A cry for help.

Hi all,

I thought I could identify some of the clock tunes but there are a few issues which are making some of the process a bit difficult.

Given that the ringing of each of the bells carries on and reverberates it then makes it difficult to isolate the melody from the sea of sound and then do some sort of music notation to copy the melody.

John's pianist friend has done some sterling work in writing down music notation for the tunes 3, 4, 5 and 6 and I have attempted to also try to identify the melodies. I will be transcribing both her piano notations and my own attempts into Noteworthy Composer (NWC) so our interpretations can also be compared. Then I can save the NWC files as MIDI files which would make it easier for other people to hear the melodies more clearly than trying to listen to the videos with the ringing sounds.

However, I don't have software to convert the MIDI files to ABC Notation and I'm not sure whether there are any free online sites where I can do that. I am not competent at creating ABC Notation, although I could do it very, very slowly. I imagine there are some ABC Notation wizards here at Mudcat, or maybe one of you may have some conversion software.

Another issue with the clock tunes that I have is that the rendition on the clock music mechanism does not seem to match the rhythm or note lengths of the tunes that I know or have heard. If you listen to Tune # 2, identified by the EFDSS as Begone Dull Care you may be able to hear that, well, what I usually refer to as "the lilt" is missing. The notes of the tune match but the usual lilt of the tune is absent. I'm sure there is a proper musical term for this. In transcribing the tune into music notation, there would be few dotted notes and half notes, but mainly just whole notes but if you look at the usual music notation for the tune it isn't just plain whole notes. The transcription on the clock music mechanism is a bit pedestrian compared with the lilt and beauty of the tune more commonly known, in my humble opinion. If you get what I'm trying so blunderingly badly to say.

A tip: when you are listening to the clock tunes on the video, focus on watching the hammers hit the bells so you will *see* the progression of the melody visually. After listening to the slower pre-cleaning versions that John posted earlier I also found it easier to identify the melodies in the post-cleaning videos more easily, and my brain stopped hearing the tinkly sea of sound so much.

At this stage, I haven't finished transcribing all of the melodies into music notation but I'm planning to get stuck into it today and see how far I get.

I'm thinking I could be really really nice to one of the moderators and see if the completed MIDI files can be posted on the Mudcat MIDI page.

The help needed is for other people to listen to those melodies and try to identify the tunes and/or confirm or deny the tune suggestions I offered up earlier.

I'm not fantastic at identifying tunes but I know that a lot of Mudcatters are amazingly knowledgeable about different music and some of you could identify them in an instant if you could hear the melodies more clearly.

I hope. Please!!

Stay tuned to this thread for when I gain a bit more of a foothold on these MIDI files.