We must have some others out there, and this forum is a ghost... forum.
So are there any? I myself ring tower bells... although only call changes not methods.
*hopes hes not alone in this thread*

I am...sort of (I never go to practices, just ring if i'm needed) My limit for tower bells is ringing the treble for plain hunt

We also ring carols on handbells at christmas, which is fun.

*Plug* Forums handbell day is some time late next summer *Plug*

plain hunting the treble and tenor is easy (in theory...)
Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, normal, slow slow slow slow slow slow slow normal.

I thought you said you didn't do methods

Does bell ringing come under percussion?

Why shouldnt it?




I know.
Plain hunt isnt a method, its a principle as every bell does the same pattern.

OK

Seeing as I'm going to be handbell ringing this summer,

a) is it straightforward?

b) does it require huge dollops of co-ordination?

c) are there any terms/techniques unique to handbell ringing that I may need to know about?





I honestly don't know Carol. I guess this is probably the best forum for this thread!

Sarah might work you hard, and give you some obscure thing such as April day which about 3 people have heard of. But thats unlikely.

Youll probably be given sheet music.
and i think i ordered Bach Toccata & Fugue in D Minor for handbells last week.
I can't remember whether i ordered it or not lol.

a) yes if you can read music to a very basic level,so you can get the rhythms right.

b) not really. If you can play an instrument that has two hands doing different things, it should be a doddle.

c) no

I'd have said that bells definitely counted as percussion instruments.

who are your bells made by Sarah?

So pretty much anyone can at least have a go then. Great!

did you look at the pictures of those handbells i sent you barry

yes...

Fancy that then?

Yup. I've only seen one person who couldn't play the handbells. He was tone deaf, couldn't read music and had zero coordination skills.

H_C, I have no idea who made the bells.

erm...



Well, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you're going to make all of us bell ringers do in August!

dont ring infront of a mirror then sarah..

Are your bells like these?

Thats how there rung in the pic....

How easy (or not) is it to ring church bells?

i find it really easy, all it really requires is a good ear. you dont really even need tobe able to see.
One of the teachers at my tower was telling me howhe taught a blind man, and when he would ring, he would slowly walk around the rope, meaning everyone else would lose there place, because they couldnt see his rope!

Its quite easy when you get the hang of it. I love it, the best bit is when the heaviest bell - the tenor - is down ( you then have to increasingly pull it harder and slower to get it to ring full circle) because you can stand on a box or something, grab the rope, and jump off it - you get pulled about 6 feet up in the air!
Its so fun! and theres no danger behind it, because the bell wont go all the way up , it hardly moves.
however - DON'T GO AND DO THIS IF YOU ARENT A RINGER! if you do this on a bell which is up, you WILL be in hospitol for a while.

The bells in Utrecht's Dome were playing Haydn's Sonata in F (Hob XV!/23) yesterday! (They have a Carillon keyboard. It is the same Basic layout as a piano or organ but the " keys" are big levers that the Carillonist strikes.)

It sounded awful !!

It's definitely harder (and a lot more scary) to learn to ring big bells and has to be taken slowly. If you miss the rope, it can be dangerous and will almost defnitely be scary if you are a beginner, so can't stop the rope yourself. I missed one once and it really put me off ringing, and jurked my arm really hard so that it hurt for a long time afterwards.

You learn by ringing one stroke (handstroke or backstroke) while someone else rings the other, then once you've got them sorted, you move on to doing both at once with someone ready to catch it when you miss, which will last for a long time too.



Jumping on the tenor is fun

H_C, have you ever seen anyone break a stay? Several people at my church have. Normally instinct would tell you to let go of the rope, only one person forgot until his feet were 10 feet off the ground. It really shouldn't be funny though as he could have been seriously hurt

Not for the faint hearted then...

I'll stick to handbells for now I think!

its very fun though!

im ringing tomorrow for service.
Ive not seen anyone break a stay, but ive bounced it once or twice which scared the carp outta me!

why do you have fish in you?

swap the middle letters around

Im off now to ring for sunday service.
My first one...
Ill let you all know how it went

Will be very interested to read the report.

