A new collection of handbell-friendly compositions

Submitted by simon on Sat, 25/06/2022 - 08:11

Among its many features, Composition Library allows one to create collections, which can contain methods, compositions or both. I have defined a collection consisting of many of my favourite handbell-friendly compositions, both quarters and peals. Each composition has a brief note describing the features that make it especially suitable for handbells, and in most cases there is a link to a blog article about the composition. It took a little bit of coaxing to get the blog links into CompLib - they are masquerading as page numbers, where the number is a reference to the blog's internal database.

There are some other CompLib collections of handbell compositions; everyone has their favourites. I have previously set up a collection containing all the methods and compositions from Change-Ringing on Handbells Volume 1, but most of the compositions are just standard callings and not particularly handbell-oriented. If other handbell conductors would like to nominate compositions, I will add them and write blog articles reviewing their handbell-friendly features.

Handbell compositions

A successful weekend

Submitted by simon on Sun, 24/04/2022 - 21:15

For once, everything proceeded exactly according to plan!

We started by slotting in an extra quarter on Friday evening. When I discovered that Matt would be arriving relatively early, I thought I'd better organise something to occupy us for the evening, so we rang Bob Major for Zoé's first handbell...

Handbell days and weekends

Submitted by simon on Sun, 17/04/2022 - 15:16

Yesterday was the Oxford DG handbell day in Reading, which logged an impressive 31 quarters in BellBoard involving 35 people. The next Scottish handbell day will be on 7th May, and we have 21 people signed up. Slightly smaller than the ODG day, but when you consider that the Scottish...

My turn to conduct Stedman

Submitted by simon on Thu, 17/03/2022 - 13:36

Last week we attempted another quarter of Stedman Triples, this time with me conducting. We didn't get it, partly because of internet problems. We tried again yesterday and succeeded. I rang the tenors, which (as expected) reduced the task of ringing Stedman and putting the bobs in to a manageable...

More Stedman Triples

Submitted by simon on Sun, 27/02/2022 - 20:32

We rang another quarter of Stedman last week, this time with Julia conducting. There was a false start but after that we rang well, and Julia did some impressive correcting of mistakes. We're not ringing this week, but next week it's my turn to conduct, which I will do from...

An embarrassing discovery

Submitted by simon on Mon, 21/02/2022 - 18:22

I have mentioned before that we have been ringing handbells on Sunday afternoons with three of the Glasgow ringers: Jessica, Colin and Zoé. Yesterday only Colin and Zoé could come, and Tina was busy with Dorothy, so we had a six-bell session. We started with a 360 of Bob Minor, which...