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The Sound of Bells – The acoustics, sound, tuning and history of church bells

133 points by belkarx 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your joy in bells. That's an awesome collection of knowledge.
enriquto 4y ago
As if there was just material for a single PhD thesis! I would guess that the mathematical theory of bells is pretty much open. The shape of a bell (a solid of revolution) can be described by one function u:R->R. Given u, you can compute the vibration spectrum of the sound by standard methos. But if you are given a desired timbre, how to find u? Nobody knows. The most that we can do is optimization starting from a close solution candidate.
- sitkack 4y ago
  If drums are bells, you should see how Nicolas Bras [1] modifies the sound by damping some of the nodes of the drum. Are you saying all bell are radially symmetric? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXavtyyyj34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXavtyyyj34
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  The pitch perception work alone is probably a few degrees, if you get deeper into it.
- Someone 4y ago
  > The shape of a bell (a solid of revolution) can be described by one function u:R->R If you phrase it that way “surface of revolution” describes bells much better than “solid of revolution”. I think “solid of revolution” is the better term, though. That allows you to model varying wall thickness. You’d need more than a function u:ℝ->ℝ to do that. Also, I don’t a priori see why the shape of a bell would be limited to such functions. If the edge of a bell bends inwards into the bell and goes up a bit, I think I would still call it a bell, especially if it somewhat sounds like one. Finally, rotational symmetry isn’t required for a bell. Your typical cow bell, for example, is elliptical or even rectangular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowbell_(instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowbell_(instrument)) ⇒ the design space is a lot larger than you indicate.
  - mbustamanter 4y ago
    Surface of revolution is 'okay', 'solid' would mean its interior is completely filled. What you're describing is an active area of research in numerical analysis (adjacent to my own MS thesis topic, buckling of shells). > That allows you to model varying wall thickness That's mentioned in the first chapter of this book [0]. [0] The Finite Element Analysis of Shells – Fundamentals, Chapelle & Bathe EDIT: I'm aware it is not a surface, but the notion is closer than that of a solid of revolution.
    - nomel 4y ago
      > Surface of revolution is okay But surface, by definition, has no concept of thickness, right? Surely there's a better term? > 'solid' would mean its interior is completely filled. I think the easiest way to define a bell would be the difference of two solids of revolution (front surface, back surface). What do you call the difference of two solids of revolution?
      - mbustamanter 4y ago
        I meant it from a numerical analysis/differential geometry perspective (the reason I attached the reference). While not being strictly a surface, it is characterized by a mid-surface, and a thickness t. After having that information, for each point in the mid surface, a normal vector is drawn and scaled by a magnitude of t/2 in both directions of the normal, giving a thickness of t to the object that, I should have made it clearer, is not a surface but characterized by one.
        enriquto 4y ago
        I don't think that a bell is correctly modelled as a shell of variable thickness. The inner surface is smooth, and the outer surface has ridges. These ridges are apparently important to the timbre, thus it may be more appropriate to consider it as a solid volume of arbitrary shape. Of revolution, if you want to stay with a one-dimensional model.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  This site is quite old and IIRC I had bachelors students building additive synthetic bells from the amazing data he's collected. Also great tales of acoustic archaeology, building bell sounds based on models from the foundry drawings and metallurgy data.
  - crustycoder 4y ago
    It's been around for a while but he's still active in the field (he recorded & analysed our bells a couple of years ago) and he's revamped the site fairly recently.
- mbustamanter 4y ago
  Yes, it's a vibration of an elastic axisymmetric thin shell (surface of revolution, as you meantioned). Going deeper into the theory, to know or characterize the sound it makes one should have a model of free or forced vibration and find the eigenvalues of the resulting linear system. That system is typically (K-omega^2 M) U = F, where K is the stiffness matrix of the material, M the mass matrix, U the displacement matrix, F the force matrix and omega the frequency. Now, to find the displacement given the eigenvalues (spectrum) is possible in a finite-dimensional setting, in infinite dimensions it's trickier. I'm sure there are approximation results of this kind, but not if there is an exact way.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
crustycoder 4y ago
Yes, Bill did. He's a really nice guy and the subject of bell tuning has been of academic interest for a very long time, because they don't produce a single note and the note you "hear" isn't produced by the bell at all. See for example Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh's paper of 1890, linked to on Bill's site.
- krumbie 4y ago
  That is fascinating. I thought that bells had one or a couple dominant / loud frequencies that would mostly determine pitch, and the rest would just mix in to change the timbre but not the main percept. I always found the sound of melodies played with bells kind of uncomfortable because there is too much going on, too many different frequencies interfering with each other.
