Wind chimes are a type of
percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
constructed from suspended
tubes
Tube or tubes may refer to:
* ''Tube'' (2003 film), a 2003 Korean film
* ''The Tube'' (TV series), a music related TV series by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom
* "Tubes" (Peter Dale), performer on the Soccer AM television show
* Tube (band), a ...
, rods,
bell
A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inter ...
s 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
A garden ornament is an item used for garden, landscape, and park enhancement and decoration. Garden ornaments include:
* bench
*bird baths
* bird feeders
* birdhouses
*columns – cast stone
*fire basket
* flower box
** window box
*fountains ...
. 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 songs or
broken chord
A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves.
An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...
s.
__TOC__
History
Ancient Rome
![Roman wind chime (tintinabulum) flying phallus with bells](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Roman_wind_chime_%28tintinabulum%29_flying_phallus_with_bells.jpg)
Roman wind chimes, usually made of bronze, were called ''
tintinnabulum
A tintinnabulum (roughly "little bell" in Medieval Latin) is a bell mounted on a pole, placed in a Roman Catholic basilica to signify the church's link with the Pope. It consists of a small gold bell within a golden frame crowned with the papal ...
'' and were hung in
gardens
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...
,
courtyards
A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky.
Courtyards are common elements in both Western and Eastern building patterns and have been used by both ancient and contemporary ...
, and
portico
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...
es where wind movement caused them to tinkle. Bells were believed to ward off malevolent spirits and were often combined with a
phallus
A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic.
Any object that symbolically—or, more precisel ...
, which was also a symbol of good fortune and a
charm
Charm may refer to:
Social science
* Charisma, a person or thing's pronounced ability to attract others
* Superficial charm, flattery, telling people what they want to hear
Science and technology
* Charm quark, a type of elementary particle
* Ch ...
against the
evil eye
The Evil Eye ( grc, ὀφθαλμὸς βάσκανος; grc-koi, ὀφθαλμὸς πονηρός; el, (κακό) μάτι; he, עַיִן הָרָע, ; Romanian: ''Deochi''; it, malocchio; es, mal de ojo; pt, mau-olhado, olho gordo; ar ...
. 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
![Wind-powered bell under temple eaves,](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Wind-powered_bell_under_temple_eaves%2C._Banna-ji._Ashikaga%2C_Tochigi.jpg)
In
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
during the second century CE, and later in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, extremely large
pagoda
A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...
s became popular with small wind bells hung at each corner; the slightest breeze caused the clapper to swing, made in bronze too, 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.
[
] Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese glass wind bells known as ''fūrin'' () have been produced since the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
,
[
] and those at
Mizusawa Station
Wind chimes at the Mizusawa Station platform
is a railway station in the city of Ōshū, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East).
Lines
Mizusawa Station is served by the Tōhoku Main Line, and is located fro ...
are one of the
100 Soundscapes of Japan In 1996, as part of its efforts to combat noise pollution and to protect and promote protection of the environment, the Ministry of the Environment designated the . There were 738 submissions received from all over the country and the 100 "best" we ...
. Wind chimes are thought to be good luck in parts of Asia and are used in
Feng Shui.
Wind chimes started to become modernized around 1100 C.E. after the Chinese began to cast bells. A bell without a clapper, called a ''yong-zhong'', was crafted by skilled metal artisans and primarily used in religious ceremonies. 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
![Windglockenspiel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Windglockenspiel.Koshi.jpg)
Chimes produce
inharmonic
In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (also known as partials or partial tones) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency ( harmonic series).
Acoustically, a note perceived to have a singl ...
(as opposed to
harmonic
A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...
)
spectra, although if they are hung at about 2/9 of their length
[ Sethares, William A. (2005). ''Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale'', p.115. .] (22.4%
), some of the higher partials are damped and the
fundamental
Fundamental may refer to:
* Foundation of reality
* Fundamental frequency, as in music or phonetics, often referred to as simply a "fundamental"
* Fundamentalism, the belief in, and usually the strict adherence to, the simple or "fundamental" idea ...
rings the loudest.
