Instrumental Credits Trivia Quiz

Before any instruments are actually verbally introduced, "Tubular Bells part 1" settles into a slowly varied loop (it begins at at 17:10 minutes in, with the first actual repetition beginning at 17:33). The loop consists of a typical blues chord scheme shortened to 10 bars instead of the usual 12, omitting two bars of the tonic (T-T-S-T-D instead of the full T-T-T-S-T-D). The iteration on which the grand piano actually enters the song is already the seventh, after a subtle build-up.

The instrument actually enters at 19:51 into the song. It introduces a melodic line above the existing rhythm and harmony that will stay with the listener almost until the end.

We're not yet really talking about a grand build-up (this comes later), but the reed and pipe organ replaces the piano at 20:15 in. Unlike many of the later iterations, this one does not keep the previous instrument(s) active.

The third (or, if you want to count the preparatory ones, ninth) round introduces the clear, percussive glockenspiel at 20:38 into the track. Just like the previous two rounds, the instrument plays solo over the bass and rhythm line established by the preparatory iterations.

We're into the second "trilogy" at 21:01 and something changes: No longer is the new instrument playing alone, but the previous round's one is kept, accentuated by the newly introduced bass guitar. This starts to lend some urgency and power to the music, to be built upon as we progress.

The fifth loop at 21:24 adds the "double speed guitar" which is not an actual instrument you could play live - the effect is achieved by recording a normal electric guitar on tape and then playing back that tape at twice the normal speed to increase the pitch.

"Tubular Bells" has actually been performed live twice in 1973, but there is no documentation on how this particular effect was achieved. In fact, the first of the performances introduced the instruments in the wrong order, but it was still a publicly acclaimed success.

In the original recording, Mike Oldfield played almost all the instruments himself and used mixing desks and overdubs to ultimately achieve the sound he wanted.

We're at 21:47 now (still no change in speed, each loop clocking in at just over 23 seconds) and the instrumentation is enriched by the more characteristic "electric guitar" sound you get when a bit of distortion is added to the amplifier. While the announcer ("master of ceremonies") still stays calm about it, this round's instrumentation is adding more power and the song is clearly gaining some sense of impending culmination now.

"Mandolin" is spoken with quite some excitement by Master of Ceremonies Vivian Stanshall (don't get confused by the name - this is a man) as we are nearing the climax of the piece in the seventh announced (thirteenth overall) iteration. An actual mandolin plays the melody in this section, even though it did not appear earlier in the piece - the mandolin sounds throughout the main performance were all provided by a regular guitar recorded on tape and played back at double speed.

In this iteration, the distorted guitars and glockenspiel are not heard (and the double speed guitar is, if present at all, rather subdued), but the clear sound of the mandolin being plucked so frequently over the forte bass guitar still keeps the sense of build-up intact.

The penultimate announcement is special as it does two quite similar instruments at once, both guitars. The build-up reaches a brief plateau with this round, the mandolin still being the most prominent instrument, while the newly added guitars provide a more subtle effect in the tenor range.

They however together foreshadow the titular bells in their sound, so we're ready to go for the big reward.

We're still in the 8th iteration (started at 22:34 in) of the current track, but for the purpose of the quiz, I will already look ahead at the ninth where the titular tubular bells are introduced. Those clear, clanging bells are, while being the final instrument announced, not actually the final voice to be added to the mix. One more addition (which however more maintains the climax than adding to it) is to follow!

I certainly hope that if the intro and artist didn't immediately tell you what song I was referring to, this eliminated any doubt. Tubular bells, when struck with a normal hammer used in playing percussive bells, are actually a rather soft instrument, almost like a celesta, so Mike Oldfield resorted to using an actual claw hammer to get the volume and depth of sound he wanted - ruining the instrument in the process.

For the following sixteenth overall (tenth since the announcements began) iteration of the main theme, a choir without words is added while maintaining the melody, which becomes the dominant feature towards the end of the, already declining, seventeenth round whose second half is already losing the melody that has provided the structure of the piece during this finale. An eighteenth and final round has the remainder of the melody disperse while the choir fades out and leads into a short postlude played by a solo guitar.