The player typically strums the chords with the left hand. The right hand plays the melody strings by depressing spring steel strips that hold small lead hammers over the strings. A brief stab on a metal strip bounces the hammer off a string pair to produce a single note. Holding the strip down makes the hammer bounce on the double strings, which produces a mandolin-like tremolo. The bounce rate is somewhat fixed, as it is based on the spring steel strip length, hammer weight, and string tension—but a player can increase the rate slightly by pressing higher on the strip, effectively moving its pivot point closer to the lead hammer.
Numerically coded sheet music prepared specifically for the Marxophone indicates when and in what order to play melody and chord strings. This type of music, similar to tablature, was produced for those who could not read standard notation. A rectangular piece of metal provides a backstop for the spring steel hammers, displays the name Marxophone and the patent number, and has clips that hold sheet music. It also marks the 15 keys by letter (C, D, etc.), by number (1-15) and in standard musical notation. When the instrument is moved or stored, the metal rectangle bends down, holding the keys against the strings, so the Marxophone can fit into its case—which is the size of a large briefcase.
History
Marxophone
A common misconception is that the Marxophone was manufactured by the Marxochime Colony of New Troy, Michigan, but it was not. While the design of its hammer mechanism was patented by Henry Charles Marx (1875–1947), (pat. #1044553[1] issued on November 19, 1912) the Marxophone was never manufactured by the Marxochime Colony. Instead, during their tenure from 1927 to 1972, the "colony" designed and manufactured a wide assortment of "bowed" zithers, the melody strings actuated with a bow not hammers. The 1912 patent was assigned to the Phonoharp Company, which Marx was affiliated with at the time. Phonoharp manufactured Marxophones as well as Celestaphones (having a different body contour) until its merger with Oscar Schmidt Inc. in 1926. The newly formed company known as the International Musical Corporation produced Marxophones between 1926 and 1931. Then, following the International Musical Corporation's dissolution on December 30, 1931, two successor companies, the Oscar Schmidt-International Corporation (1931-1936) and Oscar Schmidt-International, Inc. (late 1936 until the present) manufactured Marxophones until the 1950s.
Marx was one of a number of late 19th century and early 20th century musical gadget manufacturers that combined two or more instruments into one. Other inventions included the Banjolin, the Hawaiiphone, the Mandolin-Uke, the Marxolin, the Pianoette, the Pianolin, and the Tremoloa.[citation needed] Marxophones were billed as easy to play, and sold on time-purchase plans by door-to-door salesmen, and through mail-order companies like Sears-Roebuck.[citation needed]
Technology
Because the hammers are made of white lead, the instrument sheds small amounts of lead powder. Musicians who actively use this instrument have adopted the practice of coating the hammers in Epoxy glue, which does not affect the sound but stops the wearing away of the hammers (and prevents the poisoning of children, cats and other small creatures).
In addition to being limited to the keys of C major and A minor (and modal variants), the Marxophone is partially limited to certain tempos because of the rate at which the hammers bounce on the strings. The fixed pulse rate of the hammer strike fits the music best when it is a power-of-two denominated fraction of the pulse of the music, in other words an 8th, 16th, 32nd, or 64th note of the performance tempo.
Variants on the Marxophone idea include the "Hammer-Jammer," a hammer-frame that attaches to the fingerboard—and the 2010 "Marxoguitar" created by Ranjit Bhatnagar. which attaches to an electric guitar at the bridge to produce a Marxophone-like tremolo effect.
Modern day use
The Marxophone did not become widely known to the general public, but recording artists have occasionally used it. The Doors and John Prine used its unique sound on studio recordings of the 1960s and '70s and it was still used more recently by notable figures such as Norway's Avant-Garde musician Sturle Dagsland and the American rock bandStone Temple Pilots.
