About

In my work as a film composer, I realized I often wanted the sound of a celesta, keyboard glockespiel, or other keyboard bell chime instrument. A full size celesta isn’t easy to come by, and keyboard glockenspiels are antique, rare, and clunky when you find one. The other option is to use a sample based plugin instrument. There are several wonderful ones available, but even the best aren’t as inspiring as an acoustic instrument, and lack the organic response of actual chimes played in a room. The rich harmonic content of a bell chime responds interestingly to different mic techniques not available with a sampled instrument. 

With this in mind, I set out to build an instrument I could use for projects in my small studio. I hacked up toy pianos, researched vintage instruments, experimented some more, and ended up with the Celette. It’s voice is sweeter than a glockenspiel with a more delicate attack.  

Celette is designed to encourage experiments in the studio. The source of it’s tone is round titanium aluminum rods hand cut and tuned to pitch. These rods are mounted at their null nodes to ported blocks, and each block is mounted individually to a multi-chambered resonator harp. The port in each block functions as the neck of a helmholtz resonator when paired with the chamber, adding depth and focus to the sound. Since each is individually mounted, it is possible to easily change the position of each chime on the harp. As such, you can rearrange notes or transpose the instrument however you’d like. Randomly moving chimes to other octaves is particularly fun. The entire harp can likewise be removed from the keyboard cabinet, and placed on a tabletop to be played with mallets, or used in whatever experiments you might have up your sleeve. 

Celette is also at home as an educational instrument in classrooms or as an upgrade to a traditional toy piano.