Retune the oscillators to bell ratios, shorten the high-partial decays, and the same envelope rig turns from piano into a struck church bell.
In the world
Big Ben's bells were cast in the 1850s with deliberate inharmonic profiles; the bell-maker tuned five named partials (hum, prime, tierce, quint, nominal) by shaving metal from the inside.
A bell hit is a piano rig with two changes: retune the oscillators to the inharmonic bell ratios from the bells step, and shorten the high-partial decays even more aggressively. The strike is bright, the tail is a warm, slightly sour drone. Because the partials are not integer multiples, the tail never quite settles into a clean pitch; it shimmers.
This is why you cannot build a convincing bell with a filter sweep. Only additive lets you place partials off the harmonic grid.
Did you know?
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which cast Big Ben and the Liberty Bell, closed in 2017 after 577 years of continuous operation. Their tuning secret: shaving metal from five specific zones inside the bell to independently adjust five named partials.
Explore
A cymatics plate viewed from above fills the 3D scene. Click to strike it and watch sand particles scatter, then settle along the nodal lines where the plate is still. The pattern that forms changes with the partial ratios - adjust them and strike again to see a completely different geometric figure emerge from the same plate.