xylophone

I was fortunate to be part of creating a long wooden xylophone for an advertisement for a mobile phone by Docomo (a Japanese mobile phone company). In the winter of 2010, the project started with an ambitious sketch, probably it was drawn by Morihiro Harano. It described a musical instrument, a long wooden xylophone. The idea was like playing music with a ball rolling on a wooden marble run rail. Given a tight timeline of only 2-3 months, Kenjiro Matsuo(Invisible Designs Lab.) formed an R&D team consisting of sound designers, carpenters and University students. I helped with the early prototyping of the main wooden rail and later was assigned to the creation of a 'special rail system' such as a funnel, see-saw, tunnel, jumper, etc. We as a student team(Takeshi Usami, Nobu Furuta, Hiroshi Matoba) developed ideas and created prototypes. Most of the ideas are excluded before final production except 'Tremolo' which appears in the middle of the video. We also helped with on-site installation and xylophone adjustment.