The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars stuck by mallets. Each bar is an idophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African or

Asian instruments, diatonic in any western children’s instruments or chromatic

For orchestral use.

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The term xylophone may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the sematron. However, in the orchestra, the term refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre then the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused.

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By Chloe 9/10/18