The bond of true love

Brent Mydland from the Grateful Dead singing his beautiful lullaby to his little girl that he wrote it to. You can click on the image to see the full version. Look at the trust and love in her eyes. I am sure Brent has the same gaze though his eyes are obscured by his mike stand.

Here is a link to a version of his song "I Will Take You Home."

















http://www.archive.org/details/gd88-07-03.sbd.ststephen.3908.sbeok.shnf

You can listen live to either the whole concert or just scroll down to the song and click on it.

A post without pictures!

It has been a bit. Basically I have learned my skill well enough that I am going to begin to market my instruments. Well built and tuned chimes are musical instruments. I have sold a few but I have mostly gifted my chimes while I was learning. I am now going to work on the really hard part, marketing and developing a biz. This part does not come easy. I have been trying to come up with some good names that aren't as out there as FreeMonx. I have come up with: Chason De Murath (songs of Murat in French), Puujana (honoring in Sanskrit) and Stauti (to celebrate in song also in Sanskrit). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

String Instruments pt1

Here a 5 of the 6 string instruments I have made so far. Not too bad for a beginner but I have spent much more time making the chimes. That may change since I have the chime making down to a science/art.

I am out of titles.. deal,pt1

Talk about out there. This thing is from maybe 2004 or 2005. It is a percussion instrument tuned to the period of existence of Jerry Garcia. The tubes are 4" pvc tubing over a 4" sound board. It was over 4 foot long and 2 foot wide. It sounded really great and I had some cool beat tone, theta waves and all sorts of other cool stuff going on with it. I am not much of a percussionist so I ended up giving to a bunch of Mormon hard rocker type of dudes in Denver. I was installing windows at their parents house and they were intrigued. Who could have figured this thing ended up with the Mormon's? Goes to show you just can't ever judge! Ever!!!

More stuff

Pot of gold?

Some out there sound art

Not quite art! Me pretending like I could actually play:)

Another chime

This is a door chime tuned to Om. As the name implies it is meant to be hung on the back of a door and impart good vibes to anyone entering your space.

Beautiful Buck

The buck has been coming around for 3 summers now. Stunning. So strong and good looking.

New chimes pt.2

Two chimes with Lacewood parts for a friend in memory of a dear friend passed.

New Chimes

A harmony set tuned to Om.

Patetrns in Sound

While searching for the photos of the stickball bats and 528 chimes I came across this picture from a science project Liam did a few years ago. It is just salt on a vibrated plate. He used his violin bow to vibrate the plate. The shape kinda looks like a dove.

Stickball Bats

Here are some custom stickball bats I made for the kids, myself, Phil and Ryan. I forgot how much fun stickball was.

528 Chimes

Here is a set I sent to Dr. Len Horowitz. He is leading a very cool global concert on Jun19th-21st with all instruments tuning away from the 440A and into 528C.

Another part of the whole

I am sending out the wedding and soul chimes, pictured below, as special gifts to friends and family it dawned on me that they need to cleansed(with Sage) and chanted upon to totally purify the intent possessed within the chimes. I am going to ask Jeannine if she would do the cleansing for me. She is a yogini with a very beautiful voice and very pure heart.

Soul Chimes

Here are some chimes I built for a friend in honor of his friend's passing. It came to me that before I send the chimes out they need to be cleansed with Sage and chanted upon for purity. They are of Lacewood and Poplar painted purple. I was going to paint these impressively fancy but I passed as the only was inspiration was for simplicity. The color purple reflects the fundamental frequency of the chime.

Wedding Chimes

My brother in law Paul got married in Aug 2007 and I told them I would make them a chime as a gift. I did not have it really figured out back then, so I never built them. To create this set I took Paul and Christy's age from the day they were born until their wedding day. I then summed their ages and built a scale from the frequency representing their union. These chimes represent the harmony that brought them together. They will always have something to reflect upon through good times and tough times. Again I have used the 1-4-5 chord pattern. I will put up some more photos once the sun comes out.

Venus Chimes

Here are 3 of the chimes tuned to Venus. Again the pattern represents harmony with a 1-4-5 chord set up. I used 3/4" tubing for these. The song/tones gave me the " chicken skin, cuz." That is Hawaiian Pidgin for goosebumps. So much so that I had to build a set for myself.

Orchesteral Chime Set.

I am starting work on an 11 chime set tuned to Venus for a friend. This will have tubes representing: bass and rhythm, lots of harmony and some melodies. This should get things moving and a groovin!

Ooooops!

I was wrong in stating that since my parents have both passed I can now use the tunings to heal myself. I am going to build the "Seraphic Chimes" to honor their existence. I am going to build a three chime set of only the one chords for each person. Let the dissonance shine! The reason is that the 2 joined to form a third and together we are One!

My newest chime set

I just ordered some tubing the other day, 48 feet of it. Since my parents have both unbirthed themselves I am going to build a healing set. Though we all strive to do the best for our children we will always fall short and leave them a little scarred. I reflect back on my parents and and look at the short comings that they instilled short comings in me. I see these short comings and try to change these for my kids. The process of evolving souls! I do not fault them for they were doing their best. I am building a 9 chime set. Two in the "Seraphic Tunings" of my parents and the other will be a chime for myself. I am going to sum their ages on the day I was born and use that to represent myself. I haven't run the calculations yet but I am assuming that there will be dissonace amongst the sets (souls) and I will provide the individual consonance by using the I-IV-V pattern of harmony for each person. My one beef with music is the need to have each instrument tuned to one another. My voice is not tuned to 440 A nor is yours and that is the beauty! I will post some more pix when they are complete. Some day I will maybe get around to recording this stuff. But for now you will have to take my word that they sound as they should.

