A recent comment from a tester prompted us to write up this application note. WinChime has long had the capability to use any instrument defined in the MIDI sound bank, not just the ones listed in the Instrument drop-down list. This is even documented in the help file… but it’s a little hard to find unless you use the context help feature of Windows, which

WinChime Help has a table of MIDI instruments, in the table of contents at Operations-> MIDI Instruments. (The table is included below). As an example, take Kalimba, with number 109. Subtract 1 to get 108. (Why subtract one? It’s a long story. Just trust me on this.) Enter that number into the edit-box portion of the WinChime main windows Instrument combo-box.

Try playing and see how it sounds. Now try entering other random numbers between 0 and 127. Instruments with a distinct attack and slow decay, such as Tubular Bells, make the best traditional wind-chime sounds, but on some days you might just need “Voice Oohs”, number 54.

Related Posts:

Installing WinChime on Ubuntu Linux
WinChime RingTone: Android

Stanford physicist Matt Bellis and developers attending Science Hack Day SF have created a program to render subatomic particle collisions as musical notes. Particle parameters, such as energy or angle, could be mapped onto volume or pitch of a note.

Read the Article in Symmetry Breaking magazine or download the software.

from Cloud chamber photo/Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/User:Deer*lake

Related posts:

• Smart Wind Chimes
• Intriguing wind chime application: GPS chimes

This has been making the rounds of the blogs lately.

What MIDI instrument selected in WinChime gives  a similar sound?

I recently toured Arcosanti, a futuristic-looking experimental community north of Phoenix Arizona, designed by Paolo Soleri and gradually, ever so slowly, being constructed by residents, currently numbering approximately 100.

Community artisans generate income that help fund ongoing operations and construction by creating and selling sand-cast bronze wind bells.

Patterns drawn in sand before the metal pour allow each chime sculpture to be unique.

Ceramic chimes are also created here. This is another material amenable to creating one-of-a-kind artifacts.

Consider shopping for wind bells, or experience the community.

Having recently acquired a Samsung Intercept cell phone running Android 2.2.2 (Froyo), we wanted to add a soothing WinChime ringtone, at no charge if possible. Luckily for us, Android plays MIDI files natively and (at least for this handset) allows MIDI as ring tones, so the procedure is straight-forward.

First we use the WinChime menu “File-> Save Midi File As…” feature to generate a MIDI file of sufficient length; 100 notes are more than plenty. In the screenshot below, we are running WinChime under Ubuntu+Wine to test out this function under Linux, but you can run under Windows just as easily.

The file minor.mid is available to download and test.

Now e-mail the resulting MIDI file to your phone. Or alternatively, connect your phone to a USB port, slide down the notification bar, and select “USB connected” to make Android phone external storage visible to your computer as a flash drive.

For this example we e-mail the file to ourselves and use Gmail app on the Android phone to read.

Click “Download” or “Preview” to start the Media Player.

Press the “Menu” button and select “Use as ringtone“. Now call yourself and relax to the soothing sounds of WinChime!

Related Articles:

• WinChime RingTone: Motorola/Tracfone v176
• WinChime RingTone: Uniden ELX500
• WinChime RingTone: Motorola/Tracfone W370
• Talk Like a Pirate: WinChime Ringtone: Motorola/Tracfone v176

Following the procedure described in the article Installing RecAll-PRO and RecAll on Ubuntu Linux, we need to add some additional steps to enable WinChime to function under Linux. The standard Ubuntu distribution does not seem to include a MIDI synthesizer daemon, necessary for rendering WinChime’s sounds. We follow the procedure described here to install Timidity++ and configure it. For WinChime, the freepats samples sounds fine, so we did not bother with eawpatches. If we do everything right, WinChime should play correctly.

We first install Timidity using Synaptic Package Manager. Select “timidity“, and “timidity daemon” if available.

Start a terminal window and enter:

timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os1l -s 44100

and start WinChime. When you click the Play button you should hear chimes.

Now we need to configure timidity to start at boot. Googling older versions of timidity gives hints of a script installed in the /etc/init.d directory to do this, but I do not see one on the current timidity package.

(Aside: on a version of Ubuntu previous to 11.10, after using the installation instructions linked to above, the timidity daemon started at boot. However, in research for this article we uninstalled and installed timidity and found the timidity daemon no longer started at boot. If the daemon auto-starts for you, then ignore the rest of this application note.)

Perhaps not the standard “Linux way” of starting a timidity daemon, but I found this works for me: Launch “Startup Applications” and click the “Add” button. Enter as shown:

Now when I boot Ubuntu, the timidity daemon runs and WinChime works!

fin

Lufdesign presents the design concept of a wind-bell that swings to sound (instead of electronic reproduction) when a message is received. The chime body and pendulum may display message content and name of sender.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzJGTYgZGJE] [video link]

[kudos Gizmodo]

Wind chimes are one nature-powered music device, but here is another: a solar thermal organ.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv0ulNLRkWM [video link]

Parabolic reflectors power thermoacoustic variable-pitch pipe resonators. In another video the creator describes how the sun can cast shadows on arrays of thermal organs, changing sound as the sun moves.

[kudos Make:]

Oddstrument Collection is having a contest for garden musical instruments:

Things like wind chimes, outdoor gongs, bells, fountains, musical sculptures, “wind banjos”, etc. Think solar, wind, water powered and beyond.

[via :Make]

Related posts: Chime Variations, Building Wind Chimes

Ranjit describes a sound sculpture using strings instead of chimes. [Video link] (hat tip Make)

Furin are glass wind chimes, a sound of summer in Japan. PingMag interviews furin craftsman Yoshiharu Shinohara, with marvelous photos. (kudos Dinosaurs and Robots)