there. if you stop the video at 1:20 you can clearly see the wider lower wooden bars that are too big for a xylo.....you can also see the accidentals (sharps/flats "black keys" are raised above the the "white notes" (non accidentals).

I too read the Wiki bit about Todd producing them and finding an xylophone in the studio and coming up w that mallet part and playing it. good story but that sure sounds like keyboard playing a xylo patch to me.


but that story (which may or may not be accurate) aside....the part in question has ALWAYS sounded to me like an xylo patch played on some keyboard. still sounds exactly that way to me ears.

and i'm probably not going too far out on limb when i pull rank and say that unlike the rest of you hosers....i HAVE been messing around w keyboard percussion ....(or as Memphis likes me to refer to it...."playing mallets"*) since i was ten yrs old!

*useless trivia: "playing mallets" is EXACTLY how most who double on vibes and marimba DO refer to it.

anyone who still thinks they're hearing a for real xylo or marimba...should check out any of the other vids of them doing the song live. the part is played on a keyboard in the three vids i checked out. but it doesn't really take much sleuthing when you consider how big synth was back when that song was hitting.

so, even if you aren't that hip to mallet percussion, and don't get how different each bar of the instrument sounds and has it 's own color and personality....that's a synth approximating what a xylo sounds like. (pretty funny when you consider our thread's title!)

there isn't a synth that comes close to capturing the "vibe" of most acoustic instr! and that's very much the case here as it pertains to mallet perc instr......every note on the track is soooooo e-v-e-n. TOO even. and no amt of compression you might slather on a xylo or marimba would sound that "even" (sterile).

back to the instr in the vid.

it's just like this one here.....a four octave PREMIER marimba.

a few yrs ago just before i bought my 1942 DEAGAN Imperial 64 marimba i was looking at one of those PREMIERs. I could have scored it for 1K...good price. but i ended up spending a little more money on what i thought was a better instrument and was glad i did.