Xylophone

percussion · music · wooden bars

Made of wood. Xylophones have wooden bars arranged in order from low notes to high notes, kind of like the keys on a piano but made from wood instead.

Hit with mallets. You play a xylophone by striking the wooden bars with mallets, which are like hammers with soft heads that make a bright, clear sound.

Found worldwide. Xylophones come from many places around the world, including Africa and Asia, where they've been played for thousands of years in traditional music.

Different scales. Some xylophones use pentatonic scales (five notes), while others use diatonic scales (seven notes) or even chromatic scales (twelve notes for orchestras).

In orchestras. Western orchestras use xylophones with chromatic tuning in their percussion sections to add bright, shiny sounds to classical music.