Sounds of Music C

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Kid Cobain
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by Kid Cobain »

illusionist wrote:
Kid Cobain wrote:For a guitar, would I be able to use a guitar pick and store bought strings?
Make your own guitar pick. Just cut up an old (make sure it's inactivated) credit card/gift card into a pick-like shape. I play a "real" guitar, and if I'm ever short on picks, I'll make one from an old card. Works fine
Thanks for the tip. Looking forward to Sounds in division B
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by Infinity Flat »

Congratulations to all who participated at Nationals this year! I really enjoyed seeing and hearing all of your instruments. I should have fairly detailed pictures of the (winning) bass marimba up in about a week or so, and perhaps some photos of the violin and a video of the performance soon after that. Until then, here is a video of our performance at states. We did the same pieces at nationals, but they were better practiced and more refined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZt8stDKJY
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2013: Astro (2, 6) / Chem (2, 5) / Circuits (8, 36) / Diseases (1,1) / Fermi (N/A, 24) / Materials (1, N/A)
2012 : Astro (1, 11) / Chem (N/A, 13) / Diseases (3, 1) / Optics (2, 3) / Sounds (2, 1)
2011: Astro(2,11) / Diseases (1,27) / Optics (1,13) / Proteins (2,15)
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by ILoveEgretsClub »

Any idea what types of instruments will be allowed next year, assuming they don't do what they did this year and allow all types? Pleasepleaseplease have chordophones. xD
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by quizbowl »

ILoveEgretsClub wrote:Any idea what types of instruments will be allowed next year, assuming they don't do what they did this year and allow all types? Pleasepleaseplease have chordophones. xD
I don't think they'll be as lenient as they were this year with the instrument choices.
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by Infinity Flat »

quizbowl wrote:
ILoveEgretsClub wrote:Any idea what types of instruments will be allowed next year, assuming they don't do what they did this year and allow all types? Pleasepleaseplease have chordophones. xD
I don't think they'll be as lenient as they were this year with the instrument choices.
I expect that there will be more restrictions on instruments and construction as a way of making it EASIER for division B competitors.
In my opinion, wind instruments are the most complicated, and so if anything is going to be prohibited it's those.
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2013: Astro (2, 6) / Chem (2, 5) / Circuits (8, 36) / Diseases (1,1) / Fermi (N/A, 24) / Materials (1, N/A)
2012 : Astro (1, 11) / Chem (N/A, 13) / Diseases (3, 1) / Optics (2, 3) / Sounds (2, 1)
2011: Astro(2,11) / Diseases (1,27) / Optics (1,13) / Proteins (2,15)
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by zyzzyva980 »

I disagree. Find some PVC pipe, drill a few holes, and you've got a working flute. (Though I would agree that instruments from the brass family would be rather difficult).

I think the more difficult instrument would be percussion, and that's because everything involving the instrument has to be perfect. With winds or strings, a good player can make up for deficiencies in the instrument and still make it sound good. It's much more difficult for a musician to compensate for problems in a percussion instrument. For a percussion instrument, you need to find a material that sounds good for both the instrument itself and the mallets, and for it to be in tune, you have to have very accurate measurements. It's a lot of attention to detail, but it can be done- the last three national champions have had a xylophone or a related instrument.

Of course, you could make a case for any instrument being toughest to make and play. Our own experiences with the event undoubtedly make us biased. With regards to whether or not there will be limits next year, I don't think so. You can never know, but I doubt that the rules will require certain instruments. Let each team figure out what works for them- there will be differences.

On the other hand, I'd love to see them make electrophones mandatory. :P
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by AlphaTauri »

zyzzyva98 wrote:I disagree. Find some PVC pipe, drill a few holes, and you've got a working flute.
"Working" and "in-tune" are not synonyms. :P Also, flute-like wind instruments make it slightly more difficult to hit accidentals, unless you are very good at bending notes.

I think that pitched percussion is easy by comparison. Yes, they are large and bulky instruments and they take ages to construct correctly, but there's more room for error - if you overshoot/undershoot a note, you can still easily salvage the key and work it back to the note it was supposed to play, and measurements aren't as big a deal as you'd think, since as long as you're relatively close, everything still works out during the fine tuning. If you misdrill one hole in a flute...well, you kinda have to get a new piece of PVC.

IMO, pitched percussion also eliminates some human error at competition. As any wind/brass player knows, you have to get the air just right to get a note in tune. With pitched percussion, no matter how you hit the key, it still produces the same note. As a starting mallets player, I think that it'd be much easier (even for someone with no music experience) to pick up pitched percussion than it would be to pick up a wind/brass instrument. After all, it's basically "hit right things at right time", as opposed to "force right amount of air across mouthpiece, while simultaneously putting down fingers over right holes in instrument at right time".
On the other hand, I'd love to see them make electrophones mandatory. :P
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by nomynameisnotkevin »

Hello, I am interested in building a xylophone type instrument. Any ideas on what I should use to build a mallet?
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by beaverkid »

Use your head
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Re: Sounds of Music C

Post by Infinity Flat »

nomynameisnotkevin wrote:Hello, I am interested in building a xylophone type instrument. Any ideas on what I should use to build a mallet?
Depending on the pitch of your xylophone/marimba you will want a different type of mallet.
Generally, you want a harder mallet for higher notes and a softer mallet for lower notes. For the most part, mallet selection in this event is less important than the actual construction of the instrument, and you can usually get away with only using one hardness/type of mallet for your device.

Generally, a mallet is made up of a head and a shaft. For the shaft, you can use either a wooden dowel (1/4-1/2 inch hardwood/oak from Home Depot work pretty well) or a plastic rod. The head typically has a rubber core wrapped in some other material, usually yarn.

For the rubber core, we used these black rubber annulus things about 1.5 inches in diameter with a .5 inch center hole, and about a quarter or half inch thick. Not sure exactly what they are called, sorry. We wrapped the end of the stick in masking tape for a tight fit, and then hot glued the core onto the end of the wooden shaft.

After the "skeleton" of the mallet is constructed, we then wrapped the mallet using a fairly soft yarn, following the instructions from here. For a bass marimba, you might want ~150 wraps, whereas for a higher "xylophone" mallet, 25-50 wraps suffice.
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2013: Astro (2, 6) / Chem (2, 5) / Circuits (8, 36) / Diseases (1,1) / Fermi (N/A, 24) / Materials (1, N/A)
2012 : Astro (1, 11) / Chem (N/A, 13) / Diseases (3, 1) / Optics (2, 3) / Sounds (2, 1)
2011: Astro(2,11) / Diseases (1,27) / Optics (1,13) / Proteins (2,15)
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