The ringing rocks of Kiandra: a musical mystery still not solved | The Canberra Times

Meanwhile, on a recent visit to the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in Cumbria, England, I was surprised to come across a 150-year-old musical instrument made from naturally resonant stones called hornfels, quarried from the hills of the surrounding Lake District. Hornfels are sought after because they provide a superior tone and a longer ringtone than the more commonly used slate. The lithophone (stone xylophone), somewhat similar to the glockenspiel, was created by a team of geologists and music scientists from the University of Leeds and was inspired by a similar, but cruder lithophone made for the artist John Ruskin in 1884.