  - crustycoder 4y ago
    For literally centuries European bell tuning was all done by rule of thumb, with results varying from to sublime to abysmal. It was all finally figured out by Canon Simpson in 1895/6 who described the relationship between the 5 main components of a bell's strike note - the hum, prime, tierce, quint and nominal. https://www.hibberts.co.uk/building-a-bell-sound/ https://www.hibberts.co.uk/building-a-bell-sound/
jmmcd 4y ago
Bells is also one of the sub-themes in the Polifonia EU-funded research project (disclaimer, I'm involved in a different theme). It's more about documentation of historical bells in open/linked data, rather than acoustics. https://polifonia-project.eu/ https://polifonia-project.eu/
- crustycoder 4y ago
  In the UK we have 61,626 documented bells (a lower bound) spread across 7,148 towers. https://dove.cccbr.org.uk https://dove.cccbr.org.uk In the last year unaffected by COVID, there were 10,701 recorded performances and many more unrecorded ones and practices. https://bellboard.uk/ https://bellboard.uk/ There are 23,397 Methods and 52,650 Compositions available, where a Method is roughly equivalent to a piece or song in traditional music terms. http://methods.ringing.org/intro.html http://methods.ringing.org/intro.html
  - Veen 4y ago
    I used to enjoy listening to the church bell practice sessions on summer evenings when I lived by a church (not so much being woken on Sunday mornings though). Annoyingly, they eventually shortened and lessened the frequency of practice because newcomers to the village complained that their idyllic second home in the countryside was affected by "noise pollution"— something that has been a regular feature of village life since the bell tower was built in 1545.
    - crustycoder 4y ago
      The UK government did promise to reduce the grounds for noise complaints about church bells, on the grounds that normally they were there before the complainant arrived, and would still be there long after they were gone, but it appears it was like many government promises... https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/2-february/news/uk/new-policy-protect-church-bells-silenced-complaining-neighbours https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/2-february/news/...
      - 4y ago
lqet 4y ago
Very cool. I became fascinated with bells after watching this [0] documentary on how they are made a few years ago (it's in German, but that hardly matters, just watching the process is extremely interesting). The whole process is a combination of extreme sophistication and extremely simple tools and materials, something that has become quite rare nowadays. And despite an exact calculation of the bell shape and thousands of years of trial and error, tradition, and experience (the foundry in the video has been owned by the same family for 300 years), the cast is still highly dangerous and it still regularly happens that the bell just doesn't come out right and cannot be saved - months of work for nothing. I think that explains why on the day of the cast (which is just 1 or 2 times per year), everyone involved is extremely nervous. The bell founder and the customer all join in prayer, and the cast traditionally starts with "in God's name" [1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8ZZV5UjcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8ZZV5UjcI [1] https://youtu.be/OQ8ZZV5UjcI?t=1918 https://youtu.be/OQ8ZZV5UjcI?t=1918
- crustycoder 4y ago
  The only remaining dedicated bell foundry in the UK is in Loughborough - https://taylorbells.co.uk/ https://taylorbells.co.uk/ You can visit :-)
  - niccl 4y ago
    Little known fact: They made the AC/DC's original Hell's Bell for the Back in Black tour. Touring with 3,000 kgs of bell in a flight case made for some interesting experiences
    - ftio 4y ago
      Eh, in my experience that’s about the same weight as an old Ampeg SVT head.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Even with it being in German, I agree, I still enjoyed it. If you've ever made anything or seen a different thing made, you'll get the concepts of what they are doing. The scale of what they are making is impressive, as well as their jigs for building. Thanks for the link
nicwolff 4y ago
That mug-tapping demonstration in the "Doublets or warble in bells" page [0] is neat! I'll be looking for an opportunity to show that to someone, ask why they think it happens, explain pedantically, and yell "Science!" [0] https://www.hibberts.co.uk/doublets-or-warble-in-bells/ https://www.hibberts.co.uk/doublets-or-warble-in-bells/
itsoktocry 4y ago
An interesting podcast on bells form Planet Money: When you've got two companies down the road from each other making the same thing, you can almost guess the history. Originally there was just one company, but something happened. Maybe someone got angry, somebody left, and they started a second business, a competitor. Today on the show, the rivalry between two companies that make nearly all the world's handbells. And how they eventually made peace. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1067333584/bell-wars-classic https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1067333584/bell-wars-classic
ortusdux 4y ago
I found this video by Matthias Wandel about two-toned bells very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgmJEaYs70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgmJEaYs70
pradn 4y ago
Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev has an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope.
- aeolis_mons 4y ago
