Ambrose Li

Toronto Old City Hall chimes

I first noticed a month ago, on June 5, that our Old City Hall strikes ting-tang quarters. At that time I jotted down

toronto old city hall uses ting-tang quarters
it went like \absolute {\tempo 4=60 c''2 g c'' g'} and i checked the time and it was 13:30

I captured an incomplete recording last week and checked the audio today. The melody is significantly slower than 60 bpm, and the actual notes in the ting-tang are A4 and E4, each note spaced approximately 2.5 seconds apart; hour strikes are E3, spaced approximately 5 seconds apart. The first hour strike is struck about 9 seconds after the last note in the fourth quarter is struck.

This means the three o’clock chimes at Old City Hall actually sound more like

\absolute { \tempo 4=24
            \repeat volta 4 { a'4 e' }
            r1 \repeat volta 3 { e2 } }

Everything is approximate because, I suppose, you can’t really predict when the bells are physically struck.