Technique Tips for Big Bells

This is the first thing everyone notices about the bass bells--they're heavy! How heavy are they?

Not only do they weigh a ton, but the sheer size (diameter of the mouth) means they chew up a lot of table space. Unlike the battery, where a single assignment of bells is approximately the same width as the ringer, or the treble where a single assignment is narrower than the ringer, a bass assignment is typically much wider than the person playing it. For example, my usual assignment is C3 through A3, which I can compress to fit on only 7 feet of table. This means the average bass ringer has to be able to reach for bells across his/her assignment, and set bells down into a tight space without crashing.

Because of the physics of bronze, bass bells are automatically much quieter than the smaller bells. Also, those big rich tones are usually swallowed up by the environment. Especially bad factors are wood, carpeting, high ceilings, and crowds of people--in other words, the most common surroundings in bell venues.

Finally, related to the size issue is the basic fact that it takes longer to ring a bass bell. This is based on two factors: inertia of the casting and the length of the clapper shaft. Inertia is obvious: anything that heavy takes a lot of force to set in motion when it's at rest. The length of the clapper shaft is also basic physics: a longer pendulum (which is essentially what the clapper shaft is) takes longer to swing at the free end (compare the pendulum of a cuckoo clock with that of a grandfather clock).

Solutions to the problems above

There's just no getting around it. If you want to be able to heft those monsters, you have to do some basic weight training. Here's the best training regimen I've come up with: First, locate an empty wine bottle or two. (If you can't find an empty one, you might just have to empty one out yourself ;-) Fill it with water, recork it, and duct tape it securely closed. Now you have a free weight which mimics the essential shape of a bell--the center of the weight is well away from the grip point. Hold the neck of the bottle the same way you'd hold the handle of a bell, and pretend you're at rehearsal--bang away! Do it while you're watching TV, talking on the phone, or reading email.

At first, it may not seem like you're doing much. After all, a standard wine bottle full of water will only weigh about 1.75 pounds, nothing at all like the monster weights you see the He-Men at the gym hefting. But here's the rub: those guys are doing 10-15 repetitions, max. In the course of a 1-hour rehearsal you probably do something on the order of 200 reps. Tell that to your muscle-bound friends.

If you really think that's too easy, try switching to 1.5-liter wine bottles (even more fun to empty out). If you're a real brute, try filling the bottle with sand instead of water.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your arms and shoulders are not the only muscle groups in your body. You need to use your back and legs, too. Unlike the rest of the set, bucket ringing is a full-body endeavor. Your back will absorb a lot of the stresses of moving the bells forward and backward. Your legs are very good for helping you get UNDER the bells and picking them up -- a concept which doesn't make much sense until you try it.

Other solutions, I find, are of more limited use. Some people will recommend always ringing the bass bells with two hands. This is fine, if you always have enough time to set the bell down and get the next bell with both hands, but most of the time you just don't have that luxury.

Arrangement of the bells on the table is a matter of creativity in space-assignment. Staggering bells is the first place to start. Instead of putting all the bells in a straight line, set the accidentals up to the far side of the table, so the bells look something like a piano keyboard. In this option the bells you use the most are closest to you. And the handles of the accidentals take up less space between the castings of the diatonics, so horizontal space is freed up.

Consider also making your lines curved. Bells are essentially wedge-shaped, wide at the outside and narrow at the inside. If you arrange the bells with the same spacing between the handles as the castings, you'll end up with an arc of bells on the table. This frees up additional horizontal space PLUS it gets the handles closer together for those quick changes.

If you have the luxury of setting up your tables in something other than a straight line, consider making an "L" shape in the bass section, with the ringer standing at the inside corner of the "L". This way the curve of the lines of bells can follow the angle of the table, while still leaving as many handles as possible as close to each other and the ringer as possible.

The best thing to do is to get rid of bells you aren't using. Put them on the floor behind you (on carpeting or extra pads, naturally!). This has the two-fold benefit of freeing up table space and (helping) ensure that you won't pick up and play the wrong note. Be very careful about getting rid of bells, though--the last thing you want to happen is to discover halfway through a piece that the crucial accidental for a passage is sitting in a case under the table.

Short of changing the physical properties of the bronze, the bells, or the room you're playing in, the best thing you can do to enhance the sound of the bass is to get the bells off the table. We all know that the sound propagates from the sides of the casting, not the mouth. If the casting is horizontal, 1/4 of the sound is going straight into the table, another 1/4 is going straight up to the ceiling, and the other 1/2 is going sideways for your neighbors to hear. Almost nothing is left for the audience. Get the bell vertical (mouth to the ceiling), and hold it up high. Get it up above your music stand, or again part of the sound will get swallowed before it ever has a chance to get to the audience.

