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Category: Stretch tuning

Strike notes and tuning of old-style bells

Posted on 7th June 2022 (2nd July 2022) by Bill Hibbert

Investigation of the tuning of 23 historic peals of eight and ten showing their strike pitches were tuned more accurately than expected, followed by a review of the few written accounts of historic methods of bell tuning. […]

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Posted in Individual sets of bells, Stretch tuning

Virtual pitch and stretch tuning

Posted on 31st December 2021 (5th January 2022) by Bill Hibbert

Around 20 years ago, I rang on the peal of eight at St Edmund Southwold. All the bells had been tuned in 1990 by Whitechapel with accurate nominals, but to my ears the trebles sounded distinctly flat, by up to a quarter of a semitone. The two trebles at Southwold cast by Moore, Holmes & […]

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Posted in Stretch tuning

Strike pitch shift demonstration

Posted on 31st December 2021 (5th January 2022) by Bill Hibbert

In bells, the note we hear (for all bells that are not very small or very large) is a missing fundamental or virtual pitch effect. A set of higher frequency partials generates a sensation of pitch in our ears, auditory nerve or brain. This sensation of pitch is very strong and outweighs any sensation of […]

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Posted in Stretch tuning

Stretch tuning

Posted on 31st December 2021 (24th March 2022) by Bill Hibbert

Sometimes, peals of bells are tuned with stretch, so that the nominals of the trebles are sharper than the musical scale would require by a quarter or a third of a semitone. Stretch tuning was common in peals of bells produced before the true-harmonic revolution in the late 1890s. Paul Taylor re-introduced the practice at […]

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Posted in Stretch tuning
The Sound of Bells 2022.