How to tune windchimes???

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My mom has always loved wind chimes, and when I was younger and dumber I thought it would be cool to make her a monster set of them one year. I set out to the hardware store and basically picked out the biggest copper pipe they had and had them cut me 6 or 8 sections in intervals to get different lengths then spent forever working to get these things mounted up and strung. They look amazing, but as I learned, they sound like crap. So here I am, quite a bit older and hopefully a little less dumb but I thought it would be cool to try and salvage them if at all possible and make them actually sound as good as they look. So how the heck does a guy go about tuning wind chimes to actually sound good?
 

OkieJoe72

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Here’s what looks to be a very good guide, though I couldn’t tell you how well the described methods work ;)

https://windchimecharms.com/tune-wind-chimes/
Pretty good article. One modification that I would suggest is to use an analog instrument tuner in place of the tuning fork. If you don’t have a good “ear” for music, an instrument tuner will be easier to use. You could also play around with different chords. For example, if you wanted an “A” chord, you could tune the chimes to any combination of A, D, or E notes. Analog tuners are pretty inexpensive ($20 or so).
 

dlbleak

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Interesting. I’m not a fan of wind chimes probably because some of them sound like crap. When I was a kid, my room was at the corner of the house which was near the neighbors patio. I had to listen to those dang things all night sometimes.
now that I’m a little older, I suppose I could appreciate a tuned chime. So, thinking outloud here. If you had one perfectly tuned pipe, would doubling the length or cutting the length in half play the same note in a different octave?
 

turkeyrun

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Interesting. I’m not a fan of wind chimes probably because some of them sound like crap. When I was a kid, my room was at the corner of the house which was near the neighbors patio. I had to listen to those dang things all night sometimes.
now that I’m a little older, I suppose I could appreciate a tuned chime. So, thinking outloud here. If you had one perfectly tuned pipe, would doubling the length or cutting the length in half play the same note in a different octave?

Good question.

Answer is NO

The analog tuner is the way to go.
Had 1 in the shop, when I was doing calibration, in Houston. Had a buddy build a set for his muffler shop, using muffler pipe. Longest was 8'. Got them tuned and had a bass windchime. Sounded amazing.
 

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