Oh, just found another - no cats harmed at all, just a big meow. Rossini, Cats' Duet with real meows

LOL. Excellent!

I rather like threads going slightly off the main topic with a bit of humour. It will never resume with the main subject if people take umbrage and sulk. You must just put up with anything Alfred allows. It's his forum. After all the Cat piano does have much in common with your chord xylophone. Neither exists, and I do not think they would be very useful if they did!

Agreed. Usually the tangents are interesting and informative, too. Besides, no cats I've ever owned would even allow for sitting in the frame like that, let alone being 'played'. Loving the Rossini videos. Just played one of them near Binx. He looked most perplexed.

Oh, just found another - no cats harmed at all, just a big meow. Rossini, Cats' Duet with real meows

I don't think one could achieve  chords with a complex mallet - ie striking more than one key simultaneously

But one can using two or three separate mallets? It doesn't really matter - ears are not that sensitive. Even chords on a piano do not necessarily have all the keys struck precisely simultaneously, nor could that happen with your idea of stacked keys. (It definitely does not happen on a guitar.) Besides the slight flexibility of the mallets would probably compensate adequately. However, I was not suggesting that seriously, or even at all. It was a question for William.

This guy seemed to manage quite well with only one mallet per hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDGqBJNU6t0 Who needs chords?

. . . Patrick Moore . . . .

He was quite a character. I met him once at a local wedding.  While night sky viewing conditions are not particularly good on the coast, he lived in Selsey, I believe, which is not heavily populated, or at least, wasn't, so light pollution there was relatively low.

With the dearth of old style variety shows, the chances of seeing a xylophone performance on the TV is vanishingly low.

In doing my research (yeah!) into xylophones, I found definitions of the various types of instruments in that class; the marimba, for example. I had come across several in lists of MIDI sounds.  We have an electronic keyboard, and I was able to link a desktop  MIDI application to that, and play various pieces that way. One strange listing was for a bummel!

I believe I have seen TV excerpts showing players with two mallets in each hand.

I’ve found a video clip that includes a few seconds of Patrick Moore playing with two mallets in one hand and one in the other.

https://youtu.be/SphMqmGnCKw?t=321

My wife, while not a xylophone player, is of the opinion that more than two mallets are used, and I believe I have seen TV excerpts showing players with two mallets in each hand.

I certainly have.

Exactly this. It’s a convenient way to maintain the focus on the quote while giving it some much-needed context.

I don't think one could achieve  chords with a complex mallet - ie striking more than one key simultaneously  While it obviously takes considerable dexterity to strike several keys at once with multiple mallets (ie more than one in each hand), to get one multiple head or broad mallet to strike several keys with the same touch or force would be a difficult design problem.

I'm sorry if the reference to the Katzenklavier upset you, William, but other people found it amusing. As I said, there is no evidence that anyone ever built such a nasty thing - and anyway, do you think the cats would play along? Pun not intended.

As for bolding some of your text, the alternative might be to do a snip losing the intended reference.

This was a pleasant thread until that was posted.

Also, if you change a quoted text, such as you have by makimg some words bold, it is polite to state (my emboldening) so as not to misquote the original writing.

In Internet forums it’s common practice to embolden or otherwise highlight the particular aspect of a piece of quoted text that one is addressing. Unlike a quote from, say, a book, the original is readily accessible for those who wish to see exactly how the text was originally presented.

Impossible not to think of Rossini

Or this version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WZonn4d98M

How could I have forgotten about that one? Thanks for the reminder, Geoff!

A xylophone uses wooden keys.

Perhaps we could add a glockenspiel to the thread to represent the metal version.

You could have four keys spaced and arranged in a stack. Strike the top key and the three beneath are struck
simultaneously.

How would you strike three keys with perpendicular accuracy?

I shall not do so now in protest

I rather like threads going slightly off the main topic with a bit of humour. It will never resume with the main subject if people take umbrage and sulk. You must just put up with anything Alfred allows. It's his forum. After all the Cat piano does have much in common with your chord xylophone. Neither exists, and I do not think they would be very useful if they did!

How about answering the on topic question I posed?

William

When playing, changing chord would just be by using the mallet upon a different group of xylophone bars.

Karen won't like this, ...

I don't like it either.

This was a pleasant thread until that was posted.

Also, if you change a quoted text, such as you have by makimg some words bold, it is polite to state (my emboldening) so as not to misquote the original writing.

William

Impossible not to think of Rossini

Or this version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WZonn4d98M

I am wondering if one could have a chord xylophone, where narrow bars are in groups of three or four and one uses a single wide mallet to strike the three or four bars in the group simultaneously.

A xylophone uses wooden keys. I think it would be extremely difficult to make keys producing the correct note narrow enough to be so closely spaced as to be capable of being struck by a single mallet.

Why not use a three-headed mallet?