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Local woman makes instrument with father, wows her professors and strengthens her ties with her dad at the same time
Audio: Click the play icon to hear Mandy Brown's marimba.
BY KIM BAER
Two years ago, Mandy Brown Web-surfed her way into a huge project. She found a book online called "Make Your Own Marimba." The title caught her eye. She had played the marimba, an instrument that looks like a xylophone, since the eighth grade. Building one from scratch sounded like fun, but she knew she'd need help pulling it off. Luckily, she knew just who to ask. Brown called her dad to tell him about the book she'd found. "He was like, 'Great, let's do this.'" But Brown, a music major at the University of Mary Washington, had little spare time. They made a promise: For Brown's senior seminar project, they would build a marimba. And they did. 'A MAJOR UNDERTAKING' Nearly every weekend from January through April, they worked on the marimba in the garage of the family's home in Spotsylvania County's Fox Point subdivision. Chris Brown helped with the power tools and building the frame. Mandy Brown made sure the marimba made beautiful music. That wasn't easy. Marimba-making requires knowledge of physics and acoustic theory, said Craig Naylor, an associate professor of music at UMW. For instance, Brown had to cut the marimba's keys to the proper lengths to get the right pitch, Naylor said. She had to shave each key in the middle to produce the precise pitch and overtone. She had to find the nodes, the places where the bar does not vibrate, where she drilled a hole to mount the bar to the frame. She had to ensure that all of the keys were in proper scale. "It's a major undertaking," he said. Marshall Maley, percussion instructor at UMW, wasn't sure Brown could pull it off. He now believes she could be a professional marimba-maker. He's seen bands perform with marimbas that look and sound like Brown's. "I've had students attempt to build keyboard instruments before, but never as thoroughly as she did," he said. "The effort she put into it and the result was just stunning to me." Brown eventually moved beyond "Make Your Own Marimba." She read five books about the math behind building the instrument.
Date published: 11/11/2008
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