Product Review

This mysterious and soothing chime plays the ancient Greek pentatonic scale devised by Olympos, Phrygian flutist and lyre player of the seventh century B.C. Olympos is given credit for the introduction of the flute into Greece from Phrygia, thus adding a new instrumental sound to that country. It is said that Olympos was also very inventive with rhythm as well which may just qualify him as the original King of Rhythm and Blues. Because of these contributions, Plutarch, the Greek historian and biographer, named Olympos the father of Greek music. Nearly three thousand years later, the bluesy scale of Olympos, tuned in the pure system of “just intonation,” is still heard today on the Japanese koto and on a Woodstock Chime.Over 30 years ago, Grammy award-winning musician and instrument designer Garry Kvistad created the first Woodstock Chime from an aluminum lawn chair he found in a landfill. Fascinated by the Scale of Olympos, a 7th century pentatonic scale that can’t be played on a modern piano, Garry cut and tuned the lawn chair tubes to the exact frequency of the ancient scale. The resulting Chimes of Olympos was the first Woodstock Chime and is still one of our best selling, musically-tuned windchimes. Garry and his wife Diane founded Woodstock Chimes in 1979 and still develop the chimes today. It remains a family-owned business in New York’s Hudson Valley.