  One of my favorite sequences in any movie. I will never forget the visuals of workmen sweltering in front of flaming portholes in the bell's cast. Enduring a little inferno, to create the sound of heaven! Thank you for reminding me of it. :)
  - pradn 4y ago
    It's an unforgettable 40 minutes. So lucky to have seen it on the big screen the first time I saw the film.
- scarecrowbob 4y ago
  I can't recall as it has been a number of years, but my impression was that the young bell maker was lying about his father having given him the "secret" to making the bell, hence the anxiety about the success of the project. Am I misremembering that, or was I just not reading it correctly?
  - gregsadetsky 4y ago
    That's exactly it -- https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/20/the-secret-of-andrei-rublev/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/20/the-secret-of-andrei... "The boy, named Boriska [...] claims that before his father died, he revealed to him the secret of casting a bronze bell" "Amid his tears, Boriska reveals that his father never imparted to him the secret of bell making"
  - pradn 4y ago
raymondgh 4y ago
“Someone wrote a PhD thesis on bells” is a clickbait title. It implies the value of the content is merely the surprising or shocking concept that the content even exists. But looking at the page, that’s not what the content is about. It’s an earnest study into bells. Are we meant to point and laugh?
- crustycoder 4y ago
  I wouldn't worry, if that was the intent, I think it backfired ;-)
- skocznymroczny 4y ago
  I thought it's clickbait because I expected that the text of the thesis was etched on the bells somehow.
  - misterprime 4y ago
    Nice joke, Dad.
- belkarx 4y ago
  I agree, title was a bit clickbait but I was surprised that one would dedicate their life to something that specific. Hyper-specialization at its finest, and the passion is something I can appreciate
  - pvg 4y ago
    You should still stick to original titles like the site guidelines ask
    - belkarx 4y ago
      Ah, apologies. I will keep that in mind in the future
      - dang 4y ago
bsedlm 4y ago
There's a russian artist who's made a couple of albums about "singing bronze". He plays the bronze plates, they sound a lot like bells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5RIZrNKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5RIZrNKw
jFriedensreich 4y ago
why would he name his software wav”anal” when there even is a concept of “rim partials”. this is hilarious.
Cenk 4y ago
Thesis PDF here: https://oa.mg/work/10.21954/ou.ro.0000add2 https://oa.mg/work/10.21954/ou.ro.0000add2
jhallenworld 4y ago
Here is my bell related science-fiction recommendation: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. "The drop had been scheduled for noon. If she had come through on time and Probability was right about the slippage, it would be six o'clock in the evening, which was too late for vespers. And if it were vespers, why did the bell go on tolling? It could be tolling for mass, or for a funeral or a wedding. Bells had rung almost constantly in the Middle Ages—to warn of invasions or fires, to help a lost child find its way back to the village, even to ward off thunderstorms. It could be ringing for any reason at all."
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  That book (that section specifically) has one of the best "slow realization that you're in trouble" processes I've read.
elric 4y ago
Somewhat tangential; there's a company, clock-o-matic, that makes hardware and software to play carillons (or single bells) programatically using MIDI files.
rpmisms 4y ago
Grew up in a long tradition of bell-ringing. It's amazing, and even more so in person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbn_Fzcxw3o&ab_channel=petyaluk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbn_Fzcxw3o&ab_channel=petya...
elijahwright 4y ago
I read a few pages of this and found it most enjoyable. The sheer nerdiness of tuning bells and improving them - it's great!
crustycoder 4y ago
The bells studied in the PhD thesis are primarily used for English Change Ringing, which started in the early 1600s and the compositions played on them (methods) are based on mathematics, specifically Group Theory, rather than being tunes in the normal sense - the aim is to ring all the possible permutations of the bells. The Mathematics of Bell Ringing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs Performances (Peals) consist of 5040 changes (sequences), have a strict set of rules and take around 3 hours 15 minutes to complete, and must be rung entirely from memory, with no written aids. In the early 1960s a CS algorithm for efficiently enumerating permutations was published, the Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm. It's in Knuth, for those who have access to a copy. Unfortunately for them, it had been known by English Change Ringers as Plain Changes, since around 1621.
- allisvancity 4y ago
  wow. had no idea bell-ringing was so... pathological
  - crustycoder 4y ago
    Yeah, it's full of geeks :-]
  - rwmj 4y ago
    I think you mean campanological.
    - crustycoder 4y ago
      Ooh no, don't ever call bellringers that, unless you want to cause grave offence. Campanologist is a name for wussy academics, bellringers ring bells. And drink beer ;-)
rwmj 4y ago
If you just like the sounds of church bells, the BBC has you covered: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sgsh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sgsh
WalterBright 4y ago
The sound of European church bells is so lovely and charming. No recording can do it justice. On the other hand, the American church predilection for electronic bells is an abomination. My desk telephone has real bells in it for the ringer. It's from the 1950s, naturally.

