Handbell Anatomy ....................................................................................5
Ringing Technique .....................................................................................7
Handbell History..........................................................................................8
The Elements of Music: Introduction .......................................................9
The Elements of Music: Rhythm ............................................................. 10
The Elements of Music: Melody ............................................................. 12
Note Anatomy ......................................................................................... 14
Note and Rest Values ............................................................................. 15
Handbell Note Names............................................................................ 16
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Handbells are manufactured out of bronze, which is a mixture of
copper and tin. The bronze part of the bell is called the casting
and is carefully tuned to the correct pitch. The casting is highly polished but not lacquered, because lacquer would diminish the musical quality of the bell.
Because the bell is not lacquered, touching the bell with bare
hands will cause the bell to become stained and tarnished. For this
reason, carefully wiping all smudges and fingerprints from every
bell is essential following every rehearsal.
Also, handbells should never come into contact with each other,
hard objects, or rough surfaces. Chips, scratches, and dents in a
bell changes its pitch over time, and bells can shatter if weakened
by cracks or if dropped on a hard surface.
A handbell is a delicate musical instrument and must be treated
with utmost care. You should be familiar with the parts of a hand-
bell and be knowledgeable about how to care for the handbells
you play.
HANDLE
HAND
GUARD
CASTING
WAIST
LIP
or
RIM
5
The mechanical center of the bell consists of the yoke and the restraining springs. This mechanism controls the clapper and can be
adjusted to control the effort it takes to strike the bell. The clapper
strikes the side of the casting to create the bell's sound. Each bell is
tested to determine the best point for the clapper to strike—the
point at which the pitch sounds most truly and the bells sounds
most clearly. This strikepoint is marked with a tiny scratch inside the
bell casting.
CLAPPER
STRIKEPOINT
YOKE
RESTRAINING SPRING
Other important parts of the handbell are the handle and the
hand guard or collar. (See image on page 5.) Both have the pitch
name of the bell printed on them.
When ringing a handbell, always grip firmly with your hand up
against the hand guard. Never hold the bell by the end of the
handle or insert your fingers into the loop to ring.
6
As the bell rests on the padded table in front of you, you
MALMARK
LOGO
should be able to see the small Malmark bell logo on the
handle. If you cannot see the logo, carefully turn the
bell over so that you can.
Extend your hand as if you were going to shake
hands, and then grip the handle of the bell firmly
and as close to the hand guard as possible. Hold the
bell upright as if it were full of thick, rich cream—don't spill
it! Then lift the bell as you tilt it back toward your body slightly, then
allow it to fall forward momentarily before returning it to an upright
position.
The ringing motion should be fluid and graceful and should appear
to be effortless. Never punch with a bell!
The primary reason the bell should remain upright is that the sound
reverberates from the sides of the casting. If the bell is upright, the
side of the casting faces your audience, thus allowing the maximum tone of the bell to reach the audience. Another reason to
keep the bell upright is to avoid physical injury to your wrists and
tendons, especially if you play larger bells.
To stop the sound of the bell, you damp the bell by bringing it back
toward your body and touching the side of the casting to your
shoulder or chest. Of course, avoid wearing jewelry or clothing that
will interfere with damping.
Following the ringing and damping instructions given above, ring
long notes with your bells. Keep moving your bells in a circular motion while they are ringing—extend your arms away from your
body and attempt to watch and mirror the same motions as the
other ringers in your ensemble. Bell ringing should look as beautiful
as it sounds!
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Aside from the practical purposes of bells (alarms, marking time,
summons, celebration, and communication), bells possess a varied
history that is rich with symbolism, from the “dome” of a bell
representing the vault of heaven, to our Liberty Bell being an
international symbol of freedom.
Small handheld bells date back to well before the time of Christ.
However, the type of handbells we ring today originated in
England several hundred years ago as an outgrowth of an old
English tradition called change ringing. Change ringing involves
more mathematical skill than musical talent. Several people would
ring huge steeple bells in different combinations, never playing the
same sequence of bells twice.
For instance, 4 bells can be rung in 24 different sequences, and 8
bells can be rung in 40,320 different sequences, which would take
about 20 hours to ring on tower bells. 12 bells can be rung in over
479,000,000 different sequences, which would take over 30 years to
ring. No one has ever attempted this impressive feat!
However, practicing change ringing presented problems. Not only
were the church towers cold and damp, but the immense bells
could be heard for miles—highly annoying to the neighbors. Small
handheld bells were manufactured so the ringers could practice
indoors in comfort without disturbing the countryside.
Tune ringing, as we do today, developed much later, and English
handbells first came to America in the 1920s. Then in 1948 a handbell choir was featured on a national television variety show, and
handbells have become a popular performance medium in
churches, schools, and communities all over America.
We ring English handbells, although they were manufactured in
Pennsylvania in the United States of America. A distinguishing
feature of English handbells is that the clapper moves in only one
plane, as opposed to other handbells in which the clapper can
move in any direction.
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We can define music as organized sound, and the elements of
music are the musical organizers, the different facets of music that
are used to organize the sounds.
Rhythm organizes time.
Melody organizes pitch.
Harmony organizes texture.
Expressive controls organize emotion.
RHYTHM
First, let’s explore rhythm. Rhythm organizes time in music—the
rhythm is when musical notes happen. Rhythm is based on music’s
steady, recurring pulse or beat, similar to the human heart beat,
which keeps us alive.
