Temple Bell

How it's made

Source

a large bronze temple bell hit once on its sound bow by a heavy wooden log. The strike is a soft 5–20 ms low-passed noise burst plus a short sub-bass thud of the log hitting the thick wall.

Body

the shell rings in inharmonic modes relative to the strike note: hum 0.5, prime 1, minor-third tierce 1.2, quint 1.5, nominal 2, then 2.5, 3, 4.2 and 5.4. The deep hum and prime carry the energy and ring for many seconds (T60 up to ~7 s); upper partials die in a fraction of that, so the strike is bright and the tail is a dark, pure drone.

Beating

the cast shell is never perfectly round, so every partial is a pair of modes a fraction of a hertz apart; the tail pulses slowly, faster for higher partials (`beating`).

Envelope

near-instant onset, a fast initial drop as the upper partials leave, then a very long exponential tail of the lowest partials, closed by a gentle fade at the end of the render.

Variation

`rng` mistunes each partial by up to ±0.3 % and varies the strike noise; presets change size, striker hardness and how much of the upper spectrum survives.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.