[Bell Historians] Proto-NBR and musical scales

[aaj buswell]

I may have come in late on this discussion. I'm no musician  but usually an 'A' is set at 440hz. Are there other standard pitches such as 'philharmonic? G&J use 335hz as their 'A' . Irrespective of Note, what are the hz's?

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Wilby 
  To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 2:49 PM
  Subject: [Bell Historians] Proto-NBR and musical scales


  Without being critical of the work John Baldwin is undertaking, can I 
  suggest there should be a review and common agreed standard around 
  the recording of individual notes within the scale of a ring of bells?

  I post two examples from the Dove website, one for a ring in C# and 
  another for a ring with a tenor given as D#. I seem to recall some 
  discussion about how bell notes are listed a while back, but I think 
  the two examples, especially the latter, demonstrate how difficult it 
  can be to make any sense when using the "piano keyboard view" of a 
  scale.

  http://www.cccbr.org.uk/dove/detail.php?DoveID=BLOXHAM

  http://www.cccbr.org.uk/dove/detail.php?DoveID=ASHBY+DE+Z

  In the first example, the correct musical notation would have the 
  second expressed as B# and the sixth as E#. The latter example is a 
  real confusion of keys, with some notes from the scale of D# 
  (presumably as advised by the founder), and others from E-flat! So 
  you can either have it as (tenor first) D# E# Fx G# A# B# Cx D# E# Fx 
  (where x denotes "double sharp"), or Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb F G, but not 
  as-is. To express either ring as currently published is musical 
  nonsense, and while I'm sure there are good intentions behind 
  recording bells thus, in practice it is dumbing-down and ultimately 
  is not helpful. 

  To the novice pianist, notes such as B# and E# don't *apparently* 
  exist on a piano keyboard, but music written for piano in keys such 
  as C# include B# and E# in their scores. All stringed 
  instrumentalists would have no problem in the concept of playing an 
  E# if required!

  Bells are musical instruments tuned to musical keys: let's notate 
  them as such.

  MPAW



              
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