For our purposes at this beginning stage, we are going to call the
steady pulses ta or quarter notes. How many are there?
quarter notes
It’s hard for our eyes to keep track of where we are with so many
notes, so we group the steady pulses into measures by adding barlines at regular intervals. A measure is the distance between two
barlines.
barline
barline
measure
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We can then number the pulses in the measure. In this case, we
have four pulses in each measure. The strongest beat is the first
beat in each measure, called the downbeat. The conducting pattern for music with four pulses in a measure looks like this:
1
2
1
2
1
3
To conduct the pattern, think DOWN-IN-OUT-UP. Conduct with your
right hand; if you use your left hand, do the opposite motions from
the drawings above—still think DOWN-IN-OUT-UP, with IN always
coming in toward the center of your body and OUT always moving
outward away from your body.
Meter refers to the grouping of notes into measures. Most of the
music we play this year will be duple, triple, or quadruple meter,
having either two, three, or four pulses per measure.
The meter signature is written at the beginning of a song to indicate how many pulses are in a measure and what kind of note receives one pulse. A meter signature is written like a fraction and
can be read as a fraction. For example, the most common meter is
four quarters—four quarter notes in each measure.
meter signature
10
4
2
1
3
The top number indicates how many pulses are in each measure,
and the bottom number indicates what kind of note will receive
one pulse. In this case, we have four quarters in each measure. This
is also called common time and can be written with a C instead of
a 4/4.
Silence in music is represented by rests. A quarter rest equals one
pulse of silence, just as a quarter note equals one pulse of sound.
Perform this pattern by clicking your mallet handles together on
each quarter note and hitting the air in front of you on each rest.
Say the beat numbers aloud as you perform.
PRACTICE 1.1
On staff paper, write your own rhythm pattern using quarter notes
and quarter rests. Follow these instructions, please:
1) Divide your staff into four equal-length measures, using barlines.
Draw the barlines neatly; they should not extend above or
below the staff.
2) Write 1, 2, 3, and 4 under each measure, but again, try to space
the numbers out evenly across each measure.
3) Draw a quarter note or a quarter rest above each number.
4) Rehearse your pattern, then perform it with your fellow ringers
by establishing a steady beat and then going either up or down
the table with each ringer clicking his pattern immediately after
the ringer before him, without missing a beat.
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MELODY
Handbell music is written on a grand staff. Each line and space has
a pitch name, a letter of the alphabet from A through G.
Some people find it easier to remember the note name of each
line and space by using pneumonic devices. For example, the
space notes in the treble clef spell the word F-A-C-E. The treble line
notes are an acronym for a phrase like “Eloise Gave Bradford Delicious Fudge.”
However you remember the note names is up to you—as long as
you memorize them! A competent ringer can recognize line and
space notes immediately, without stopping to count up lines and
spaces. Practicing with flashcards will help you to increase your
speed in recognizing the notes.
Notice that the C at the bottom of the treble clef staff and the top
of the bass clef staff is on a little line. This line is called a ledger line;
ledger lines extend the staff so we can add higher or lower notes.
To read the notes on ledger lines, you just keep going through the
musical alphabet. On page 16, you will notice that some of the
commonly used notes for handbells are on ledger lines above the
treble staff and under the bass staff. This is because handbells play
a wide range of notes, from very low to very high.
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We place a treble clef at the beginning of the top staff. Many hundreds
of years ago, this was a fancy capital G, and it curls around the G line
of the staff.
PRACTICE 1.2
Practice drawing 10 treble clefs on your staff paper. They don’t
have to be fancy, but they should be neat.
We place a bass clef at the
beginning of the bottom staff.
This symbol developed from
the capital F during the Middle
Ages. The two dots go on either side of the F line.
PRACTICE 1.3
Practice drawing 10 bass clefs on your staff paper. Make sure the
two dots go above and below the F line.
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Before proceeding, we need to take a detour and learn about the
“anatomy” of notes. The various parts of a note have names, and
it’s especially important that we know how to write notes legibly.
stem
note head
1) Note heads are oval, not round.
2) Note heads cannot overlap lines or spaces.
3) For notes on the middle line or above, the stem must go down
from the left side of the note head. These are called downstem
notes.
4) For notes below the middle line, the stem just go up from the
right side of the note head. These are called upstem notes.
5) Stems extend to the space or line of the next note with the
same letter name. For example, the bottom-line E in the treble
clef must have a stem that reaches to the top-space E in the
treble clef.
PRACTICE 1.4
Practice drawing some quarter notes on staff paper. Draw 10 upstem quarters and 10 downstem quarters. Spread them out so that
there is at least a half inch between the notes.
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Music would become pretty monotonous after a while if all we
used were quarter notes and rests! There are many other kinds of
note values—notes and rests that last for different lengths of time.
For example, let’s use a tie to make a longer note. A tie is a curved
line that connects two notes to make a longer note. If we tie two
quarter notes together, we end up with a note that lasts exactly
twice as long as one quarter note. It looks like this:
half note
If you add two quarters together in math, you end up with a half,
and it works the same way in music. The new note is called a half
note and receives two pulses. Based on that process, what kind of
note would four quarters tied together equal?
whole note
Four quarters equal a whole note, which would receive four pulses.
We can also tie together two half notes to equal a whole note.
Of course, there are also half and whole rests, which represent that
amount of silence. They look very similar—both are a black rectangle. The half rest sits on the staff line, while the whole rest sits below
the staff line. Some people find it helpful to remember this by saying that the whole rest makes a “hole” in the ground.
15
We have already learned the absolute pitch names of the various
lines and spaces. Of course, the letter names are the same in
handbell music, but we also add a number after each letter, to
help ringers to know exactly which bell to play. For example, we
have six A’s in our set of bells. Each bell has its own line or space or
ledger line on the staff, and it’s important for good handbell ringers
to know at a glance which bell should play each note.
Basically, we assign two of these bells to each ringer, although
sometimes the very lowest and the very highest ringers might have
extra bells to play. Each two bells is called a position, and it’s important to know which bells each position plays.
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