Product Review

In music, the word encore means “more” as called by an audience at the end of a concert. The Woodstock Encore Collection Chimes are designed to be “more” windchime in every way—more colors, sizes and value. Each windchime is precisely hand-tuned to a 5 note pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale is particularly well-suited to windchimes because all of the notes are harmonious. Any combination of Encore Chimes will always play beautifully together, creating a rich soundscape.

The Encore Collection series includes the Chimes of Mercury, Chimes of Mars, Chimes of Polaris, Chimes of Pluto, Chimes of Earth, Chimes of Saturn, and Chimes of Neptune.

Woodstock Chimes are the original, musically-tuned, high-quality windchimes known worldwide for their superior sound. When listening to a Woodstock Chime, you hear a fine musical instrument played by the wind, perfectly hand-tuned using the ancient system of “just intonation” based on natural harmonics. This means the frequencies at which the different tubes vibrate are related to one another by simple whole-number ratios. Tones that are related in this way produce the most beautiful musical intervals. The sonic effect is exceptionally pure and soothing.

More than 30 years ago, the first Woodstock Chime was created by founder and owner Garry Kvistad from an aluminum lawn chair he found in a landfill. As a professional musician and instrument designer, he was fascinated by the Scales of Olympos, a 7th century pentatonic scale that can’t be played on a modern piano. Garry had the idea to cut and tune 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 bestselling windchimes. Garry and his wife Diane founded Woodstock Percussion, Inc. in 1979 and it remains a family-owned business in New York’s Hudson Valley.