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comment by demure
demure  ·  3370 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what's one of your interests that you don't think other people on Hubski share?

The carillon.

The carillon is the instrument which controls and makes up church bells. In order to be a carillon, there have to be 23 bells, or two octaves minus two notes (trad. Bottommost dflat and eflat) - otherwise it's just a chimes and chimes are boring. The only other carillonneur I know on hubski is birchbarkcanoe. We're a rare breed.

Maybe I'll post a video of me playing sometime.





kleinbl00  ·  3370 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So, funny story.

Back in college I spent a summer building Electric hot rods out in Port Townsend, WA. Which is an odd little berg; they filmed An Officer and a Gentleman out there. It would have been the "big city" in Washington except that the rails came and it was on the wrong side of the sound. There's a saying about Port Townsend: "Port Townsend used to be nothing but sailors, indians and assholes and now the indians are all dead and the sailors have all sailed away."

Anyway. It's the kind of place where you could find electric hot rodders in 1995. As you might imagine, that sort of business park has other interesting occupants, like, say, Olympic Carillon.

Yes, they make carillons. Yes, they build them out there. Yes, I got to walk around and talk to the guys that ran the shop - a couple of brothers who, for bizarre reasons, opened a carillon shop on the wrong side of the Sound. It was a hell of a summer. I lived on top of the bathroom in a quanset hut. I had maybe an 8x8 space. I never once heard a carillon chime, which sucked... but they banged on 'em every now and then.

Fast forward fourteen years. Me and my not-yet-wife are clearing stuff and preparing to move down to California. She played oboe; I played oboe. She played oboe well; I didn't. She had an awesome old oboe that she decided she was going to get rid of because if you don't keep up your embouchure you might as well give up. So we took it to the guy her old music teacher recommended - pretty much the premiere oboe dealer in the US who happened to be up in Bellingham where we both did undergrad (me, some; her, all).

And we get there and it's this nice dude and he was looking down his nose at her oboe 'cuz it was a Fox until he played it and then I swear to christ he got all weepy it sounded so good and he was ecstatic to have it he knew exactly the customer for it and isn't this lovely and I saw a picture of a carillon in his office. I inquired.

"Oh, yes, my brother and I build them. Not many people know what they are."

We then had to have a chat about that time we met fourteen years earlier when that weird electric hot rod shop opened up next door.

demure  ·  3370 days ago  ·  link  ·  

woah

elizabeth  ·  3370 days ago  ·  link  ·  

you totally should!

steve  ·  3361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

so cool! I recently toured a new bell tower that had just been installed at a university I attended.

demure  ·  3359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wow! That is a really nice carillon. (whispers look at this! birchbarkcanoe)

birchbarkcanoe  ·  3359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh my goodness that is a really nice carillon.

steve  ·  3359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

it was really beautiful. It's about 6 stories up in a brand new tower on campus. It was super cool. The carillon player was super friendly and even let me strike a few notes. He was prepping for the big ceremonial ribbon cutting. You can see the video screen to his right - the orchestra was going to play on the ground and he had to watch the conductor (with a slight video delay) and try to keep up and play with the orchestra. It was really cool.

user-inactivated  ·  3370 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You should. I'd love to see it.