- Bells
The bells fill a 60-square-meter area and a total weight of five tons. The heaviest one is 203.6 kilogram and is 1.5 meters tall, while the smallest one is 2.4 kilogram and 20.4 centimeters high. Tests have shown that each bell can produce two different high-pitched notes (a major third and a minor third) depending on where they are struck.
The instrument has a range of five octaves and is one of the earliest instruments with 12 semitones. After 2,500 years in the tomb, the instrument can still play ancient music. The beautiful pitch produced can be modulated, giving some idea of the musical complexity available even in the early times. Acoustic tests have found that the mixture of tin and lead in the bronze instrument fits with modern metallurgy. Even today, making such bells is by no means an easy job, especially the big bells.
The 1.5-meter-high bell would require 136 pottery molds to make a bigger mold, which would be filled with melted bronze water at some 1,000 ℃. The smaller the bell the higher the pitch and volume. Therefore, the chime's effect depends greatly on its size and shape. The bell's shape explains how the chimes can generate two different tones. When the front side is struck, the lateral amplitude is zero, and vice versa. In this way, two tones coexist without interfering with each other.
- Patterns