Tram Bell

How it's made

Source

a streetcar's metal striker hits a mounted bell twice, 0.19-0.34 s apart. Each contact is a 0.3 ms attack and 2.5 ms filtered noise pulse; a quieter 12 ms linkage knock sits below the ring.

Body

a shallow metal bell has modes at 0.73, 1, 1.49, 2.03, 2.72, 3.61 and 4.83 times 890 Hz. Paired modes split by 2-5 Hz model shell asymmetry; both hits excite the same resonating shell.

Envelope

lower modes have 0.52-0.78 s T60; upper modes lose energy in 0.12-0.32 s. The second strike renews the bright clang over the first tail. A final smooth fade ends the short ring cleanly.

Layers

filtered contact noise excites the modal shell, with a restrained direct contact and low-mid linkage knock. No environmental reverb is baked in.

Variation

seeded tuning varies by 0.15 percent and strike timing by 3 ms; the second hit is slightly weaker. Pitch, hardness, spacing and damping distinguish standard, heavy, brisk and muted bells.

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