The Union Central Chimes--The Sound of Christmas (1961)

 

It was inevitable--a chimes LP, here at MY(P)WHAE.  Every Christmas blogger ends up in this spot.  It is fate.  It is preordained, I think the word is.  But this thrift gift from Diane has an awesome cover, it has an Ohio connection--Cincinnati, in the general area from which my foster father hailed--and bell chimes are actually pretty interesting, even if they're perhaps not all-day-playlist material.  Most of us associate the sound of these bells with the holiday, so there's instant holiday ambiance.  We had a Catholic school half a block from our Toledo home, so I grew up hearing timed chimes.  ("Timed Chimes" sounds like the name of a modern rock band.)

I should also note that, when John's family resided in New Concord, Ohio, their plumber was none other than John Glenn's father.  True.

Chimes.  Well, let's start with Britannica's handy definition of "bell chime":

"Set of stationary bells tuned in a musical series, traditionally in diatonic sequence (seven-note scale) plus a few accidentals (sharps and flats)."

The Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati, Ohio must have had one impressive collection of bells, given the variety of keys (or scales) heard on this LP, and given the fact that the opening track, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, begins with no fewer than four half steps.  I wonder how the bells are arrayed?  I Google-searched, but found no images of the tower interior.

Chimes have a strike tone, which is the melody note we hear.  Then there are a bunch of overtones, which I can't make out so well on a 1961 mono recording, as opposed to hearing bells in person--in which case, I was trained to hear overtones (3rds, 5ths, octave, etc.).  What I can hear is a lower, parallel Major 6th.  The effect is kind of spooky, since constant parallel intervals sound weird in music.  A Major 6th is a pleasant-sounding interval, but there's a problem--the lower "shadow" melody is, ostensibly at least, in B Major, and there are points at which non-diatonic notes happen--C, D and G natural, for example.  Our ears are hearing B Major, with a number of wrong notes tossed in.  I hope that explanation made sense.  I'm not sure it did.

The bells sound gorgeous, and they're beautifully tuned, and if your ears aren't as distracted as mine by the weird-sounding tone happening under the strike tone, this should be an enjoyable listen.  I read that bells can be programmed, essentially, in a piano-roll fashion, which would eliminate the need for a live performer at a keyboard or at wooden levers to operate each bell.  It would help with timing the chimes, too.  Anyway, some of the tracks have an organ added, which seems to be the common Christmas thing--organ and bells.  But at times it seems more like bells vs. organ, as the bells plow ahead of the organ in tempo--so I wonder if a live organist was playing along with programmed melodies.  It's also possible there were two live performers, each unable to hear the other, since the organist would have had to be isolated in a booth or another room--things had to be separately miked, since the bells would have obliterated the organ sound.  I wish the LP notes would have gone into some detail.  A simpler solution, of course, would have been double-tracking, with the organist playing along with the prerecorded chimes in a studio.

I learned a lot about bell towers in the quick studying I had to do for this post.  Fascinating stuff.  Ignore the non-diatonic lower tone (if you don't detect it, don't worry about it!), and put this on for maximum holiday atmosphere.  I'd love to hear these in person, because these clearly are (or were) superbly fashioned bells, and because the full overtone experience is always cool.  And "full overtone experience" (in quotes) brings up two matches on Google.  I just added a third (once Google catches it).

And, again--that cover is just too cool.  Thanks, Diane!

Note: Side 1, track 4 is a label typo--it's actually God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, a carol typically punctuated incorrectly as God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.

DOWNLOAD: Union Central Chimes--The Sound of Christmas (1961)

Lee