Bill

I make chimes

I started sometime in 2003 or maybe 2004 to make chimes. I can't even remember why anymore. They were all wrong since I was using a formula for organ pipes not struck bells. I kept going and going because it had a metaphysical bent to the journey. I was learning about music and music theory. Sacred Geometry, Feng Shui and much more. I began to put the pieces together and my chimes were getting closer to where they were supposed to be. One day while I was standing out back thinking the vision came to me. I was already aware that period and frequency are inversley related but I realized that I could take any period of time and calculate a frequency for it. The vision I had was that since my Dad (who passed on in 1998) had existed for a definte period of time. I realized I could calculate a frequency from his period of existence and then build a chime in memory of his life. It was a long process of learning to very accuratley estimate the length of tube and the suspension points. I have written a huge spreadsheet program with all sorts of calculations for different scales, chords etc. It was not until the summer of 2008 that I truly grasped the concept of micro tonal tuning. This was needed because the tones are almost always not that of the common 440 A concert tuning of which most normal chimes are tuned to. My "Masterpiece" was the "Uncle Jerry" chime you can see below. I had long used Jerry Garcia instead of my Dad. This was because Garcia's life finished close to an "E" in standard tuning and my Dad was between a "B flat and an A" and I didn't have the skills back then so I more often perfected my skills with Uncle Jerry. Once I tuned and put together the Uncle Jerry chime and listened to it I almost cried. It was first strung up on wood parts painted green I think. Sometime later I thought that this chime needs to go somewhere special. I contacted the Rex Foundation, which was founded as a charity by the Grateful Dead. I explained the whole thing to Sandy Sohcott the director of the foundation and she graciously accepted the gift. Of course I couldn't just send along my Masterpiece in a cardboard box so I crafted a special storage box to ship it in. It was kinda sad sending it along after so many years of work but it is where it is supposed to be. I have not made an Uncle Jerry chime since. I have been mostly using Chakra tunings for my chimes these days. Though I am probably going to make a IV and V chord for the Uncle Jerry chime and send them along to Rex. I have sold a few chimes over the years but I always held back because I knew I didn't know enough and that there was more to learn. I now feel that it is time to start sharing the beauty and offering my chimes for sale. This is a whole different game than the creating and I am trying to learn the skills to market and sell.

Thanks for taking the time to visit this blog!

Sincerely,

Bill

Smiley Chime

This chime is the 4th chime I have made in my Crown Chakra set. It is for some melody above the 1" tube chimes in the set. I got the tubes from cutting up an old store bought chime. The bumble bee look is because I was low on paints and just decided on yellow. Jeannine was the one who pointed out to me it looked like a bumble bee.

1st inversion IV chord Navel Chakra

This is a 3 tube chime "triad". This is a IV chord for my Navel Chakra set. Instead of the tones being 1-3-5 for the triad this one is 3-5-1 with the 3rd being the lowest tone.

Om Chime Suspended IV chord

This is a chime I made for Jeannine. The root tone is Om and the chord is a suspended 4th chord. The intervals being 1-4-5-8. These intervals are very important to the Old Catholic Church, Feng Shui, Pythagorean Music and the Human ear / soul.

New stuff

I have some cool new chimes which I will put up photos of shortly. I have this master set of Crown Chakra chimes I have been working on for a while. I have the I-IV-V chords and I just added a I chord an octave above for some highlighted melodies. I am going to add some fatter tubes an octave below in the root - 5 combo and some really deep root tones 2 octaves below the chords. My space will be humming.

I just thought about building a set like this for the Vietnam War Dead. Summing the lives of all who passed and building about a dozen different chimes to play a song of their lives!

Very Cool.

This chime was built for Paloma's 1st grade class. I summed the ages of all 20 students on the 1st day of class and their teachers age. I had each kid paint a disc however they wanted to represent themselves and put it all together. The overall length of the chime was longer than all but 1 kid!

And a few more...

Oh, wait I found more!

Last one for now?

This is one of the individual chimes from the below mentioned chakra set. The top piece is made out of Lacewood.

Just a few more for now.

This is an artsy photo of a set of 3 chimes based on the Crown Chakra. Each chime contains the Root, 3rd, 5th, Octave pattern. The chimes represent the One Chord, the Four Chord and the Five Chord. This is a very common musical progression and the chimes play harmony and melody. It just blows me away how cool the music is. Normal wind chimes based on melody I usually find pretty annoying most of the time. These chimes I can sit and listen to for hours.

And then....even more

Paloma painted the wood parts for this chime.

More Zen Chimes.

A U.S Constitution chime. Built to honor the founding of the country. I built two of these. One for my Mom and one I sent to my friend Charles.

More Zen Chimes

A Zen Chime I built for my Mom.

Running out of titles

Another version of the Seraphic Harmony chimes using 1" tubing.

And more chimes......

An artsy Uncle Jerry tubular bell.

Chimes part something...

This is a custom box I built to store the Uncle Jerry chime.

Chimes part 8

A chime set built to honor the life of Jerry Garcia. This chime is based on harmony. That is why I have chosen only 4 tubes. The tones are the Root, 3rd, 5th and Octave. This was sent as a gift to the Rex Foundation in San Francisco.

Chimes part 7

A tubular bell tuned to Om. This was a gift to Jeannine's original Yoga instructor.

Chimes part 6

A Zen Chime in honor of Jeannine and Me.

Chimes part 5

Another Zen Chime using the Vesci Pisce with "legs".

Chimes part 4

Another Zen Chime built for a friends father.