Carillon (A tower filled with 100 tons of bells)

sound, so I can play very softly by just lightly touching the key or I can play very loud and the whole neighborhood is listening to you right now, yes, exactly, hell, yes, and then we play with two fists, we also play with our feet and there's a board down here and I thought I don't want to look at it because I want to learn on camera, but I thought you can't really play this and I'd like to harmonize and make chords. I guess you can only play like one note at a time. I can easily play two notes like that.

I can also open my hand and play a chord with one hand so I can play four notes at once. I could play entire groups. Yeah, but if I had my feet my feet can't play so I can play you said there are 72

bells

and each one of these is one of those

bells

and then you said six octaves yeah right and these down here are just another way of ringing the bells. same notes because if I'm hitting if I move my foot here, yeah, so all the bells are Can be played from the manual, except for the biggest one, we're just in the local logo, there's no real manual gene, yeah, every two bells, the second largest bell here as we go doubling the bottom two octaves, yeah, so my hands are usually on the top pair. of octaves, yes, and my feet play the lowest active level, yes, the lower bells here are much heavier, the bells are bigger, so playing the keys is heavier.

It takes a lot more strength to move these low bells with my fists, which is why I ring them. with my feet I get more power and then I get up a little bit or it's possible that if you really hit this to break the bell, you won't break a bell, you won't, sometimes we'll break the mechanism. the wire will break, the Bellas will be fine, yes, yes, sometimes we hit this pretty hard, yes, yes, so you're playing like we traditionally play with our fists, yes, and we also play with our fingers, and that's more a more contemporary technique or even in the bass, but if I want to play very softly, maybe play with my fingers.

It's very interesting to see you play as if you were watching it here as Kelleners we learn to prepare notes, that is, we take the keys most of the time. very low before playing them, this gives us more control, the key drop here is quite big to start playing, so at the top of the key I can play it one, yes, but if I want to play it soft, I really have to go down So if I'm playing this repeated gesture, I can play it very quietly by holding those keys alone. Can I touch something? Go ahead, yeah, I'm so used to doing this, so try making your hands into fists, yeah. then if you want to play a chord, claw it so you have one note with your thumb and one note with the other four fingers, so if I'm playing I just see a C chord like that, yeah, and instead of keep notes pressed. against the bell right, you don't want to hold the hammer against the bell oh, of course, yes, sorry, you know, of course, with a keyboard; you want the note to stay, hold it down exactly, but obviously that's not the case here.

I want that, yeah, if I hold down a note and this cable gets a little tighter, you can hear it creak, so we don't want to do that, uh-huh, and that's probably not good for Bell; yes, it certainly sounds like that. You have to compose specifically for this instrument because you know if it's like you said, if you play a low note, you better know I want it to be there for the next 40 seconds exactly, you have to avoid that, yeah and you're using I see you using your pinky, yes, we press the key with our pinkies, so with a closed fist, but if the pinky actually hits, that's how we get the most control.

Wow, yeah, what do these do? We have some but

tons

up here. Yeah, so these knobs don't really do anything right when the instrument was built, it was the largest Carolina ever built by a very large margin and the Bell founders thought we might need electrical help for the larger bells because they are so heavy. plays yeah as far as I know they were never installed the but

tons

were never used yeah which is good because Carolyn should just be a mechanic mm-hmm yeah you don't come here and this practice you need yeah we need to practice . On separate instruments we have Caroline in the basement of the building playing electronic sounds and they look like this, it's Carol on keyboards, but they're just playing in the room we're practicing in, yeah, yeah, there's like, when can you ?

It even plays like what's your when do you play this? Yes, twice a day at noon and at 5:00 for an hour each time 95 for an hour, but every time we play the performance, everyone here does want to make a lot of mistakes. or trying things for the first time if we can avoid it then you need to practice one. I said I was practicing at home because there were two songs I would love to have played on this, but I was trying to play the organ like that. I have to try to get muscle memory, but being here now is so different that you have confidence in everything, it's cool to say it right before you play it and yes, I want to play it, okay, too bad, okay, and I'm going to show you where the Middle C, so it's not the middle of the keyboard, but it's actually this one.

This is the middle sense of your middle C, yeah, yeah, usually if I'm looking at a keyboard, it's like I just go to this one. I'll go one to the left, but now yes, a little like they stick out like these hammers, it's harder to tell, yes, also from back here, especially when you play very, very loud, you also hear a lot of metallic noise from the machinery , yeah, it's like We like it almost as much as the bells, yeah, that's something I completely tuned out. I don't notice it at all outside, when you hear the chime, it's just heard, yes, of course, of course, well, I'm just playing a chord.

