Indeed. See The Nine Tailors for a good reason why
Hard to find enough hunchbacks these days.
I’ve seen snippets of bell ringers in various UK shows/ movies (particulary, one Midsome Murders episode), and it all sounds to same to me. When I was a kid, I always assumed they played actual songs, but it mostly, to me, sounded like samey dribbles of notes.
English bell-ringers don’t play songs; they play intricate patterns of the bells. See The Nine Taylors cited above for an excellent account.
I’m probably being whooshed, but aren’t those the same?
No, there’s no tune that you can hum. It’s more like a dance of the bells amongst themselves.
Her’e one pattern, from the wikipedia article on Change ringing:
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as “changes”. This can be by method ringing in which the ringers commit to memory the rules for generating each change, or by call changes, where the ringers are instructed how to generate each change by instructions from a conductor. This creates a form of bell music which cannot be discerned as a conventional melody, but is a series of mathematical sequences.
But they still sound essentially the same to me. I know they’re not what we usually call “songs,” but I struggle to hear the minute differences. Maybe if I cared enough to study it for years, my ears might be able to differentiate. But I don’t care enough, so it’ll just stay background noise for me.
Carillons play songs. That’s what @Spoons was mentioning.
When you say that they sound the same to you: have you heard change-ringing in England? I don’t know how popular it is outside the UK.
Only in TV shows and movies, but all in the UK.
I just watched a very nice explanatory video that was set in the US National Cathedral in Washington. Mathematical Impressions: Change Ringing - YouTube
I was about to link that same video - and I have definitely heard change ringing in the US.
Thanks, @gnoitall. I guess not being a mathematician (at all!) is why it doesn’t speak to me. You need a math brain.
I can’t say I know the guy, but his face sure rings a bell.
Is his name Claude Cooper?
I find this surprising.
Not that I don’t believe you of course, but carillons play very distinct melodies that you can recognise and sing. There’s one in Bruges that clearly plays an adaptation of Bach’s famous prelude in C Major and I was stunned to hear Piazzolla’s Libertango in the centre of Ghent back in 2020.
The bell-ringing described above is more like a wall of blurry sounds without any discernable melodic line.
This fellow makes the rounds of RenFairs and such. I’ve heard him many times and have a couple of his CDs. In the vid yo can see how he operates the machine. And it’s small enough you can see how the whole thing works. It’s permanently built on a small flatbed trailer. Sometimes he plays in parades which is here I first saw/heard him rolling down the street. Interesting chap to talk to too.
Cast in Bronze - Carol of the Bells - YouTube
This is the kind of bellringing I was talking about. If they were playing an actual piece of music, eg. Bach, I’d recognize that for sure.
OK, thanks.
That’s the part that I found confusing, but I misunderstood you.
Change ringing to me seems similar to pibroch on the pipes. (The “great music”as opposed to hummable tunes.) A pibroch starts with a tune, or base, and then the Piper starts playing variations on the base, getting more and more complicated and definitely not hummable, before ending on the base to wrap it up.
It’s magnificent, but not readily accessible the way “Amazing Grace” is.
Jazz bagpipes. Who knew?
[aside]
We have a piper who apparently lives nearby. On nice Saturdays (i.e. most of them) he can be seen & heard marching down our sidewalks serenading the other pedestrians, joggers, and outdoor eatery patrons. Sometimes he’s dressed in Scots regalia, and other times in basic Florida Outdoor Casual.
When he came by last Saturday he was wearing a light green T-shirt, light green sneakers and a light green baseball cap. The cords and tassles that connect the three pipes (Google says “drone cords”) were a dark kelly green. The hide bag was dark brown.
The color of his clothes largely matched @Northern_Piper’s avatar, which I thought was a nice homage to our good friend up north. Had his bag also been green the story would be even better.