Tools & Resources

In this section of the Experimental Musical Instruments web site you’ll find various items of use to musical instrument makers.
Posted here at this time are two software programs for instrument making, several resource lists, and product information for some of the items we sell.

ExMI’s Free-Bar Length Calculator
Software that allows you to calculate bar lengths for free-bar instruments such as marimbas and xylophones, tubulons, chimes, metallophones and the like.

ExMI’s Fret-Placement Calculator
An applet for use in designing fretted string instruments. You tell it your string length and what sort of scale you want, and it’ll tell you where to put the frets.

How to Make a Driftwood Xylophone
A video on one particularly rewarding way to have fun at the beach.

Making Self-Resonating Chimes
An article on how to tune the air column within a tubular chime to match the chiming pitch of the metal for added resonance. 

Software on the Web
A list of web sites offering a string scaling calculator, tonehole placement calculator, several tuning system calculators, and the like.

The Where-To- Get-What List for Musical Instrument Making Materials
A list of commercial sources on the web for all sorts of hard-to-find materials relating to musical instrument making.

Stores Selling Unusual Musical Instruments
A list of retailers on the web that carry hard-to-find instruments.

Websites About Unusual Musical Instruments and Instrument Making
This is our big, messy, poorly maintained links page.

Product Information Literature
Documentation for products we sell at Experimental Musical Instruments.