Monday, August, 31, 2020 – Wind Chimes
- Mary Reed
- Sep 1, 2020
- 7 min read
At 7 a.m., the rosy glow in the sky perhaps heralds happier times ahead. I walk in an upper middle-class neighborhood where BMWs and Lexuses line the driveways. It is eerily quiet, and then I hear a wonderful musical sound. It relaxes my tension and soothes my soul — a wind chime, hanging in a tree in front of a house. Is it a portent of things to come? Will we ever feel at peace again? Maybe these residents want to be that one note of unity among all the discord, broadcasting their subtle music to the entire neighborhood. I do feel serene, undisturbed by the turbulence of the outside world — if only for a minute.
According to Wikipedia, wind chimes are a type of percussion instrument constructed from suspended tubes, rods, bells or other objects that are often made of metal or wood. The tubes or rods are suspended along with some type of weight or surface which the tubes or rods can strike when they or another wind-catching surface are blown by the natural movement of air outside. They are usually hung outside of a building or residence as a visual and aural garden ornament. Since the percussion instruments are struck according to the random effects of the wind blowing the chimes, wind chimes have been considered an example of chance-based music. The tubes or rods may sound either indistinct pitches or fairly distinct pitches. Wind chimes that sound fairly distinct pitches can — through the chance movement of air — create simple melodies or broken chords.
Chance-based or aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.
The term became known to European composers through lectures by German experimental acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his definition, "a process is said to be aleatoric ... if its course is determined in general but depends on chance in detail."
History
Ancient Rome
Roman wind chimes, usually made of bronze, were called tintinnabulum and were hung in gardens, courtyards and porticoes where wind movement caused them to tinkle. Bells were believed to ward off malevolent spirits and were often combined with a phallus, which was also a symbol of good fortune and a charm against the evil eye. The image shows one example with a phallus portrayed with wings and the feet of an animal and a phallus for a tail. These additions increased its protective powers.
Eastern and Southern Asia
In India during the second century CE, and later in China, extremely large pagodas became popular with small wind bells hung at each corner; the slightest breeze caused the clapper to swing, producing a melodious tinkling. It is said that these bells were originally intended to frighten away not only birds, but also any lurking evil spirits. Wind bells are also hung under the corners of temple, palace and home roofs; they are not limited to pagodas. Japanese glass wind bells known as fūrin have been produced since the Edo period, and those at Mizusawa Station are one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan. Wind chimes are thought to be good luck in parts of Asia and are used in feng shui.
In 1996, as part of its efforts to combat noise pollution and to protect and promote the environment, the Ministry of the Environment designated the 100 Soundscapes of Japan. There were 738 submissions received from all over the country, and the 100 "best" were selected after examination by the Japan Soundscape Study Group. These soundscapes are intended to function as symbols for local people and to promote the rediscovery of the sounds of everyday life.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, made of clay in Neolithic times, the zhong was crafted in bronze during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1066 B.C.). In performance the early zhong was either held by hand or placed on a seat with its mouth upward and struck with a mallet. This kind of zhong is also called nao in order to differentiate it from the suspended type. A yongzhong has a straight handle plus a lug at the top, which is suspended slantwise on a wooden frame. The earliest known yongzhong dates to the 10th century B.C.
Afterwards, the Chinese created the feng-ling, which is similar to today's modern wind bell. Feng-lings were hung from shrines and pagodas to ward off evil spirits and attract benevolent ones. Today, wind chimes are common in the East and used to maximize the flow of chi or life's energy.
Sounds and music
Chimes produce inharmonic — as opposed to harmonic — spectra, although if they are hung at about 2/9 of their length (22.4%), some of the higher partials are damped and the fundamental rings the loudest. This is common practice in high-quality wind chimes, which are also usually hung so the center ball strikes the center of the wind chime's length, also resulting in the loudest sounding fundamental. Frequency is determined by the length, width, thickness and material. There are formulas that help predict the proper length to achieve a particular note, though a bit of fine tuning is often needed.
Most chimes employ pentatonic or tetratonic scales as the basis for the pitches of their individual chimes as opposed to the traditional western hepatonic scale. This is largely due to the fact that these scales inherently contain fewer dissonant intervals, and therefore sound more pleasant to the average listener when notes are struck at random.