This is common practice in high-quality wind chimes, which are also usually hung so the centre ball strikes the centre 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
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale).
Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancie ...
or
tetratonic scales as the basis for the pitches of their individual chimes as opposed to the traditional western
heptatonic scale
A heptatonic scale is a musical scale that has seven pitches, or tones, per octave. Examples include the major scale or minor scale; e.g., in C major: C D E F G A B C—and in the relative minor, A minor, natural minor: A B C D E F G A; the ...
. This is largely due to the fact that these scales inherently contain fewer dissonant
intervals
Interval may refer to:
Mathematics and physics
* Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers
** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to arbitrary partially ordered sets
* A statistical level of measurement
* Interval est ...
, and therefore sound more pleasant to the average listener when notes are struck at random.
In instruments such as
organ pipe
An organ pipe is a sound-producing element of the pipe organ that resonates at a specific pitch when pressurized air (commonly referred to as ''wind'') is driven through it. Each pipe is tuned to a specific note of the musical scale. A set of ...
s, 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
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
" 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
Clapper or Clappers may refer to:
Miscellaneous
*Clapper, part of a bell
*Clapper (musical instrument), consisting of two pieces of wood struck together
*Clapper bridge, an ancient form of bridge
*Clapper Post, urban postal service of Vienna (XVI ...
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
175px, A close-up of metal rods on a wind chime.
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
![Free-Free Euler-Bernoulli Beam animation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Free-Free_Euler-Bernoulli_Beam_animation.gif)
A wind chime constructed of a circular tube may be modelled as a freely vibrating
Euler–Bernoulli beam and the dominant frequency in cycles per second is given by:
:
where ''L'' is the length of the tube, ''E'' is the
Young's modulus
Young's modulus E, the Young modulus, or the modulus of elasticity in tension or compression (i.e., negative tension), is a mechanical property that measures the tensile or compressive stiffness of a solid material when the force is applied leng ...
for the tube material, ''I'' is the
second moment of area
The second moment of area, or second area moment, or quadratic moment of area and also known as the area moment of inertia, is a geometrical property of an area which reflects how its points are distributed with regard to an arbitrary axis. The ...
of the tube, and μ is the mass per unit length of the tube. Young's modulus ''E'' is a constant for a given material. If the inner radius of the tube is ''r
i'' and the outer radius is ''r
o'', then the second moment of area for an axis perpendicular to the axis of the tube is:
:
The mass per unit length is:
:
where ρ is the density of the tube material. The frequency is then
:
where ''W=r
o-r
i'' is the wall thickness and ''D'' is the average diameter ''D=r
o+r
i''.
For sufficiently thin-walled tubes the ''W
2'' term may be neglected, and for a given material, the main frequency is inversely proportional to ''L''
2 and proportional to the diameter ''D''.
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 instrument such as the
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the ...
and
glockenspiel
The glockenspiel ( or , : bells and : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.
The glo ...
.
Use in music
150px, David Sitek with a wind chime suspended from his guitar.
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:
*
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
: ''
Saint-François d'Assise Saint-François is the French form of Saint Francis, and is the name of many locations:
Canada
* Saint-François River, a river in Quebec
* Saint-François Parish, New Brunswick, a parish in Madawaska County, New Brunswick
* Saint-François, Que ...
'' (one set of glass, shell and wood chimes)
*
Toshiro Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi (黛 敏郎 ''Mayuzumi Toshirō'' ; 20 February 1929 – 10 April 1997) was a Japanese composer known for his implementation of Avant-garde music, avant-garde instrumentation alongside traditional Japanese musical technique ...
: ''
Bugaku
is a Japanese traditional dance that has been performed to select elites, mostly in the Japanese imperial court, for over twelve hundred years. In this way, it has been known only to the nobility, although after World War II, the dance was open ...
