[Bell Historians] Kemberton

Dickon Love dickon at lovesguide.com
Sun May 15 10:09:19 BST 2022


My good friend RCO has asked this question before, and the answer is the same.

The description of the key of a ring remains a work in progress because ultimately it boils down to individual preference, and we have seen a diversity of preferences already in this thread. The same argument goes for preferences in (historic) counties and lieutenancy areas. In BellBoard, the user can set a preference, and in due course we hope we can do the same for Dove with respect to key signatures.

This will not only apply to which side of the divide the key note is (the tenor), but also whether the key note should be used in defining the scale in the first place, or even some other average applied over all the notes of the scale, not just the tenor. This latter calculation would itself be dependent on which temperament you want to apply the calculations to.

At the moment it is not particularly high on the list of priorities when we are still embedding in details of frames, hence there hasn't been a review of all sets of bells. So if A# offends you, please know that Bb is not considered incorrect, or indeed A or B if the tenor is particularly flat or sharp.

DrL


-----Original Message-----
From: Bell-historians <bell-historians-bounces at lists.ringingworld.co.uk> On Behalf Of Richard Offen
Sent: 14 May 2022 08:25
To: bell-historians at lists.ringingworld.co.uk
Subject: [Bell Historians] Kemberton

Could I ask why the new ring of six for Kemberton, Shropshire (soon to be eight) are being shown on the online Dove website as being in the key of A#?

If I remember my music theory correctly, A# Major is not in the circle of fifths as it’s structure, with three double sharps, is considered too complicated for practical use. 

The tenor at Kemberton, according to the nominal frequency given on the Dove page is 11 cents flat of B-flat, so why not show the ring in that commonly used key? To add insult to injury, one of the bells is shown as being in E-flat, which makes even more of a nonsense of it all!

Rings of bells are musical instruments and therefore, in my opinion, should conform to the tried and tested conventions of musical notation. 

Richard

Sent from Richard Offen's iPad

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