Arranging for the carillon will nearly always involve the reduction or simplification of thick chords and complex harmonies due to the reasons discussed here. In this section, we'll take a look at different techniques to achieve this.

The first step to thinning out your harmony is to see if there are any doubled (or tripled, quadrupled...) notes that you can remove. Consider the following chord:

On the carillon, this thick chord might be used sparingly for emphasis, or in a loud, heavy passage, but in normal writing you would want to reduce it. You could start by removing the doubled, inner C's:

In triads, like this C major chord, you also can typically remove the fifth of the chord. The resulting chord below may seem empty compared to the original, but the complexity and richness of the bells' sound more than compensates for this.

In seventh chords, you can also usually leave out the fifth. Even complex jazz chords can often be reduced to three or four-note chords. Consider the jazz standard "A Foggy Day."

On the piano, this might be played as:

On the carillon, you may want to consider reducing these chords to three or four-note chords. An example is shown below:

Another way to lighten up the texture and achieve better harmonic clarity is to spread your chord tones out horizontally across the measure, rather than striking them simultaneously. This can also allow you to develop rhythmic motives and secondary melodic lines.

The example below shows one way you might apply this technique to the excerpt from "A Foggy Day:"