Zen Glockenspiel
Glockenspiel, free in your browser
Play a glockenspiel online with a mouse, touch or your computer keyboard. The bars play one recorded Glockenspiel sound, and several bars can sound together.
How to play
Click, tap or use a pen on any bar, or play from your computer keyboard. On a touchscreen, several fingers play a chord together.
With a mouse, the bars show their computer-key labels. Typing in a field, or holding Ctrl, Alt or Meta, plays nothing.
Choose Song, then press Play, and Canon And Gigue In D Major, P.37 plays on the glockenspiel by itself. Melody plays its tune. Classic VP plays a Virtual Piano letter sheet of it, but only its notes in the Glockenspiel sound's range, about half of them.
Its sheet in the Zen Library is in the public domain.
A struck bar rings for at least two seconds, and longer on the lower bars, whether you hold it or let go. Strike several in a row and they ring together.
You can play only the bars on screen: E5 to C7, or fewer on a narrow screen.
The glockenspiel
How glockenspiels are built and played, with sources.
Metal bars
A glockenspiel has pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout, which makes it a metallophone. A xylophone's bars are wood, not metal.
Mallets
It is played with unwrapped mallets of a hard material, such as plastic or metal, and metal mallets give a more brilliant sound. With four mallets, a player can strike chords.
Range
The glockenspiel is limited to the upper register. Its part is often written two octaves below the notes it sounds.
Keyboard glockenspiel
A keyboard glockenspiel plays its bars from a piano keyboard. Handel first used one in his oratorio Saul (1739), and Mozart wrote for one in The Magic Flute (1791), for Papageno's magic bells. Today a celesta sometimes takes that part, though its sound is completely different.
This page plays one recorded Glockenspiel sound on its bars. It has no mallets to choose and no pedal.
Before you play
About playing here, and what the full app adds.
No. The virtual glockenspiel runs online in your browser, with nothing to install and no account.
Sound starts with your first press. If the sound is still loading, the bars say so, and your next presses play once it's ready. If it can't load, a Try again button appears.
Yes. Press several computer keys together, or touch several bars at once on a touchscreen. A mouse plays one bar at a time.
They start at E5, the lowest white key close enough to this sound's lowest recording, G5, and they end at C7, where Zen's keyboards end. A narrow screen shows fewer of them. For how high a real glockenspiel sounds, see “High and clear” above.
Its sheet in the Zen Library is in the public domain. Song plays it on the Glockenspiel sound, as its tune or as a Virtual Piano letter sheet. The song moves up an octave to suit the sound, and Classic VP keeps only its notes in the sound's range, about half of them.
Yes. On a phone, the bars fill the screen and several fingers play a chord together. Sound and Settings are in the toolbar, or in the header when the phone is sideways.
Songs and recording. Play, on a computer with a mouse or trackpad, has 16 instruments, 61 keys from C2 to C7, and three ways to learn a song: Magic Play, Demo and Practice; there, this page's link opens the song. On a touch device without a mouse, the link opens the touch piano on Glockenspiel.