133 points by belkarx 4y ago

Thanks for sharing your joy in bells. That's an awesome collection of knowledge.

As if there was just material for a single PhD thesis! I would guess that the mathematical theory of bells is pretty much open. The shape of a bell (a solid of revolution) can be described by one function u:R->R. Given u, you can compute the vibration spectrum of the sound by standard methos. But if you are given a desired timbre, how to find u? Nobody knows. The most that we can do is optimization starting from a close solution candidate.

sitkack 4y ago
If drums are bells, you should see how Nicolas Bras [1] modifies the sound by damping some of the nodes of the drum. Are you saying all bell are radially symmetric? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXavtyyyj34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXavtyyyj34
hprotagonist 4y ago
The pitch perception work alone is probably a few degrees, if you get deeper into it.
Someone 4y ago
> The shape of a bell (a solid of revolution) can be described by one function u:R->R If you phrase it that way “surface of revolution” describes bells much better than “solid of revolution”. I think “solid of revolution” is the better term, though. That allows you to model varying wall thickness. You’d need more than a function u:ℝ->ℝ to do that. Also, I don’t a priori see why the shape of a bell would be limited to such functions. If the edge of a bell bends inwards into the bell and goes up a bit, I think I would still call it a bell, especially if it somewhat sounds like one. Finally, rotational symmetry isn’t required for a bell. Your typical cow bell, for example, is elliptical or even rectangular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowbell_(instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowbell_(instrument)) ⇒ the design space is a lot larger than you indicate.
- mbustamanter 4y ago
  Surface of revolution is 'okay', 'solid' would mean its interior is completely filled. What you're describing is an active area of research in numerical analysis (adjacent to my own MS thesis topic, buckling of shells). > That allows you to model varying wall thickness That's mentioned in the first chapter of this book [0]. [0] The Finite Element Analysis of Shells – Fundamentals, Chapelle & Bathe EDIT: I'm aware it is not a surface, but the notion is closer than that of a solid of revolution.
  - nomel 4y ago
    > Surface of revolution is okay But surface, by definition, has no concept of thickness, right? Surely there's a better term? > 'solid' would mean its interior is completely filled. I think the easiest way to define a bell would be the difference of two solids of revolution (front surface, back surface). What do you call the difference of two solids of revolution?
    - mbustamanter 4y ago
      I meant it from a numerical analysis/differential geometry perspective (the reason I attached the reference). While not being strictly a surface, it is characterized by a mid-surface, and a thickness t. After having that information, for each point in the mid surface, a normal vector is drawn and scaled by a magnitude of t/2 in both directions of the normal, giving a thickness of t to the object that, I should have made it clearer, is not a surface but characterized by one.
      - enriquto 4y ago
        I don't think that a bell is correctly modelled as a shell of variable thickness. The inner surface is smooth, and the outer surface has ridges. These ridges are apparently important to the timbre, thus it may be more appropriate to consider it as a solid volume of arbitrary shape. Of revolution, if you want to stay with a one-dimensional model.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
This site is quite old and IIRC I had bachelors students building additive synthetic bells from the amazing data he's collected. Also great tales of acoustic archaeology, building bell sounds based on models from the foundry drawings and metallurgy data.
