[Bell Historians] Pitches of bells

[David Bryant]

>From: "Dickon Love" <dickon.love at ...>
>Reply-To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
>To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] Pitches of bells
>Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 13:35:43 -0000
>
>DLB said:
>
> > In some cases, notes tend not to be
> > used - it is rare to find bells described as being in B#, E# or
>Gb, for
> > example, so C, F and F# respectively will almost always be used in
>these
> > cases.
> >
> > With regard to the point about how the other notes are described,
>I think
> > that they have to be described to be consistent with the note
>given for the
> > tenor - e.g. C#, Eb, F, Gb, G#, A#, C, C# would be inconsistent
>and messy.
>
>David - you have contradicted yourself. I agree that B# would never
>be identified as the pitch of the tonic, but there are certain key
>signatures which use B# rather than C higher in the scale, so it
>would be entirely appropriate to use that.
>
>A bells in a ring (these days) are put together to be consistent
>with one another and form an instrument in their own right.
>Therefore convention dictates the use of Fx, B#, etc on occasions.
>Sometimes the bells are just put together as a random collection (I
>rang a quarter on one such set of 3 on Saturday!) in which case this
>does not apply and absolute pitches are best used.
>
>As I said earlier, I would never use Cb, B#, E#, Fb or any double
>sharps/double flats to describe the key of a ring (or any bell that
>is not in a scale). But it is fair game to include them in
>describing the resultant scale (as has been done at Brasted).
>
>I am grateful to the responses from our current (and ex) bell tuners.
>
>DrL
>
>P.S.
>
>Andrew Higson said:
>"(psst, Nigel - we could market both f#s and g flats as essential
>and boost bell sales!)"
>
>Well Andrew, every little helps, as Prunella Scales would say... :)
>
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