Princess Chelsea's Factual Corner

With a fair amount of Lil' Chief releases coming out recently and scheduled for the near future - I thought it might be of some aid to music reviewers and the like to know the difference between a glockenspiel and a xylophone.

This will help them to appear more knowledgeable in their chosen field of journalism, while also preventing any damage to their credibility.


GLOCKENSPIEL




A glockenspiel [German Glocken (bells) + spielen (to play)] is a percussion instrument, composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal, thus making it a metallophone. The glockenspiel, moreover, is usually smaller and higher in pitch.


XYLOPHONE



The xylophone (from the Greek words ξύλον - xylon, "wood" + φωνή - phone, "voice", meaning "wooden sound") is a musical instrument in the percussion family which probably originated independently in Africa and Asia.[1] It consists of wooden bars of various lengths that are struck by plastic, wooden, or rubber mallets.

These two instruments are both on display in the high budget music video for my song 'Monkey Eats Bananas' (below). The glockenspiel can be found at 0:20 with it's rather metallic and bell like tone, whereas the xylophone makes it's appearance at 1.04 with it's slightly more percussive & wooden sounding tone. Interestingly enough, while both instruments are tuned they are technically considered percussion instruments.