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Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to make noise from time to time.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to popular everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera according to Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.

Perhaps the most well-known unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is responsible for the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.

Nonetheless, it should be noted that musical instruments already are present which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Without a doubt, one such device, a mark tree, is also often known as a chime tree or a pair of bar chimes.
It is performed by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, typically made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and fitted in pitch order.

Equivalent instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are generally thought of as percussion instruments, generally used by musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and thus are capable of melodies.
But these are usually very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is created by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the famous children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells throughout part of its ending credits.