Imagine you have a three octave carillon, in a nice solid 100ft tower in a beautiful spacious park in a wonderful country city. It's been there since the Great Depression, but never had a manual clavier. Easy, you say, buy a three octave clavier and wire her up pronto!
But should we assume it will always be a three octave carillon? There's plenty of room for more bells (the frame actually has the holes drilled for two of them!). With such a narrow range, shouldn't we leave some room for growth?
The original pneumatic keyboard ran three octaves from C to C, but the bells sound D to D, i.e. it transposes up a full tone. Two bells are "missing", the low Eb and the low F (C# and Eb in keyboard terms). My first impression of hearing the bells (playing under bongatron controller) was that the pitch of all the tunes played seemed high. There could be a number of reasons for that. I'm used to a carillon that transposes downwards by a semitone. Also the external clappers that the bongatron uses bring out the worst in the bells - clashing high harmonics the bell tuner never expected us to hear. Finally, the arrangements used by the bongatron are not necessarily ones you would use if playing manually. Still, it all prompts me to think a future option should be bringing down the system to non-transposing. As they have already used the carillon with orchestra, and I expect they will again, non-transposing would simplify life too.
But, apart from the topic of transposition, what other allowances for the future should we make? Seemed to me a four octave range, C to C, would lift the instrument into a different league. It would also bring it closer to the other carillons in Australia, which are both 4 and a half octaves. With those instruments only 3 to 5 hours away by car, I'd expect considerable interchange.
Starting at low C would require two more low bells (C and F), or three or four if we wished to plug the gaps. The rest of the expansion would be in the treble, so not too horrendously expensive. Interestingly, although the keyboard was three octave, the pneumatic motor box which originally pulled the clappers had room for 48 motor units. (An amazing thing - the motors are bellows! Am I ever thankful I don't have to maintain that!)
So, what would you do?
Terry