- crustycoder 4y ago
  It's been around for a while but he's still active in the field (he recorded & analysed our bells a couple of years ago) and he's revamped the site fairly recently.
mbustamanter 4y ago
Yes, it's a vibration of an elastic axisymmetric thin shell (surface of revolution, as you meantioned). Going deeper into the theory, to know or characterize the sound it makes one should have a model of free or forced vibration and find the eigenvalues of the resulting linear system. That system is typically (K-omega^2 M) U = F, where K is the stiffness matrix of the material, M the mass matrix, U the displacement matrix, F the force matrix and omega the frequency. Now, to find the displacement given the eigenvalues (spectrum) is possible in a finite-dimensional setting, in infinite dimensions it's trickier. I'm sure there are approximation results of this kind, but not if there is an exact way.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

crustycoder 4y ago

Yes, Bill did. He's a really nice guy and the subject of bell tuning has been of academic interest for a very long time, because they don't produce a single note and the note you "hear" isn't produced by the bell at all. See for example Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh's paper of 1890, linked to on Bill's site.

krumbie 4y ago
That is fascinating. I thought that bells had one or a couple dominant / loud frequencies that would mostly determine pitch, and the rest would just mix in to change the timbre but not the main percept. I always found the sound of melodies played with bells kind of uncomfortable because there is too much going on, too many different frequencies interfering with each other.
- crustycoder 4y ago
  For literally centuries European bell tuning was all done by rule of thumb, with results varying from to sublime to abysmal. It was all finally figured out by Canon Simpson in 1895/6 who described the relationship between the 5 main components of a bell's strike note - the hum, prime, tierce, quint and nominal. https://www.hibberts.co.uk/building-a-bell-sound/ https://www.hibberts.co.uk/building-a-bell-sound/

jmmcd 4y ago

Bells is also one of the sub-themes in the Polifonia EU-funded research project (disclaimer, I'm involved in a different theme). It's more about documentation of historical bells in open/linked data, rather than acoustics. https://polifonia-project.eu/ https://polifonia-project.eu/

crustycoder 4y ago
In the UK we have 61,626 documented bells (a lower bound) spread across 7,148 towers. https://dove.cccbr.org.uk https://dove.cccbr.org.uk In the last year unaffected by COVID, there were 10,701 recorded performances and many more unrecorded ones and practices. https://bellboard.uk/ https://bellboard.uk/ There are 23,397 Methods and 52,650 Compositions available, where a Method is roughly equivalent to a piece or song in traditional music terms. http://methods.ringing.org/intro.html http://methods.ringing.org/intro.html
- Veen 4y ago
  I used to enjoy listening to the church bell practice sessions on summer evenings when I lived by a church (not so much being woken on Sunday mornings though). Annoyingly, they eventually shortened and lessened the frequency of practice because newcomers to the village complained that their idyllic second home in the countryside was affected by "noise pollution"— something that has been a regular feature of village life since the bell tower was built in 1545.
  - crustycoder 4y ago
    The UK government did promise to reduce the grounds for noise complaints about church bells, on the grounds that normally they were there before the complainant arrived, and would still be there long after they were gone, but it appears it was like many government promises... https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/2-february/news/uk/new-policy-protect-church-bells-silenced-complaining-neighbours https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/2-february/news/...
    - 4y ago

