When Five Octaves Is Not Enough

A recent thread on the PAS message board mentioned that instrument manufacturers are considering the possibility of building a marimba larger than five (5) octaves and making it accessible for purchase. This is very interesting, and I have mixed feelings about the issue. Yamaha seems to have created a 5-and-one-half octave marimba which ranges from C2 through G7 -- a picture of this can be found here or here. Grover Pro Percussion has created a 5.5 octave marimba that ranges from F1 to C7; see it here. The Yamaha is intended to allow a percussionist to play many violin transcriptions. I'm interested to see what direction this goes and if percussionists feel there is a need for a 5+ octave marimba. Some problems that could arise are:

Transporting the instrument if there are extra notes on the low end. Those resonators are very large!

Moving the instrument through doors; a low-A marimba already has problems getting through many doors at schools.

Acclimating percussionists to the extra distance required to cover the entire instrument. A five-octave marimba is over nine (9) feet long, and adding more to the instrument may make it impossible for most players to cover the instrument from end-to-end with mallets in hand.

Getting new works written for the instrument and having composers write alternate passages; this is already problematic for literature written for five-octave instruments.

For bars lower than C2, it gets difficult to hear them in an ensemble without amplification. Likewise, it's tough to make C7 project, let alone notes higher than that.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea and I do believe that expansion of the instrument is a natural evolution of technology. Let's all hope that composers, percussionists and manufacturers understand the needs that come with larger instruments.