This page explains the mathematical techniques I use to manipulate bell sounds for various purposes. Sound file examples demonstrate sharpening or flattening bells, adjusting individual partials, and the effect of thin and thick bells. […]
Category: Recording and analysing bells
Identifying Bell Partials
Description of a simple experimental procedure for identifying the nodal patterns of bell partials. […]
Tubular bells
Determining the strike pitch of tubular bells. […]
Long-waisted bells
Comparison of the partials of five long-waisted bells shows a pattern to the lower partials that helps with analysis. […]
Tonal analysis from recordings
How to do a tonal analysis of a bell from a recording of it. […]
Frequency calibration for tonal analysis
The basic principle of frequency calibration is simple. If a reference tone of known frequency is available, it can be recorded along with the bell sound. When the bell sound is later analysed, the frequency of the reference tone is checked at the same time. If there is a discrepancy, work out the ratio of […]
Recording and analysis
The pages linked below give practical tips on recording bells for the purposes of tonal analysis (including taking recordings from Youtube, and how to do the tonal analysis with Wavanal. The detail given in previous version of these pages (written almost 20 years ago) on recording formats and recording devices has been completely re-written and […]
Recording bells for analysis
This page was originally written in October 2002, and has been substantially updated to only cover recording bells for tonal analysis, not recordings for general purposes. Also, audio technology has moved a long way since 2002! Andrew Wilby suggested I wrote the original paper. It included extracts from messages originally published on the Bell Historian’s chat […]