{"id":115,"date":"2016-01-23T12:57:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T12:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattnolancustomcymbals.com\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2021-07-15T11:05:03","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T10:05:03","slug":"bigger-badder-bassier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattnolancustomcymbals.com\/blog\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Bigger, badder, bassier…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where do you find the most bells in classical music? In opera. Where do you find the lowest ones? In Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. The percussion score includes an E1, an F2 and a Bb2. That E1 \u2013 the lowest E note on a standard piano \u2013 was inspired by the tolling of the Campanone (the big bell) of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. A 10 tonne bell – actually quite light as some tower bells go and, actually, an E3. We can only assume that Puccini wanted an E1 as an exaggeration. How do you replicate this in an orchestra? So far, the answer is, you don’t.<\/p>\n

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il campanone at San Pietro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At least, you don’t with a tubular bell. You might with a bell plate. But that’s for another blog. I believe there have been E2 tubular bells – i.e. one octave up \u2013 made (by EQ Percussion and by Century Mallet) for use in Tosca, but I have neither seen nor heard them. They’ll be around 15 foot long 2″ chimes by my estimate. The overtone structure of tubular bells and the way your ears and brain assign pitch to such things really starts to fall apart below about Eb3 or D3, so there must be some tricks involved in making these work. Either that or their note naming convention is different.<\/p>\n

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London got in touch with me about replacing some old tubular bells they have which were – reportedly \u2013 the F2 and Bb2 for Tosca. The F is starting to crack up and can’t be played loudly any more. I went to have a look and take some recordings for analysis. It turns out these Bronze beauties are Harringtons’ Patented Tubular Bells from up to 120 years ago (metal tubular bells themselves being only around 155 years old as a concept). They were probably originally installed in a church tower. Roughly 3 inches in outer diameter, 1\/2 inch thick in wall, and getting on for 3 metres in length; the F is around 65kg and, as it turns out, not an F2, but an F3. Sorry about the terrible mobile phone picture:<\/p>\n

\"harringtons<\/a>
harringtons patent tubular bell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, I’m both relieved and disappointed in almost equal measure that I don’t have to figure out the tubular bells below D3 conundrum \u2013 yet.<\/p>\n

Evidently, the sheer size of the bells allow much more volume from the bass partials to get out into the air and thus to suggest the lower octave. Or, perhaps more likely, they are less prone to sounding an octave higher than they should, as deep tubular bells of lesser girth can sometimes do. Tubular bells fool you into hearing a virtual fundamental \u201c1\u201d by having three partials in their overtone spectrum which are approximately in the ratio 2:3:4 \u2013 so they seem like part of a harmonic series. Sometimes this auditory illusion can break down and you can hear the 2 and 4 as 1 and 2, or yet higher overtones point to a different pitch altogether.<\/p>\n

To make replacement tubular chime bells in Bronze, or even Brass would be extravagantly expensive today \u2013 not to mention back-breakingly heavy. I have had success in making bass chimes using thick-wall Aluminium tubing. For this kind of thing, it ends up being quite a bit lighter, despite being up to 20% longer for the same note. The natural tendency for the Aluminium to damp the higher overtones also helps bolster the virtual pitch illusion. Let the adventures in 3 inch diameter Aluminium tubular bells begin!<\/p>\n

I wanted to use 3 inch outer diameter by 1\/2 inch wall thickness Aluminium, the same cross section as the existing Bronze bells, but was not able to find any which could be supplied in time. So I went for 3\/8 inch wall. Really, I would have liked to have been able to compare the two and decide which sounded better, rather than extrapolating from my experiments in 2 inch tubing. I ordered two 5 metre lengths. I couldn’t get them delivered directly to my workshop so had to transfer them from my home to there in my car.<\/p>\n

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late night motor jousting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I made my cymbal lathe, I made sure it was also capable of taking a standard metal-turning chuck. However, there isn’t a solid lathe bed or tool post, so some operations using this can be a little Heath-Robinson.<\/p>\n