PDCON:Porcelain carillon

Concerts on the Carillon

Short evening concerts on the carillon of weimar.

• Bileam Kümper: Clockwork, 24x60 canons for each minute of the day (12 min)
• Rich Thomas: Race, War, and a Failed Treaty (11:49 min)
• Thomas Grill: luscinia megarhynchos (12:20 min)
• Chelsea Leventhal: Spieluhrgruss für Weimar (ca. 12:00 min)

See the schedule for the times

Zeitmelodien~Timetunes

During the Pd-convention 2011 there will be an interactive installation on the marketplace from weimar. Visitors can send an sms with their birthday to the carillon and they'll get the #1 Chart Hit of this date.

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Project documentation (in German), Press release (in German)

Information about the Porcelain Carillon

The carillon installed in the tower of the city hall has 35 bells made from Meissen porcelain, the lowest note being an A2 and the highest note G5. The bells are driven by solenoids with plastic tips, there is no velocity dynamic possible. For playing and composing with the original sound of the Weimar porcelain bells just download and unzip the soundfont.
In Linux use FluidSynth, in OS X you can put it in ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks and use it with SimpleSynth.

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Sound recording: <flashmp3 id="Porcelain Carillon.mp3">Porcelain Carillon.mp3</flashmp3>

Downloads

• Media:PorcelainCarillon Soundfont.zip Download the Weimar carillon as Soundfont
• Media:PorcelainCarillon PureDataPatch.zip Download the Weimar carillon as Pd-patch

Links

• Radio Campanile
• Bertuch Verlag Weimar
• Turmuhrenbau Ferner
• Soundfont Tutorial how to import and use soundfonts in GarageBand
• Recommended OS X Apps
  • MidiKeys
  • SimpleSynth

FAQ

Which are the possibilities of nuances of amplitude of the porcelain-carillon?

• technically there are no "nuances" for the touch-response: once you played a note the mechanical hammersystem hits the bell with the same intensity.

What is the repeat rate of a single bell / speed of execution of melody?

• we sent a request to the guys who build the carillon if there is any limitation (techically/concerning “health” of the bells). We have not received a clear answer on this issue. As far as we tested the carillon with a MIDI-Keyboard there were no limitations except the speed of our fingers :)

Is there a full polyphony resp. how many voices can be played simultaneously?

• as far as we know there is a full polyphonic response. In principle you can play 35 bells simultaneously...

What's the length of the pieces you are looking for?

• Since there is currently no way to override or surpress the quarter-hour chimes the maximum length for a piece should not be longer than 12 minutes. If a piece is longer then it will mix with the quarter-hour chimes.

4^th international Pure Data Convention 2011 Weimar ~ Berlin