Carol of the (hand) Bells

Angelus Handbell Choir performance, from a camera on the table. The final three martellatos knock over the camera. We are the handbell choir for Grace United Methodist Church in Urbana, IL, under the direction of Callie McFarland.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• handbells
• carol
• bells

[DominaLuminara]

What level of difficulty is this piece rated?

[designbyalgorithm]

It is a level 3, arranged for 3-5 octaves by Arnold B. Sherman.

[PPLrWierd]

how many people are in your handbells? What age level is you handbell choir? Who is your director? thank!!!!

[designbyalgorithm]

We have about a dozen, recently ranging in age from teen to senior citizen.

[DominaLuminara]

How many octaves do you have?

[designbyalgorithm]

Just four. We're saving for a fifth.

[Softballstar61]

hye this is really good! I'm in a bell choir at my church and we only have about 10-12 people sometimes less. I saw that you guys only have a dozen who is the arranger of this piece? I'm interesting in playing this piece! thank you!

[kikiru11]

cool.

[vitruvian8807]

Another brand of handbells. Good thing they come with lifetime warranties, Iv'e seen a couple of them been dropped, and a few others hit against each other (on accident of course).

One time, we even got to go to the place where they make them, and watched the step on how they are created. Pretty fascinating. We went there to get the bells tuned up, fixed, and 2 replaced.

[kikiru11]

cool. What are Schulmerich bells? are they like the swiss melody chimes?

[vitruvian8807]

When I was in school, in a bell choir, we used Schulmerich (sp?) bells. I was in charge of cleaning and setting them up for practice. I loved the way they looked after a cleaning, so silvery and shiny. Really makes them seem like silver bells.

[lbsweethart]

what do you mean strike?

[lbsweethart]

yea me too, we tried it but the people in the bell choir were mostly first yrs so no one was really very good at it :P

[Yrior]

Not *quite* sure what you're asking, but there's a clapper inside set on a rubber "spring" (really a flat-ish piece of rubber) that keeps it from striking on the backswing. You scoop the handbell down with enough force to bounce the clapper against the bell, which makes it ring. In other methods, you stop it from ringing all-out or make it ring by hitting it against something else (a padded table). Also, you may do a Tibetan-singing-bowl technique to get the bell to "sing." Hope this helped!

[kikiru11]

out of all the handbell songs i've played, i love the carol of the bells! let me see if i got the notions right: thumb damp,table damp, pluck, and of course ringing. my school plays the english handbells, and i'm on the team as well; we played this song as well last christmas for the christmas pagent at our school. it went well, until i almost dropped my bell because i was playing four other bells and the high octave. i almost dropped it while trying to turn the page.

[Blaze11453]

why are people thumbs-downing everyones comments??? oh well...i wish my bell class played this song..i love this song!!