'' (one set of wood and glass chimes)
*
Giles Swayne
Giles Oliver Cairnes Swayne (born Hertfordshire, 30 June 1946) is a British composer.
Biography
Swayne spent much of his childhood in Liverpool, and began composing at a young age. He was educated at Ampleforth College and at Cambridge Unive ...
Symphony No. 1 (one set of glass chimes)
*
David Sitek
David Andrew Sitek (born September 6, 1972) is an American musician and record producer, known for his work with his band TV on the Radio. He has also worked with bands such as Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Foals, Celebration, Little Dragon, Beady ...
, of American rock band
TV on the Radio
TV on the Radio (TVOTR) is an American rock band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2001. The band consists of Tunde Adebimpe (vocals, loops), David Andrew Sitek (guitars, keyboards, loops), Kyp Malone (vocals, guitars, bass, loops), and Jale ...
, sometimes hangs a wind chime from the end of his guitar to add texture to his music.
*
Koji Kondo
is a Japanese music composer, pianist, and music director who works for the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his numerous contributions to the '' Super Mario'' and ''The Legend of Zelda'' series of video games, among others pr ...
, 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
''Super Mario World,'' known in Japan as is a platform game, platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in Japan in 1990, North America in 1991 and Europe and A ...
''.
*
Ivy Queen
Martha Ivelisse Pesante Rodríguez (born March 4, 1972), known professionally as Ivy Queen, is a Puerto Rican singer, rapper, songwriter, and actress. She is considered one of the pioneers of the reggaeton genre, commonly referred to as the Qu ...
, on the
acoustic track "Ángel Caído" from the 2004 album ''
Real
Real may refer to:
Currencies
* Brazilian real (R$)
* Central American Republic real
* Mexican real
* Portuguese real
* Spanish real
* Spanish colonial real
Music Albums
* ''Real'' (L'Arc-en-Ciel album) (2000)
* ''Real'' (Bright album) (2010)
...
''.
Influence
* The Japanese video game franchise ''
Pokémon
(an abbreviation for in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (company), Creatures, the owners of the trademark and copyright of the franchise.
In terms of ...
'' 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 tree
A mark tree (also known as a nail tree, chime tree, or set of bar chimes) is a percussion instrument used primarily for musical colour. It consists of many small chimes—typically cylinders of solid aluminium or hollow brass tubing 3/8" in di ...
s 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.
Wind chime images
Image:Fuurin.jpg, A Japanese ''Fūrin'' wind chime
Image:windchimes.jpg, A set of small wind chimes
Image:Wind-chime-M7547.jpg, Wind chimes in Nagano, Japan
Image:Unintended use.jpg, Old hard disk platter
A hard disk drive platter (or disk) is the circular disk on which magnetic data is stored in a hard disk drive. The rigid nature of the platters in a hard drive is what gives them their name (as opposed to the flexible materials which are used ...
s used as a wind chime
Image:Wind chime hole.png, Quality chimes are hung at ≈2/9 and struck at 1/2 length.
File:Enchanting Nepal.jpg, Mate Ghanta bells from Nepal
File:Patan Durbar Square (66).JPG, Phye Ghan (Nepali: फ्ये गँ:)
See also
*
Dreamcatcher
In some Native American and First Nations cultures, a dreamcatcher ( oj, asabikeshiinh, the inanimate form of the word for 'spider') is a handmade willow hoop, on which is woven a net or web. It may also be decorated with sacred items such as ...
*
Mobile (sculpture)
A mobile (,) is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, ...
*
Suncatcher
*
World's largest windchime
*
World's Largest Tuned Musical Windchime
References
External links
How To Design Your Own Wind ChimesWind Chimes Sound Generator (Online)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wind Chime
Wind-activated musical instruments
Percussion idiophones
European percussion instruments
Asian percussion instruments
Garden ornaments
Outdoor sculptures
Objects believed to protect from evil
Amulets
Talismans