What do sleigh bells sound like

They were installed in the lavish theater organs used to accompany silent movies during their short lifetime before the "talkies" took over. Silent movies were popular in the U. The end of the silent movie era was heralded in , when "The Jazz Singer", the first talking motion picture, was released. The production of theater organs stopped during the Great Depression, which started in October and lasted through the early s.

Today, a number of theater organs exist in good working order scattered throughout the U. Credit: I am grateful to physicist Dr.

Al Sefl for educating me about tuned sleigh bells in theater organs. He is an expert at restoring theater organs and restoring their tuned sleigh bell sets. If you jingle a dozen or so antique horse bells, the pitch main musical note and timbre quality of the sound will vary, sometimes by quite a bit, even though the bells may all have the same diameter and design and are all from the same manufacturer.

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These cookies do not store any personal information. In old Pagan beliefs, jingle bells are used to ward off bad luck, diseases, and evil spirits.

Today, some motorcyclists strap small bells to their handlebars to ward off road demons. Headline image credit: Sleigh Bells. Photo by Richard Wheeler. Our Privacy Policy sets out how Oxford University Press handles your personal information, and your rights to object to your personal information being used for marketing to you or being processed as part of our business activities. We will only use your personal information to register you for OUPblog articles.

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