I did an internship in a tiny town in WA state one summer and would occasionally hear pealing from the warehouse next door. Wander over one day and they're legit-no-shit carillon makers. I asked what the odds were of ending up next to a carillon shop and they said "well, there are only a couple on the planet..." Fast forward fifteen years and we're selling my wife's oboe to an instrument broker in a different tiny town in WA state. The broker and I keep looking at each other and finally I say "I think I know you from somewhere" and he says "not unless you're in the carillon business." The New Zealand bells in the article? They were making 'em while I was there, I think. The timing is right and I didn't get the sense that they moved a lot of product. Hell of a thing to hear without context.
Dang, is there some obscure world that you haven't at least glimpsed into? I looked into Olympic Carillon a bit since I hadn't heard of them before. Usually when talking about carillons one talks about the foundry that made the bells--which OC doesn't do. But still, the rest of the parts of building a carillon that aren't about casting tons of metal are also extremely important to the overall character of an instrument like that. Things like positioning of the treble bells, for example, which are several orders of magnitude (!) smaller than the largest bass bells, can have a large effect on how the instrument sounds to folks listening on the ground. Before this trip, I'll have played carillons with bells cast by Gillett and Johnston, Taylor, and Paccard. After this trip, I'll be adding Hemony, Eijsbouts, de Haze, and Petit & Fritsen, with the oldest bells being Hemony bells from 1651! edit: Holy shit Olympic Carillon did a renovation of the carillon at Riverside Church in New York City. Riverside's carillon has the heaviest tuned bell in the world as its bourdon (nearly 41,000 lbs)
Let's keep our eye on the ball here: I've talked to people who have built carillons. Twice. You've got a hitlist. ;-) Any chance you could record some of this? 'cuz that would be amazing to hear. Not as amazing as hearing it in person for painfully obvious acoustical reasons but still... Damn - anyone ever done a surround or ambisonic recording of a carillon?
PZM means "Pressure Zone Microphone"(microphone - yeah). Their pattern is "everything" and they only work on a boundary. If you wanted to hear what the carillon sounds like inside the carillon that's the way to go. If you wanted to get the sound inside where you play it, that's a great way to do it. Generally you want to get the sound of the acoustic space where people are hearing the performance. With the massive church organs, the answer is obviously "inside the church." But hey. Take what you can get.
I'll do my best when I'm abroad--those recordings will probably be mediocre. Hopefully soon I have some nice recordings from my home tower. We've got a mic (maybe two, i.e. stereo? not sure) in the belfry, positioned to get higher quality recordings. It'd be dope to do a surround recording. But we have a small budget.