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, in modern forms usually made of plastic, originally of animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th century minstrel show fad, followed by mass-production and mail-order sales, including instruction method books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but 5-string and 4-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 21st century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, but was also used in some rock, pop and even hip-hop music. Among rock bands, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Some famous pickers of the banjo are Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when the keys are pressed. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the "accidentals", which are needed to play in all twelve keys.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Zithers are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, it could be any instrument of the psaltery family. In modern terminology, it is more specifically an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat body, the topic of this article.
An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term autoharp was once a trademark of the Oscar Schmidt company, but has become a generic designation for all such instruments, regardless of manufacturer.
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic.
An arpeggio is a type of broken chord in which the notes that compose a chord are individually sounded in a progressive rising or descending order. Arpeggios on keyboard instruments may be called rolled chords.
The bowed psaltery is a type of psaltery or zither that is played with a bow. In contrast with the centuries-old plucked psaltery, the bowed psaltery appears to be a 20th-century invention.
The ukelin is a stringed musical instrument made popular in the United States in the 1920s. It is a bowed psaltery with zither strings and its name derives from the ukulele and the violin. It lost popularity prior to the 1970s because the instrument was difficult to play and often returned to the manufacturer before it had been completely paid for.
The guitar zither is a musical instrument consisting of a sound-box with two sets of unstopped strings. One set of strings is tuned to the diatonic, chromatic, or partially chromatic scale and the other set is tuned to make the various chords in the principal key of the melody strings.
The mandolin-banjo is a hybrid instrument, combining a banjo body with the neck and tuning of a mandolin. It is a soprano banjo. It has been independently invented in more than one country, variously being called mandolin-banjo,banjo-mandolin,banjolin and banjourine in English-speaking countries, banjoline and bandoline in France, and the Cümbüş in Turkey.
Guitar picking is a group of hand and finger techniques a guitarist uses to set guitar strings in motion to produce audible notes. These techniques involve plucking, strumming, brushing, etc. Picking can be done with:
A bridge is a device that supports the strings on a stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a soundboard, such as the top of a guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air. Depending on the instrument, the bridge may be made of carved wood, metal or other materials. The bridge supports the strings and holds them over the body of the instrument under tension.
Oscar Schmidt was a musical instrument manufacturing company established in 1871. During its long existence, Oscar Schmidt has produced a wide range of string instruments, not only guitars but also numerous models of parlour instruments such as autoharps, celtic harps, guitar zithers, the "guitarophone", marxophones and bowed psalteries.
The tremoloa, plural tremoloas, is a stringed instrument belonging to the fretless zither family. It was produced in United States in response to the rapid increase in popularity of Hawaiian music during the 1920s, and continued to be produced until the 1950s. Musical collective Broken Social Scene features the instrument in "Tremoloa Debut." The instrument is also featured sporadically on The Magnetic Fields' album 69 Love Songs.
The celestaphone was a musical instrument of the zither family, which was played by pressing spring-levers to cause small hammers to strike the strings of the instrument.
Bluegrass mandolin is a style of mandolin playing most commonly heard in bluegrass bands.
The Phonoharp Company (1892–1928) was an American manufacturer of musical instruments based in Boston, Massachusetts. Among the instruments the company was known for was the autoharp, whose design they acquired from Alfred Dolge in 1910; they later merged with Oscar Schmidt in 1926. The company was also known for producing other instruments, namely the guitar zither, mandolin zither, celestaphone, and the ukelin.
The tube zither is a stringed musical instrument in which a tube functions both as an instrument's neck and its soundbox. As the neck, it holds strings taut and allows them to vibrate. As a soundbox, it modifies the sound and transfers it to the open air. The instruments are among the oldest of chordophones, being "a very early stage" in the development of chordophones, and predate some of the oldest chordophones, such as the Chinese Se, zithers built on a tube split in half. Most tube zithers are made of bamboo, played today in Madagascar, India, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Tube zithers made from other materials have been found in Europe and the United States, made from materials such as cornstalks and cactus.
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