The Chime Master music library is the heart of our products. Decades of arranging and carefully recording each hymn by experienced church bell musicians has resulted in the best available music for automatic ringing.
A dynamic record of how the musician stroked the keyboard as they performed each song is permanently stored in Millennium and Platinum carillons. For each song, appropriate arrangements for specific sizes of bell instruments are stored in permanent memory as virtual piano rolls. These arrangements trigger the playback of individual bell recordings in real time in a similar fashion as an old player piano.
Music is stored in the Six-SS carillon as a media recording called a track. These audio tracks are created using a special studio prototype of the Platinum carillon and a recording computer that captures the performance completely in the digital domain, eliminating the noise and distortion caused by analog converters.
SmartAlmanacTM
SmartAlmanacTM is our unique and proprietary feature that integrates the music library into our ringing systems. Thirty years after Chime Master debuted this feature, we are still the only company to offer true set-it-and-forget-it scheduling. Instead of scheduling specific songs or even seasonal music to play on certain dates, simply indicate at what times during the week you want music to play. The system will choose appropriate music for the current season from then on, every week, every season, every year.
SmartAlmanac's festival database includes either Western Gregorian or Eastern Orthodox holidays that move with Easter.
Music is grouped first into Sacred or Non-Sacred, then into Catholic, Protestant or Ecumenical, then into the appropriate season(s). When programming random selections, the user selects between Sacred and Non-Sacred. If the Marian season is enabled in the almanac setup menu, then Catholic selections play for the Sacred groups. When the Marian season is disabled, Protestant music will play.
Premium Management Suite support software allows you to configure your own personalized random play lists for each season. Simply drag and drop the music you want in the season's list or delete those you do not care to hear.
Catalog of Music
Here are links to PDF file downloads for catalogs of music, hymns and bell ringing for each digital electronic carillon model.
Millennium and Platinum
Six-SS Chime and Harp
- Standard Library - for Catholic and most Lutheran churches
- Protestant Library - for Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches
- General Library - for Courthouses and Universities
Six-SS Cast Bell
- Standard Library - for Catholic and most Lutheran churches
- Protestant Library - for Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches
Essentials carillon
Ethnic Additions
Orthodox churches may or may not wish to mix their music in with the standard library. For this reason, we download a custom Group-9 Almanac to the system prior to shipment. If the customer has the Management Suite, she may further customize this random group. Currently available ethnic Group-9 Almanac files are Spanish, Polish, Greek, Ukrainian and Byzantine.
Ethnic music addendum sheets are shipped with these systems.
Multiple Arrangements
Millennium and Platinum carillons are loaded with up to three arrangements for each selection. With the harp voice turned on, the carillon will always play two part arrangement which can have melodic solos on the harp. When a user selects a preferred bell voice without the harp a special arrangement will be used to play the chime only. This arrangement does not have the harp part in it at all, and may or may not include some harmony bells played on the chime. Selecting a five-octave carillon voice will play a suitable carillon arrangement.
These arrangements are automatically selected based on the user's settings in Seasonal and Voicing Preferences.