lqet 4y ago

Very cool. I became fascinated with bells after watching this [0] documentary on how they are made a few years ago (it's in German, but that hardly matters, just watching the process is extremely interesting). The whole process is a combination of extreme sophistication and extremely simple tools and materials, something that has become quite rare nowadays. And despite an exact calculation of the bell shape and thousands of years of trial and error, tradition, and experience (the foundry in the video has been owned by the same family for 300 years), the cast is still highly dangerous and it still regularly happens that the bell just doesn't come out right and cannot be saved - months of work for nothing. I think that explains why on the day of the cast (which is just 1 or 2 times per year), everyone involved is extremely nervous. The bell founder and the customer all join in prayer, and the cast traditionally starts with "in God's name" [1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8ZZV5UjcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8ZZV5UjcI [1] https://youtu.be/OQ8ZZV5UjcI?t=1918 https://youtu.be/OQ8ZZV5UjcI?t=1918

crustycoder 4y ago
The only remaining dedicated bell foundry in the UK is in Loughborough - https://taylorbells.co.uk/ https://taylorbells.co.uk/ You can visit :-)
- niccl 4y ago
  Little known fact: They made the AC/DC's original Hell's Bell for the Back in Black tour. Touring with 3,000 kgs of bell in a flight case made for some interesting experiences
  - ftio 4y ago
    Eh, in my experience that’s about the same weight as an old Ampeg SVT head.
dylan604 4y ago
Even with it being in German, I agree, I still enjoyed it. If you've ever made anything or seen a different thing made, you'll get the concepts of what they are doing. The scale of what they are making is impressive, as well as their jigs for building. Thanks for the link

nicwolff 4y ago

That mug-tapping demonstration in the "Doublets or warble in bells" page [0] is neat! I'll be looking for an opportunity to show that to someone, ask why they think it happens, explain pedantically, and yell "Science!" [0] https://www.hibberts.co.uk/doublets-or-warble-in-bells/ https://www.hibberts.co.uk/doublets-or-warble-in-bells/

itsoktocry 4y ago

An interesting podcast on bells form Planet Money: When you've got two companies down the road from each other making the same thing, you can almost guess the history. Originally there was just one company, but something happened. Maybe someone got angry, somebody left, and they started a second business, a competitor. Today on the show, the rivalry between two companies that make nearly all the world's handbells. And how they eventually made peace. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1067333584/bell-wars-classic https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1067333584/bell-wars-classic

ortusdux 4y ago

I found this video by Matthias Wandel about two-toned bells very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgmJEaYs70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgmJEaYs70

pradn 4y ago

Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev has an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope.

aeolis_mons 4y ago
One of my favorite sequences in any movie. I will never forget the visuals of workmen sweltering in front of flaming portholes in the bell's cast. Enduring a little inferno, to create the sound of heaven! Thank you for reminding me of it. :)
- pradn 4y ago
  It's an unforgettable 40 minutes. So lucky to have seen it on the big screen the first time I saw the film.
scarecrowbob 4y ago
I can't recall as it has been a number of years, but my impression was that the young bell maker was lying about his father having given him the "secret" to making the bell, hence the anxiety about the success of the project. Am I misremembering that, or was I just not reading it correctly?
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  That's exactly it -- https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/20/the-secret-of-andrei-rublev/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/20/the-secret-of-andrei... "The boy, named Boriska [...] claims that before his father died, he revealed to him the secret of casting a bronze bell" "Amid his tears, Boriska reveals that his father never imparted to him the secret of bell making"
- pradn 4y ago

raymondgh 4y ago

“Someone wrote a PhD thesis on bells” is a clickbait title. It implies the value of the content is merely the surprising or shocking concept that the content even exists. But looking at the page, that’s not what the content is about. It’s an earnest study into bells. Are we meant to point and laugh?

