An occasional series that discusses matters about the state of change ringing on handbells, with some occasional philsophising.
From time to time we have tried to encourage other ringers to use our blog to write about their progress, or how they overcame certain obstacles, and in general share their experience of learning to ring handbells.
When we started this blog in 2011, neither Simon or I were at...
Today Tina reminded me that blog articles get automatically transferred into Facebook, where we have a "Learn to Ring Handbells" page. I've never been a big Facebook user, and my account is more or less completely blank except that earlier this year I joined the Bellringers group so that I...
BellBoard addicts might already have noticed that Henry Pipe has rung Norman Smith's 23-spliced on handbells. This is a tremendous achievement, all the more so at the age of 13. I had the pleasure of ringing one part for practice, with Henry, David Pipe and Alex Byrne, on our holiday last...
Going through Simon's occasional series of handbell-friendly compositions, I have been giving some thought to what features make the method itself handbell-friendly. Some methods do lend themselves well to handbells, while other methods are surprisingly tricky. Here are some of my thoughts on some particular features and a 'handbell-friendliness' score...
There has been a lively discussion on Facebook about how to reverse the decline in the number of people ringing peals, in order to capitalise on the success of the 'FirstPeal2015' initiative (this was to get 300 people to ring their first peal in 2015). In his analysis, Matthew Sorell...
Somehow I have only just noticed that Graham John's web site has several recordings of handbell ringing. They are extracts from peals, in a variety of methods on different numbers of bells, including some record lengths. All of the ringing is excellent - in fact you have to listen...
On Saturday we had the annual Scottish Association training day, at which I was running a Bristol group at Dunblane. At Angela's suggestion I took the mini-bells, and although we didn't have time to do any ringing during the day, we did get them out in the pub after...
A few thoughts based on our experiences.
It so happens that Simon's mother has lately taken up handbell tune ringing (or, as the rest of the world seems to know it, English handbell ringing). Last weekend we went to see her in concert with her group, the Alton Handbell Ringers.
This was an outdoor affair, part of...
Last week I joked on Facebook that our 41 Minor would have been the featured performance on BellBoard, if it hadn't been for the those clever chaps in Cambridge ringing Chandler's in hand on the same weekend. Yesterday we were first, for a while, before being beaten out by a...