source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 11:49:33 -0800 Subject: Re: Post from Brian McLaren From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@CompuServe.COM> > It is the bell, not the clapper, which produces a tone, and the pitch of > the tone is not determined by the mass of the clapper but by the mass and > shape of the bell. I realize that this isn't ultimately all that important, but I may as well point out that this statement is both exactly correct and exactly incorrect. The amount of momentum with which you hit a bell (or most any other solid object) does affect its perceived pitch. That, however, only to the extent that how hard and where you strike it affects the relative volumes of the object's nonharmonic partials. As another aside, how hard you bow or blow a largely-harmonic instrument, can have fairly significant effects upon the quantitative and qualitative pitch of the resulting tone. That is mostly due to imperfect elasticities of strings and reeds and such. But Brian's statement is still essentially correct; the size of the hammer has FAR LESS effect upon the pitches of the partials than the dimensions of the bell itself. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:57 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA15107; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:58:50 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA15128 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id LAA19619; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 11:58:47 -0800 Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 11:58:47 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu