The partials in a bell tone are, in general, not harmonically related. But the spectrum of a bell tone is made up of discrete partials and is not the continuous spectrum we associate with white noise. Only a few specially shaped structures have normal modes with haromonically related resonant frequencies. When any of the infinite variety of other structures are excited into vibration by an impulse, the tones will sound belt-like if the decay rates of the various partials are relatively slow. Only the bells designed for playing music in harmony, such as cast carillon bells and the hand bells used by bell choirs, have standarized relationships between the partials. Tapes will be played demonstrating the tone of cast bell carillons and also synthetic tones in which the partials are stretched from the harmonic relationship by a factor ns, where n is the harmonic number, or shifted arithmetically by adding or subtracting a constant number from the frequency of each partial. As the frequencies of the partials are changed from the simple harmonic relationship the tones become more bell-like.