thank you, guys and merry christmas !

Merry Xmas and and a Happy New Year to you all!

What a great surprise. It just so happens that I was preparing an orchestral score in Sibelius for a concert this week that involves tubular bells.

Here's the interesting part. Orchestral tubular bells (or chimes) only go down to middle C. But many large pipe organs have a chimes stop that are authentic acoustic tubular bells triggered electromechanically from the keyboard. The difference is that on some pipe organs the tubular bells go down to the G below middle C.

The Pianoteq tubular bells go down a full octave below middle C.

Well, in the composition I was preparing (transposed down from the original arrangement) I needed to go down to the A below middle C, and the concert is in a church with a large pipe organ, so the director and I decided to have the organist play the chimes on the organ rather than having a percussionist bring in a set of orchestral tubular bells (which percussionists hate dealing with, which have to be rented, and which are extremely heavy and expensive).

To cap all this off, the orchestral sample set for "mock-up" playback in Sibelius has a set of orchestral tubular bells samples, but they only go down to middle C.

So now I can use the Pianoteq instrument with Sibelius and play back chimes that go as low as the organ. Nice.

Are you aware that one can set the diapason (Tuning for A above Middle C) to 220 Hz rather than the usual 440Hz, and essentially drop even the extended range of the tubular bells by an additional octave?

Cheers,

Joe

Merry Christmas to you all!

Heinke

Like each and every year around christmas, even if the season is rainy and mild over here this year again, I love to listen to early Oldfield compositions. After all the man made tubular bells even more popular.  As his album with the title - really, you did guess it? no..... "tubular bells" were released in 1973 people thought a new Sibelius would rise.  Well, no, but at least it's Oldfield.

Ommadawn is still one of my favourites. The tubular bells, like celesta, must be very important for 12-tone-guys too, I think?

As I had an old "bells" in my ptq-folder, I just renamed that to bells_old, so I guess they'll stay in my folder also.

Lovely that you extended the range, that was a great idea. Nobody is forced to use that, but we can, if we want- that's exactly what is great.

I hope you'll find a few weeks to do just things you love now soon. The time "between the years" can be magical (but where is that wonderful snow, pure, white, lots of it!^^), and nobody should work too hard during those 2-3 weeks.

All the best to you!

Here's the interesting part. Orchestral tubular bells (or chimes) only go down to middle C. But many large pipe organs have a chimes stop that are authentic acoustic tubular bells triggered electromechanically from the keyboard. The difference is that on some pipe organs the tubular bells go down to the G below middle C.

The Pianoteq tubular bells go down a full octave below middle C.

Well, in the composition I was preparing (transposed down from the original arrangement) I needed to go down to the A below middle C, and the concert is in a church with a large pipe organ, so the director and I decided to have the organist play the chimes on the organ rather than having a percussionist bring in a set of orchestral tubular bells (which percussionists hate dealing with, which have to be rented, and which are extremely heavy and expensive).

To cap all this off, the orchestral sample set for "mock-up" playback in Sibelius has a set of orchestral tubular bells samples, but they only go down to middle C.

So now I can use the Pianoteq instrument with Sibelius and play back chimes that go as low as the organ. Nice.

Merry Christmas to all of you from all of... me