crustycoder 4y ago
I wouldn't worry, if that was the intent, I think it backfired ;-)
skocznymroczny 4y ago
I thought it's clickbait because I expected that the text of the thesis was etched on the bells somehow.
- misterprime 4y ago
  Nice joke, Dad.
belkarx 4y ago
I agree, title was a bit clickbait but I was surprised that one would dedicate their life to something that specific. Hyper-specialization at its finest, and the passion is something I can appreciate
- pvg 4y ago
  You should still stick to original titles like the site guidelines ask
  - belkarx 4y ago
    Ah, apologies. I will keep that in mind in the future
    - dang 4y ago

bsedlm 4y ago

There's a russian artist who's made a couple of albums about "singing bronze". He plays the bronze plates, they sound a lot like bells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5RIZrNKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5RIZrNKw

jFriedensreich 4y ago

why would he name his software wav”anal” when there even is a concept of “rim partials”. this is hilarious.

Cenk 4y ago

Thesis PDF here: https://oa.mg/work/10.21954/ou.ro.0000add2 https://oa.mg/work/10.21954/ou.ro.0000add2

jhallenworld 4y ago

Here is my bell related science-fiction recommendation: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. "The drop had been scheduled for noon. If she had come through on time and Probability was right about the slippage, it would be six o'clock in the evening, which was too late for vespers. And if it were vespers, why did the bell go on tolling? It could be tolling for mass, or for a funeral or a wedding. Bells had rung almost constantly in the Middle Ages—to warn of invasions or fires, to help a lost child find its way back to the village, even to ward off thunderstorms. It could be ringing for any reason at all."

InitialLastName 4y ago
That book (that section specifically) has one of the best "slow realization that you're in trouble" processes I've read.

elric 4y ago

Somewhat tangential; there's a company, clock-o-matic, that makes hardware and software to play carillons (or single bells) programatically using MIDI files.

rpmisms 4y ago

Grew up in a long tradition of bell-ringing. It's amazing, and even more so in person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbn_Fzcxw3o&ab_channel=petyaluk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbn_Fzcxw3o&ab_channel=petya...

elijahwright 4y ago

I read a few pages of this and found it most enjoyable. The sheer nerdiness of tuning bells and improving them - it's great!

crustycoder 4y ago

The bells studied in the PhD thesis are primarily used for English Change Ringing, which started in the early 1600s and the compositions played on them (methods) are based on mathematics, specifically Group Theory, rather than being tunes in the normal sense - the aim is to ring all the possible permutations of the bells. The Mathematics of Bell Ringing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs Performances (Peals) consist of 5040 changes (sequences), have a strict set of rules and take around 3 hours 15 minutes to complete, and must be rung entirely from memory, with no written aids. In the early 1960s a CS algorithm for efficiently enumerating permutations was published, the Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm. It's in Knuth, for those who have access to a copy. Unfortunately for them, it had been known by English Change Ringers as Plain Changes, since around 1621.

allisvancity 4y ago
wow. had no idea bell-ringing was so... pathological
- crustycoder 4y ago
  Yeah, it's full of geeks :-]
- rwmj 4y ago
  I think you mean campanological.
  - crustycoder 4y ago
    Ooh no, don't ever call bellringers that, unless you want to cause grave offence. Campanologist is a name for wussy academics, bellringers ring bells. And drink beer ;-)

rwmj 4y ago

If you just like the sounds of church bells, the BBC has you covered: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sgsh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sgsh

WalterBright 4y ago

The sound of European church bells is so lovely and charming. No recording can do it justice. On the other hand, the American church predilection for electronic bells is an abomination. My desk telephone has real bells in it for the ringer. It's from the 1950s, naturally.