marimba one is the only company that offers two acoustic levels of resonator voicing and three acoustic levels of keyboard voicing. Musicians tell us that they want keyboard response to be even and balanced from the treble end to the bass end. In response, marimba one innovated ‘keyboard voicing’ which means that we select bars for the entire keyboard that have the same character in terms of strength of fundamental and overtones.
To match and balance well across the range of a marimba requires a very large inventory of bars from which to create keyboards.
At marimba one, we maintain a consistent supply of at least 75 sets of 5 1/2 octave bars in our temperature controlled tuning rooms. Each bar is graded out in accordance to keyboard level: Traditional, Enhanced, and Premium Keyboard Voicing.
Having 75 tuned sets of bars on hand also allows us to select for keyboards that are more resonant, darker or brighter sounding, and bars that produce an amazing amount of sound.
A voiced marimba acts as a cohesive unit, as if all of the rosewood came from one tree. Any differences in ring time and tone color are very subtle from bar to bar.
Our keyboard is matched with your choice of resonators to create the sound that you want.
First, we drill the holes through which we will suspend the keyboard. We precisely position these holes through the nodes to maximize resonance across the bar. The node can be thought of as the point of no motion on the bar.
The job of a tuner is that of a problem-solver whose goal is to maximize the bar's resonance. We look for harmonic balance in each bar. From a player's perspective, this means a large "sweet spot" in the bar. The bigger the sweet spot, the better balanced its structural harmonics. By better balancing the harmonics in the bar, we increase the sweet spot on the bar—this also increases the resonance of the bar.
Our custom-made bar cord has a soft and fuzzy outside sheath, even when under tension. This fuzzy sheath eliminates any cord noise created from within holes in the bars. Our bar cord ends have a flexible, shrunken tip that makes it easy to thread the bars.