vibraphone

vibraphone, vibes, showing pedal bar, a percussion instrument struck with mallets. Similar in appearance to the xylophone and marimba, the vibraphone uses aluminum bars instead of wood. Each bar is paired with a resonator tube having a motor-driven butterfly valve at its upper end, mounted on a common shaft, to produce a tremolo or vibrato effect while spinning. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal similar to that used on a piano: When the pedal is up, the bars are all damped and the sound of each bar is quite short, with the pedal down, they will sound for several seconds. Frequently used in jazz music, and used here in the modern symphony orchestra by Harrison Birtwhistle, in his Mask of Orpheus (for the BBC Proms 2009).