It's like a C chord. Okay, people would be really mad at me if we didn't play for Whom the Bell Tolls. I'll show you the baseline, it's just two shirts. It's okay, I have interests and men. Ramiro Pretory, I can play. in a bass degree, yes I promise, I played instruments before, things on bells often sound a little different than you expect, yes, yes minor third in overtime, yes they were when you ring a bell , you are ready, let's do it. Wow, most metal versions. of that bird that's in 100 tons of Brown, one hundred tons of Roth, yeah, so when were they first built?

With these inventions, Carolyn goes back about 500 years, to the year 1510, when we consider the first

carillon

that was built and the evolution of the

carillon

. It really parallels the evolution of the clock, clocks originally pointed to bells rather than clocks, so as clocks became more elaborate there were more bells and

tower

s and they started to have bells that announced the time by playing a tune before for the Irish track to arrive. It catches people's attention because if you just listen to the time, maybe you missed the first couple, you don't know what time it is, but if you hear a melody, it's a sign that it's time and then you hear the arrow and you know what time is. and as the cities grew and the

tower

s began to compete with each other, you got bigger bells, better bells, more bells, better musicians and it became a kind of competition between cities who could play the most with their Caroline on her instrument.

Wow 1510 was the first year that there was a keyboard connected to the bells and it wasn't until the 20th century that the Carolines were really concert instruments, before that they were really signaling mechanisms and then in the early 20th century in Belgium, which is where kalyan originated, people started playing it more. musically and playing real concerts with real music, so all our music written for the instrument is just from the 20th century in the 21st century, how did you find out? I started playing the carillon at Yale University. I toured the campus when I was a high school student.

The tour guide pointed out the carillon tower and there are people up there ringing bells and for some reason that fascinated me and I just needed to go up there, yeah, and it was a hobby for a long time. I was an engineering student and then a graduate student. But I finally left that engineering career behind I just play the carillon, yes, Harry Potter, oh, of course, yes, thank you my voice, yes, yes, I can take them out if you want, yes, I will serenade you to whatever you are receiving , that's one of the coolest things. that's ever been on this channel that's exactly the kind of music I think yeah actually well man the other most requested song is Game of Thrones.

I'm very surprised that you can do those quick movements: the keys are these are called keys, yes we call them QC or batons, yes, yes we like to wind strings from the top, so from bottom to top usually two notes in each hand , sometimes more, it will be complicated, yes, yes, it is easier to get up and down. The trick is to keep the notes very well prepared, really alone, yes, so that you only play them a little bit. It's also very strange to touch under the keys, yes, putting your hands under them is used to control them, yes, good.

I'm going to play something I like this you won't play that melody in the other octaves 1 2 3 4 calluses should be changed not just a long ending so I was getting to that no yeah I really love that I didn't think we'd be like playing this today, yeah, from up here I had to be very careful because if I look down it's a keyboard and yeah, I know it's a keyboard, but I'm like that and you just know, yeah, yeah. Looking at it from one angle, it's quite difficult to say what is known as rich because you just don't line up that well.

I felt like I was almost German. You know, wow, that was great, yeah, we need to read more music, yeah, a song on the bench right there yeah, we got my sheet music on the yeah, well, no, I didn't think this instrument would be so capable, did you? Yeah, people don't expect that, yeah, some of these are really what I wanted. what to do on the pipe organ other similar video comments like you have to play rain, yeah, it's really yeah, do you think you could pull it off like it's good? Just try to touch it, let me know when to turn the pages.

Not long ago, no, yes, I heard it on YouTube. I love it, oh thank you, yes. Everyone is fine. Okay, that was awesome. OMG it's so amazing that this song is being played. Truly amazing. I want to ask you for a copy. of the music really the copy of this book you mean the ones that are available on dftba.com semi ready for the plugs thank you very much for allowing us to be here and be on the channel if you would like to hear Joey play, yes, we. We play twice a day most days of the week.

You can come to Rockefeller Chapel. We give concerts in the tower nine times a week from Tuesday to Friday and on Sundays all the time. If you're not in Chicago, go see a carillon near you, there are 600 of these around the world and new ones are being built Caroline, well, thanks again, subscribe if you like. I'm sure this isn't the last time we do something like this. Here's a playlist of many other videos we've made. done like this and have a good