On my other blog, Guitar Licks, I did a post in 2009 about this really interesting church instrument called the Carillon. The post was titled The Carillon at Metro United Church in Toronto. This classic bell based instrument is located at the Metropolitan United Church M.U.C. in downtown Toronto, Ontario. So the story goes like this …

I had been just been at a doctors appointment across the street from the M.U.C. and I was killing some time before I returned for the second half of my visit. It was a hot July afternoon so I decided to sit in a park right beside the church. While sitting having a smoke, I’ve been successfully smoke free for 3 months now, when I heard the sound of bells coming from the bell tower at the church. Not just bells ringing to tell the citizens what time it is but bells that are actually playing multiple notes creating a real song. I thought to myself wouldn’t it be neat to get a closer look at this thing?

Since I had nothing to do and the doors to the church were open, I waltzed in to take a look around. After chattin’ with a women inside, who was handing out pamphlets, I noticed this guy walking down an old staircase. The women then introduced him to me as Gerald Martindale. I told him that am a musician and have a couple guitar blogs that I love to talk about unique instruments to people on. After telling him of what drew me into the M.U.C.,he said he was flattered. Gerald said the belled instrument that I was listening to is called the Carillon and that he was it’s principle player. He then began tell give me a brief history lesson about it.

After a couple minutes into our conversation he offered to take me up the bell tower for a closer look. He said it would take around an hour or so for a full tour. I thought to myself that if I get up there, there’s no way in the world I’d make the rest of my appointment so I had to begrudgingly declined his offer. He then told me I could come back later and make a little video about the Carillon. So we exchanged e-mails so we could arrange a proper time to met again.

Obviously I wanted to head back there but I never had the opportunity to do so. So today while searching a website from a local college, I came across a video that one of their students made about this exact instrument. Now after going through the video, it takes a couple of minutes to get to the actual piece, I thought it was well done so I just thought that I’d do a follow up on my previous post.

Check out this link to Centennial On Demand and proceed to 18:33 on the video counter to see the whole interview. It’s really neat to see all the moving parts, a little history about the Carillon and watch how to play this instrument. I hope that your enjoy it!

Keep on Jammin’