Step 1 Check your glockenspiel
Start the microphone and play one note at a time: the dial names the note and how many cents sharp or flat it is. Audio is analysed on your device and never leaves it.
Got a New Glockenspiel? Start Here
Four steps for your first week with a glockenspiel or bell kit: check the bars, learn the layout — it is a piano keyboard made of steel — play five easy songs, and follow a seven-day plan that takes ten minutes a day.
The bars cannot be retuned at home — check them instead
A glockenspiel bar’s pitch is set by its length and thickness when it is made, and changing it means removing metal, so there is nothing for an owner to turn. What the tuner is for is confirming that every bar is right before you learn on it. Strike each bar in the centre: near the ends, where the bar rests on its cord or pins, the note is weak and the tuner may lock onto an overtone instead.
The dial reads two octaves higher than the bar’s name
An orchestral glockenspiel sounds two octaves above its written notes, so a bar labelled C reads as a C two octaves up on the dial. Both are right. Small toy instruments vary; judge the letter, not the octave.
A bar that buzzes or sounds dead
Check that it is sitting properly on its felt or rubber and is not touching the bars beside it or the pin that holds it. A bar that has slipped off its support sounds short and dull even though its pitch is right. The marimba & glockenspiel tuner page has the bar-by-bar checking routine.
Step 2 Learn the layout
Songs36 songs to play
Every song here is public domain — traditional melodies and classical pieces free for anyone to publish. Pick one to hear it played on the bars, or switch to practice mode and the instrument will wait for you to find each note. Want something else? and share it as a link. See every song written out, to read or print →
30 bars · written G3–C6, sounds G5–C8 · The orchestra’s glockenspiel: thirty thick steel bars, struck with hard mallets, ringing for seconds.
Tap a bar, or drag across them for a glissando. On a keyboard the letters on the bars are the ones to press — they run up the bars from the lowest note.
A glockenspiel is a piano keyboard made of steel. The front row holds the natural notes — C D E F G A B, again and again — and the raised back row holds the sharps and flats in groups of two and three, exactly where a piano’s black keys are. Every C is the front bar just left of a group of two. Find one and you can find every note.
The instrument above shows the note name on each bar. Choose Orchestral or Bell kit to match yours, then play C D E F G A B C along the front row. Drag across the bars for a glissando.
The full instrument, with every size and key, is on the online glockenspiel page.
Step 3 Your first five songs
Easiest first: the library marks each tune easy or harder, and within that the songs covering the fewest notes come first — on a glockenspiel, range decides more about how hard a tune is than speed does. Every one is a public-domain melody.
1. Hot Cross Buns
E3D2C1–E3D2C1–
C1C1C1C1D2D2D2D2E3D2C1–
Play Hot Cross Buns on the online glockenspiel → It loads with the song ready: Play plays it for you, Practice lights each note and waits.
2. Going Home (New World Largo)
E3G5G5–E3D2C1–
D2E3G5E3D2–––E3G5G5–E3D2C1–D2E3D2C1C1–––
Play Going Home (New World Largo) on the online glockenspiel → It loads with the song ready: Play plays it for you, Practice lights each note and waits.
3. Mary Had a Little Lamb
E3D2C1D2E3E3E3–
D2D2D2–E3G5G5–
E3D2C1D2E3E3E3E3D2D2E3D2C1–
Play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the online glockenspiel → It loads with the song ready: Play plays it for you, Practice lights each note and waits.
4. Ode to Joy
E3E3F4G5G5F4E3D2C1C1D2E3E3D2D2–
E3E3F4G5G5F4E3D2C1C1D2E3D2C1C1–
Play Ode to Joy on the online glockenspiel → It loads with the song ready: Play plays it for you, Practice lights each note and waits.
5. When the Saints Go Marching In
C1E3F4G5–––C1E3F4G5–––
C1E3F4G5–E3–C1–E3–D2–––
E3E3D2C1––C1E3–
G5G5G5F4––E3F4G5–E3–C1–D2–C1–––
Play When the Saints Go Marching In on the online glockenspiel → It loads with the song ready: Play plays it for you, Practice lights each note and waits.
Every glockenspiel song · Christmas songs for glockenspiel
Step 4 A seven-day plan
Ten minutes a day is enough, and the same ten minutes every day does more than an hour on Sunday. Tick each task as you go; this page remembers where you got to.
0 of 7 days done
Day 1 Check the bars and find C
Day 2 The bounce
Day 3 Alternating hands
Day 4 Letting it ring
Day 5 Playing in time
Day 6 A longer tune
Day 7 Your first set
Ticks are saved in this browser only.
Sizes and types of glockenspiel
The orchestral glockenspiel is two and a half octaves, written G3 to C6: thirty steel bars in a case, played with hard mallets. The student bell kit from school band is 32 bars, written F3 to C6, usually aluminium, often on a stand in a carry case. Children’s toy glockenspiels — the eight painted bars a toddler gets — play one major scale with no sharps; the songs below that stay inside an octave fit most of them.
If your instrument has wooden bars it is a xylophone rather than a glockenspiel, whatever the box says, and the online xylophone has both the toy and the concert instrument. The online glockenspiel page explains why the steel rings so long.
Back for a retune?
The marimba & glockenspiel tuner has the full checking routine and every note chart.
🎙 Open the Marimba & Glockenspiel Tuner