Windy Town And Bell

The small town stirs at the sound of the bell beckoning its inhabitants to step out of their windswept perches and enter the house of God for an afternoon prayer. If you can but stand to walk across the avenues without wanting to stop and bathe in the golden sunlight and stew in the sweet smells surrounding you in the air, then you might just make it to mass. In the Western world, its most classical form is a church bell or town bell, which is hung within a tower and sounded by having the entire bell swung by ropes, whereupon an internal hinged clapper strikes the body of the bell (called a free-swinging bell). In the Eastern world, the traditional forms of bells are temple and palace bells, small ones being rung by a sharp rap with a stick, and very large ones rung by a blow from the outside by a large swinging beam. Bells are made to exact formulas, so that given the diameter it is possible to calculate every dimension, and its musical note, or tone. The frequency of a bell's note varies with the square of its thickness, and inversely with its diameter. Much experimentation has been devoted to determining the exact shape that will give the best tone. The thickness of a church bell at its thickest part, called the "sound bow", is usually one thirteenth its diameter. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=118953