Musical instrument
OwnerIsabelle L. Haackinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A bell tower arranged to permit a single person to ring a substantial number of bells as in the playing of a musical selection. The bell tower includes a stand for supporting a plurality of bells suitably to be rung by the selective striking thereof as by a mallet or other ringing element. The instrument includes a control for selectively damping rung bells. The control may be foot pedal operated and may be arranged to damp selected groups of the bells of the tower. The bells may be supported on the tower stand to define octaves corresponding to the notes of a conventional piano keyboard. The respective octaves may be vertically related. The damping control may be biased to a damping disposition and selectively released by the user in the playing of the instrument.
Claims9
A musical instrument comprising:
- a stand;
- flexible means for freely supporting a plurality of bells suitably to be rung by the selective striking thereof with a ringing element;
- means for damping said bells;
- means acting on said flexible means for constraining movement of the bells to dispose the bells to be engaged by the damping means while permitting the bells to be freely hung on said flexible means when the damping means is spaced from the bells;
- and
- control means on said stand for selectively spacing the damping means from the bells to permit undamped ringing of selected bells and damping the rung bells.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.