Alas, i hath returned... i arrived in a blizzard and left in a blizzard.
ringing was ok for a while, till i missed the sally (fuzzy colored part of the rope, not a woman) , and tensed up, but we stopped for a minute or two, and then just rang rounds (down the scale) as we only have 5 minutes before service started. Overall it went well. The tower captain and i were talking for a while, waiting for everyone else to get there, apparently im a natural, the priest wants me to go ring on christmas day, new years eve/day at midnight...

Well done h_c, glad it went well.

And I've learned that the coloured part of the rope is a sally. You learn something new every day!

I was about to wish you good luck, but then realised I was too late, so well done for getting through it

Ringing for new year could be fun (having said that, I've refused to do it at least twice...I'm such a dedicated bellringer! handbells on christmas eve is a completely different matter though )

There aren't many people who know why, when I was little, I called my cuddly lemur Sally

Another handbell question.

Do you generally have two handbells to play? And if so, are they consecutive pitches in a diatonic scale?

I'm getting rather interested in this!

Yes, as a general rule. Although one member of the team I used to conduct controlled up to seven in The Entertainer.

Thanks andante. Seven does sound a bit scary!!!

Normally you would have two consecutive diatonic notes. The exceptions are that the highest of lowest play may only have one sometimes, or sometimes you have a chromatic three if there are accidentals in the piece.

'Proper' handbell players would have two in each hand at once.

Thanks Sarah

Two bells in each hand sounds equally scary!

Only if they're part of a four-in-hand team. There are different norms for different styles of team and it also depends which part of the country you come from.

These bells are better than handbells

Booked. Saturday 29th August. West Byfleet. Director of music = sarah123.

oooh can i be official head page turner-at-the-wrong-time person?
*if i can come*

Director of music sounds very formal and important!

Important, yes, formal, nope! It's likely to be about as informal as you can get.

here ya go barry
http://www.surreybellringers.org.uk/Genera...troduction.html
im sure you can see when your local towers practice night is. No doubt theyre in need of trainee ringers!

wrong county h_c , but thanks for the link, very interesting!

This looks like the place to ask this... when church bells are being rung, am I right in thinking it starts as a descending scale then goes through all the permutations? surely you can't play every different order? what determines what is played? ..showing my ignorance

Des

Broadly, yes, you are correct. There's a wiki article which explains the basics here.

You can ring all the possible different changes: on 6 bells it is 5040, so when you ring a method, you ring all the diffrerent orders possible, when keeping to the pattern of the method, and for all the methods rung on 6 bels, that makes 5040 different changes, and takes about 3 hours to ring.
Its difficult to explain, and that is basically it, but it goes alot further, ie different leads, bobs, singles etc....


Usually after a service, only rounds and call changes, or one course (120 different changes) of a method.
Call changes are like this (you can swap any bells that are next to eacher other) so for example, 1 is the highest bell, 6 the lowest, and this is a very simple call.

123456 ''Rounds''
132456 2 to 3 (two to slow down, and follow 3)
134256 2 to 4
134526 2 to 5
135426 4 to 5
135246 4 to 2 ''QUEENS'' (this is a named pattern, when certain orders are played alot and sound nice, they are named)
135426 2 to 5
134526 5 to 4
143526 4 to Treble (the 1 is the treble, the 6 the tenor)
143256 2 to 3
142356 3 to 2
142536 3 to 5 ''TITTUMS'' (because it sounds tee-tum tee-tum tee-tum)
124536 2 to Treble
124356 3 to 4 ''KINGS'' (i think this is Kings i can't remember!)
123456 4 to 3 ''ROUNDS''

Thats fairly simple i guess.

ive just had an evening playing a 6 bell carillon! Very fun!

Not quite correct, h_c. 5040 is the maximum number ("extent") of changes on 7 bells, not 6. The maximum number on 6 is 720 changes. If you ring a peal (5040) changes on six bells you have to ring the extent seven times.

oops yeh, 6x 5x4x3x2x1= 720

Which Tower do you ring for H_C?