From my previous teachers, there was no real use of graduated mallets. They gave me some instruction for the marimba, but I have worked alot more on my own. I have always just used the same set of mallets for a given piece. I was just wondering, is it "standard practice" to do this? I know that Nancy Zeltsman does this with pretty much everything, and seems very affective.
I know that it makes the low end and the high end come out, but if you are doing like a single line melody or something, you can hear the inconsistencies by one mallet being weighed different than the other. For example, if anyone here is familiar with Thomas' "Merlin", this would be a GREAT opportunity to have heavy mallets on the bottom and harder ones on the top. But when it comes to those octave runs, it might come out as "ee-oo-ee-oo-", due to the mallets not being matched. That is why I am kind of clueless as to what they do.
So, any views about this?
~Behzad

From my experiences, graduated mallets are super effective for bringing out proper voicings in chords for pieces such as Burrit's "October Night". When it comes to the single lines, I have found that the difference is usually not a huge problem. I have also noticed that many composers take into account this factor, and will write in a way that often accomodates this type of playing. But if the music beckons for graduated mallets to be used, I always do so, because it proves to be a great asset to your musicality.
George Nickson

There might be a point in choosing graduated mallets to get out more fundamentals from different registers of the instrument.
In the final section 5 of her book book "4-mallet marimba playing" Nancy Zeltsman gives advice on Merlin (amongst other solos and chamber music).
As she writes, her favorite mallets for the second movem. are her signature 6-4-3-2 graduated set...

Norbert P