How to Make It

This instrument, which is pronounced zil-o-fon', is cheap to make or buy 107 and is easy to learn to play.

To make one cut off fifteen bars of a stick of maple 1/2 an inch thick, 7/8 inch wide and make the longest one 5 inches. To get the right lengths of all the others you will have to saw them off a little at a time and try them out for tone, because any variation in thickness will make a difference in the length of them. Hence the above rule-of-thumb method for determining the sizes of them.

Drill a 1/16 inch hole through both ends of each bar

106 a push pipe can be bought for $4.00 of the L. E. Knott Apparatus Co., Boston, Mass.

107 Can be bought of any dealer in musical instruments or of the L. E. Knott Co., Boston.

and string them on a wire to keep them in place. Make two rolls of straw 3/4 inch in diameter and 20 inches long; fix the ends of these rolls on a board as shown in Fig. III and lay the maple bars on them when they are ready to be played on.

How to Play the Xylophone

The xylophone is played with a pair of hammers. To make the latter cut off two sticks 1/4 inch in diameter and 8 inches long; get or turn two wooden balls 1 inch in diameter; bore a 1/4 inch hole in each one and glue in one of the sticks.

Fig. III. AN XYLOPHONE. THE BARS ARE MADE OF WOOD

Take a hammer in each hand and hold it loosely; stand over the xylophone so that the sticks of the hammers are parallel with and about 6 inches above the bars of the xylophone and with the ball ends in the middle of the bar it is over. Now pound the bars for dear life and the faster the tune the more musical it will sound. For this reason pieces like the Circus Life Gallop are especially adapted for the xylophone.