Carillon Picnic

14/12/2023

Sorry about the lack of updates. Due to health issues I haven't had time to plan so will need to cancel the event this time around and have it again the following year. I'm keen to try and get more involvement in the event from schools, community groups, and individuals. Also the music adapters required to connect to the carillon are now with the council along with the usage instructions for if anyone else wants to utilize the carillon in the meantime, e.g someone could have a wedding up on Marsland hill with wedding music played on the carillon. I'm happy to help anyone wanting to use the adapters.

14/01/2023

A big thanks to everyone for supporting this project. It was a good learning experience and will be improved next year, e.g a better announcement system and more music. But I'm happy with how it turned out and people gave positive feedback. If you have any feedback either positive or negative then feel free to post it here so things can be improved. It would have been good to have more submitted music but I was wondering if the instructions need to be made clearer or more ways to submit music??. I've had a guy who has kindly offered to come on board to help with the next event. So I was thinking me and him could work on it together along with the Summer Scene team, also with the possibility of having the Huatoki Plaza food market up there, being that it's also intended to be a picnic. So far the options for music are either playing live on the keyboard, pre-recording on the keyboard, downloading pre-existing MIDI files, creating MIDI files by drawing lines to represent the note timings and pitch; or using a program which allows you to create music by placing the musical notes on the staffs, just like drawing sheet music.

20/12/2022

The Kibby carillon was kindly donated to New Plymouth by George Kibby in 1971 in memory of his wife Mabel. As far as I know we only have three carillons in New Zealand. This carillon has 37 bells and can play any musical notes from C3 to C6. I bought some adapters for the carillon meaning it can now be played from phones and computers, either wired or wirelessly, and can use a keyboard or premade MIDI files. The MIDI format is a well known music standard which has been around for many years. It's like the digital version of sheet music, so unlike an audio file, it doesn't have any sound, just musical instructions that can be played on many different devices. These musical instructions get processed in the carillon control room and ring the corresponding bells. There is some software that attempts to convert audio to MIDI but the results can be quite unpredictable. If you struggle with the instructions in my post about how you can go to a website to create a MIDI file to be played at the Carillon Picnic events, then you could email me a recording of you humming a tune and I'll try to convert it manually for you. Though since I'd have to enter one note at a time, it would be a lengthy process and I couldn't guarantee I'd have time to recreate all the submitted audio recordings. It's also possible to prerecord a MIDI file using a keyboard which I have available to use if needed, or you could simply play the keyboard live at the event. Please get in contact if you want help with any of those three methods or have questions about the events.

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14/12/2022

Also wanted to thank The MOST FM for letting me do a radio interview and Bryan Vickery Media Taranaki for a Facebook interview. Any promotion for this free community event is much appreciated and will hopefully lead to some music submissions.

02/12/2022

A big thanks to Access Radio Taranaki 104.4 FM who have helped me today with setting up a radio ad for the event.

28/11/2022

At 11 AM on the 14th of January 2023, Carillon Picnic will be having its first ever event up Pūkākā / Marsland Hill in Ngāmotu / New Plymouth. This will be a free community picnic playing music submitted by the public on the Kibby carillon and is planned to be a yearly event held on the second weekend of each January. The details of how to create and submit the music are pinned on the page (https://www.facebook.com/carillon.picnic) but there are listed contact details for if anyone requires more help. Depending on how many tunes are submitted, the event is estimated to go for approximately two hours. For pedestrian access, please use the signposted paved walkway which starts from the corner of Fulford street and Robe street. The walkway should also be suitable for wheelchairs, though is quite narrow and steep. Please note that there will be no toilets at the venue. For the enjoyment of others, please keep the event free of smoke, drugs, and alcohol. If the weather is inclement then the event will be postponed to the next day (Sunday) at the same time, with updates being posted on the page. Though there won't be any parking management in place, it would be appreciated if the top parking could be saved for disabled parking. There also won't be bins provided and there's only a few public bins already at the venue, so please take your rubbish home with you. People are also invited to play a live performance on the carillon, though at this stage it would need to be on a 25 key keyboard. If you're keen to perform live then please get in contact prior to the event.

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19/11/2022

Submissions are now open for music to be played on the Kibby carillon at the community picnic. Please follow these steps to create and submit your music:
1) In the web browser on a computer go to https://signal.vercel.app/ and click on the 'Launch' button. Please note that this event has no association with this website and just uses it as a platform for the music creation.
2) Click where it says 'Acoustic Grand Piano' and a popup box will appear.
3) Click 'Chromatic Percussion' in the 'Categories' list and then 'Tubular Bells' in the 'Instruments' list.
4) Click the 'Ok' button to confirm.
5) You can then click anywhere in the grid to place a note, or right click to remove a note.
6) The higher up the grid, the higher the note, and the further right along the grid, the longer the delay before that note will be played.
7) Try placing some notes and then click the play button (The triangle at the bottom of the screen.) to hear how it sounds.
8 ) To stop it from playing again, just click the stop button (The square at the bottom of the screen.).
9) While it's playing you'll see a red line to indicate the current playing position and you can change this by clicking along the timeline (Looks like a ruler above the grid.).
10) Clicking stop will take the play position back to the start.
11) Another way to delete notes is to hold down the right mouse button while dragging it over notes.
12) On the far right of the screen you'll have a scroll bar which you can click and drag to access the higher and lower notes.
13) On the far left you'll notice that some of the piano keys have a 'C' and a number.
14) The number is the octave and the 'C' is the position of the C note in that octave.
15) Starting with C and heading upwards, the white keys are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.
16) The black keys are the sharp notes of the white key below them, e.g If going up from C3 to the second black key, it would be D sharp in the 3rd octave (D3 #).
17) Being that the carillon only has 37 bells, you can't use any notes below C3 or above C6 in your music, as no bells will ring outside that range.
18) As of current, the bells C3 #, D3 #, A4 #, and E5, are all faulty so won't be able to be used in your music this time, but will hopefully be fixed in time for the following event.
19) For this event, please keep your music to 4 minutes or less.
20) You can save your music at anytime and come back to it later using the save and open commands from the file menu.
21) Once you've finished creating your music you can email the saved MIDI file to [email protected] for review. For announcement purposes; please include a name for the tune, your nickname to be known as, and your age group (Under 10, 10-20, or over 20.).
22) The next Carillon Picnic will be at 11 AM on Saturday the 14th of January 2023.
23) All music must be your own non copyright creations and the cutoff date for submissions is Saturday the 7th of January 2023.
24) If you need any help then feel free to ask either through facebook or email, though facebook messages are the preferred method of contact.

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