Category Archives: Handbell choir

Handbell choir, Rehearsal

Rehearsal “best practices”

Note: The term “best practices” means a methodology that consistently produces superior results.

Preparation – director: Do score study, breaking down each piece to determine how you’re going to approach teaching all the elements, such as rhythm, techniques, musical expression, etc. In the 1990s (and perhaps other years), Overtones ran an excellent series called Conductor’s Roundtable, where accomplished conductors explained how they would analyze and teach a piece. If you’re a member of the U.S. handbell guild, you may find some of the articles online, or you could order back copies. Always go into rehearsals with a plan for what you want to accomplish, and consider how that fits into the bigger picture of preparing to ring in church or present a concert. Continue reading Rehearsal “best practices” →

Handbell choir

No ringer left behind – Music reading challenges

There are many resources for learning music notation, both in print and online. This article won’t attempt to duplicate those, but instead focus on challenges and confusion handbell musicians may experience. Ringers with little or no prior music reading background may want to work through a workbook. I especially like Alfred’s Essentials of Music Theory – Complete. Note the catalog number (16486 – book with 2 listening CDs), as Alfred has several similar products. It’s an inexpensive resource. Though the book is available without CDs, ear training will help ringers improve. Ringers can start wherever the book presents new information, on page 1 for some, perhaps a few chapters into the book for others, and work through the book as far as the director suggests. Continue reading No ringer left behind – Music reading challenges →

Handbell choir

No ringer left behind – Communication

Often ringers struggle to keep up with others in a bell choir. Joining an established handbell group is like jumping onto a moving train. Integrating new ringers, especially if they don’t read music yet, can take time but yield big dividends. Or maybe they aren’t new, but they struggle because they didn’t get a good orientation to ringing. As the director or fellow ringer, you may struggle yourself to help them, because you just don’t understand what causes their mistakes. Many struggling ringers are adult beginners, and they haven’t learned the language of music. If you learned music yourself as a child, it’s second nature, and you may not know how to teach basic music principles, or remember how you learned them. It would be like a native speaker teaching the language to an immigrant. Continue reading No ringer left behind – Communication →

Handbell choir, Performance, Practice tips

Memorization – Jeffers article

At National Seminar, I was thrilled to be asked to write an article for the Jeffers catalog Vibrations. After reviewing the list of topics covered in previous issues, and considering what I was teaching at the time, I decided to write about memorization. This article (published in Holiday 2013 Vibrations) draws from the memorization article previously published on this site, adapted to include suggestions for bell choir musicians and small ensembles, as well as soloists. Continue reading Memorization – Jeffers article →

Copyright, Handbell choir, Legal

Sight-impaired ringers

Handbell musicians often assume it’s OK to enlarge handbell music for sight-impaired ringers. However, copyright law restricts the right to copy as follows:

1) What: literary (not musical) works
2) Who can copy: institutions that exist to serve the blind, like the Braille Institute
3) For: the legally blind Continue reading Sight-impaired ringers →

Copyright, Handbell choir, Legal, Solo work

Photocopies and “fair use”

Making copies in any form is one of the rights assigned exclusively to the copyright holder under copyright law. In addition to the usual copyright notice of “All rights reserved,” publishers sometimes use stronger wording to reinforce that photocopying sheet music is illegal. As handbell musicians, we want to do the right thing, but that can be difficult with so much misinformation floating about.

Read here about:

• The myth of the ‘working copy’
• Ways to accommodate copying restrictions
• What “fair use” really means Continue reading Photocopies and “fair use” →