In instruments such as organ pipes, the pitch is determined primarily by the length of the air column, because it is the resonance of the air column that generates the sound. The pipe material helps determine the "timbre" or "voice" of the pipe, but the air column determines the pitch. In a wind chime, the vibrations of the pipe itself radiate the sound after being struck, so the air column has little to do with the pitch being produced.
Sound can be produced when the tubes or rods come in contact with a suspended central clapper in the form of a ball or horizontal disk, or with each other.
Wind chimes may be used to observe changes in wind direction, depending on where they are hung when they commence to sound.
Materials
Wind chimes can be made of materials other than metal or wood and in shapes other than tubes or rods. Other wind chimes materials include glass, bamboo, shell, stone, earthenware, stoneware, beads, keys and porcelain. More exotic items, such as silverware or cookie cutters, can also be recycled to create wind chimes. The selected material can have a large effect on the sound a wind chime produces. The sounds produced by recycling objects such as these are not tunable to specific notes and range from pleasant tinkling to dull thuds. The sounds produced by properly sized wind chime tubes are tunable to notes. As aluminum is the common metal with the lowest internal damping, wind chimes are often made from aluminum to achieve the longest and loudest sounding chime.
The tone depends on factors such as the material, the exact alloy, heat treatment and whether a solid cylinder or a tube is used. If a tube is used, the wall thickness also affects the tone. Tone may also depend on the hanging method. The tone quality also depends on the material of the object that is used to hit the chimes.
With clay wind chimes, the higher the final firing temperature, the brighter and more ringing the resulting tone. Earthenware clay fired at lower temperatures produces a duller sound than stoneware clay fired at higher temperatures. Stoneware wind chimes are also more durable and able to resist stronger winds without suffering chipping or damage.
Mathematics of tubular wind chimes
For the main mode of vibration, there will be two nodes on the tube, where the tube is motionless during the vibration. These nodes will be located at a distance of 22.416% of the length of the tube from each end of the tube. If the tube is simply supported — not clamped — at one or both of these nodes, the tube will vibrate as if these supports did not exist. A wind chime will give the clearest and loudest tone when it is hung using one of these node points as the attachment point. These attachment points are also the same as used by other similar instruments such as the xylophone and glockenspiel.
Use in music
Different types of wind chimes have also been used in modern music and are listed as a percussion instrument. The following is a brief list of artists and composers who have used them:
- Oliver Messiaen: “Saint-François d’Assise” opera (one set of glass, shell and wood chimes)
- Toshiro Mayuzumi: “Bugaku” ballet (one set of wood and glass chimes)
- Giles Swayne Symphony No. 1 (one set of glass chimes)
- David Sitek — of American rock band TV on the Radio — sometimes hangs a wind chime from the end of his guitar to add texture to his music.
- Koji Kondo, head composer for the Mario series of video games. A prime example is the theme music for the world "Vanilla Dome" in Super Mario World.
- Ivy Queen, on the acoustic track "Ángel Caído" from the 2004 album “Real.”
"Wind Chimes" is a song composed by Bran Wilson for the American rock band The Beach Boys. "Wind Chimes" was recorded by the band on July 10 & 11, 1967, at Brian Wilson’s home studio. Marilyn Wilson said: "We went shopping one day, and we brought home some wind chimes. We hung them outside the house, and then one day, while Brian was sitting around he sort of watched them out the window and then he wrote the song. I think that’s how it happened. Simple. He does a lot of things that way."
Influence
- The Japanese video game franchise Pokémon used the Japanese fūrin wind chimes as the basis for the Pokémon Chimecho. Its in-game cry reflects this, as it sounds like three high-pitched bells chiming one after the other.
- Mark trees or bar chimes are often mistakenly called wind chimes, but they are different instruments, though with a basic similar structure consisting of tubes of differing lengths that are meant to produce a tinkling or chiming sound. The chimes are played by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of the hanging chimes, or the strings that suspend the chimes. They are mounted in pitch order to produce rising or falling glissandos.
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