Update… 24/11/23
The Christmas Carol arrangements (pdf’s) have all been updated with addition of an optional bell 15… Some changes/improvements have been made to the harmony of some carols and odd wrong notes corrected. All the video have now been updated to match.
Introduction
In this section, you will find our handbell music and resources. A collection of tunes arranged using numerical tablature, which is ideal for those who do not read music.
Most sets of bells found in towers are designed for ringing methods…. so are diatonic rings bells. This means there are no extra bells with # or ♭ suffixes.
Not all tunes can be arranged for a diatonic ring as many will modulate to another key and requires the addition of sharps(#) or flats (♭).
Additionally, suitability will also depend on the range of the tune… songs written to be sung in G, A♭, A, B♭, will be more likely to fit the limited range than those in other keys, because of the way music works and the range of the average human voice. Some of our arrangements, do include occasional and optional # or ♭bells (e.g. 5#). If you do not have an extra bell with that specific designation – ignore it – it is a different note to the normal one and will sound wrong if you don’t! The arrangement will sound OK without the note, but perhaps a little thin on harmony for that one individual beat.
We also include some items with bell ‘0’. This is one note higher that bell ‘1’. This is because many tunes commonly include the odd note which goes off the top of the 12 note set. If you can borrow a suitable bell from another set, you may still be able to ring these tunes. If not, try replacing the ‘0’ items with bell ‘2’ (if it is not already included) or just ignoring it. Again, the tune might be missing that note… but it is amazing how many people will accept this, particularly when it is a well known tune… Effectively ‘0’ becomes a virtual bell… people will just think they heard it because they were expecting it to be there!
The carols also now include an optional bell 15…. we have recently acquired an extra bell! This bottom row can be ignored if you do not have the bell!
Videos
At Pebworth Bells, we recognise that for non-musicians, following music is not easy… even from numerical tablature! Trying to keep a beat going in your head while co-ordinating both hands and following the grid is actually quite tricky!
To help, we have developed our own video versions of the songs which show the music scrolling across the screen with a cursor down the centre… These have been used at village events and ringing meetings, where teams of complete novices have been able to have a go and get very passable results with no previous experience or practice! One of our younger team quite accurately described it as ‘Karaoke Handbells’.
The videos have no sound, so are not very interesting without a team of ringers! …but they can be used with any diatonic ring of 12 bells, irrespective of key… and make an excellent resource when fed to a large screen TV for a group to follow.
If you find them useful and would like copies of the video files, because you cannot rip them from Youtube or there is no internet where you practice, let us know and we will happily share them. We have not posted them as files at present, because they take up a lot of valuable web space!