About Bell Mallets

Video Transcript

"Hey, my name's Brian Medeiros. I'm a musician and I'm going to tell you a little bit about bell mallets. Bell mallets are used to play percussion instruments used in orchestras and bands, big bands. And bell mallets are made of all kinds of different materials. A couple of 'em that I have here with me today, these are foam mallets covered with some cloth. Pretty basic, and they make a nice, soft sound on the bell. Kind of a muffled sound. The softer the material, the more muffled of a sound that you'll get out of 'em. These are felt mallets, and they're a little more firm than the foam ones, so you get a little bit more percussive of a sound off the bells when you play 'em. They make these out of everything. These are even harder than the other two that I just showed you. They have....they're just basically a hard ball of yarn on the end of these sticks. You'll get more percussive sound out of these than you would out of any of these other examples that I have. And, it's used on all kinds of different bells. Xylophones. There's all kinds of different bells that you could use mallets like this for. And, those are some examples of bell mallets and how they're used."