Some people recommend the "Statue of Liberty" method of holding bass bells to maximize their sound. This technique involves holding the bell up above your head, like the Statue of Liberty holds her torch. I'm not such a fan of this technique, personally. It doesn't fit into those nice circles, and makes the bass ringers unnecessarily prominent--they're the ones down there waving the bells around over their heads. More importantly, I find I rarely have enough time to get the bell way up there. Besides, that's a lot of extra work.

Another factor to consider is that most people treat the buckets (and bells in general) like they're made of bone china. Yes, bronze is a brittle metal and yes, bells can break. But the chance of breaking a bell with an ordinary strike is pretty slim. (Most bell breakage occurs from improper mallet or marting technique, dropping, or the occasional run-in with a forklift.) Don't be afraid to hit the bells! As I mentioned above in the strength training section, a lot of muscles should be involved in a bucket-ring than just the wrist. Much of the time a good strong strike starts from the feet and works all the way out to the clapper head. And consider changing your stance when you need a really strong sound. You can't put a lot of force into the bell with only one arm, or with your feet close together, or hunched over. To get a really strong tone, this is what I do: spread my feet apart and stagger them forward-back, so that my left foot is at the upper left corner of a square and my right foot at the bottom right corner. Hold the bell with both hands. Make a relatively normal approach to the strikepoint (circles!), maybe a little faster than usual. Immediately at the strike I pull the bell back to the shoulder very quickly, simultaneously pivoting the bell around, so the handle is leading the retreat, so to speak. The mouth of the bell is facing directly away from me. To increase the speed of the retreat, I also rotate around my waist, so my arms don't have to do quite as much work. What this does: by speeding up the approach to and retreat from the strikepoint, more energy is transferred from the clapper to the casting. By pivoting the bell away from the usual vertical position the clapper isn't allowed to rest on the casting more than a split second. It's this state where the clapper and casting are touching that can cause real damage to the bell (since the casting isn't allowed to vibrate normally, the energy that would go into that vibration instead goes into ripping apart the molecular bonds of the bronze. Oops). The rotation around the waist increases the speed (and energy) of the strike, while the bit with the legs is to improve stability. This technique may or may not be more or less the same as the "Gakuin pop" (a term invented by Rusty Sanders, after seeing the technique first demonstrated by the bass ringers of the choir of the Kanto Gakuin University. Thanks also to Rusty for explaining to me how the extended contact of the clapper and casting damages the bell).

This technique is most useful for ringing Schulmerichs loudly, since they have a tendency to "overring" at higher dynamics. ("Overringing" is when the upper frequencies of a bell are excited but the fundamental is left more or less alone.) Schullies are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon, since they have a fuller overtone series but still fairly thin castings, unlike Malmarks which have a thinner overtone series or Whitechapels which have very thick castings. It is still possible to overring any of the makes of bells, though, so it is good for all bass ringers to know the technique.

This is the single most important thing every bass ringer must learn. Since your bells take so much longer to ring, START EARLY!!!!!! If you are supposed to ring on the downbeat, don't wait until that beat to start your bell in motion. If you do, you're already late. Start the circle well before the beat, so you're ready for the clapper strike at the exact moment of the downbeat (or whatever beat you play on).

Different bells will require different amounts of anticipation, based on the weight of the bell and the length of the clapper shaft. A G3 takes a certain amount of anticipation, a C3 takes more, and a G2 more yet. Part of becoming a capable bass ringer is learning how much time each individual bell takes to sound after starting the motion.

Other considerations

There is an ongoing debate over whether wearing wrist braces while ringing the buckets is a Good Idea or a Bad Idea. Partially, this relates back to the Exercise information above--if your arms and hands are strong enough, you won't need to worry about bracing them. A related argument provides that the more practice your arms get in ringing the buckets the stronger they get and the less you'll need braces. Using braces, on that argument, actually is detrimental, because they take some of the work away from the muscles, so those muscles never have a reason to get stronger.

The opposite argument is that braces help the ringer maintain proper form while ringing, and especially while lifting and setting down the bells. Also, braces never take all the work away from the muscles, so using them for a while until the muscles develop a bit might be a good idea for beginning bass ringers.

The danger lies in letting braces become a crutch that prevents further development and progress. My personal opinion is to use braces if you have to, but try to wean yourself as you get physically stronger and more confident in ringing the buckets.

In this technique, instead of the clapper striking the side of the casting closest to the listener, it strikes the side closest to the ringer -- effectively, the "back" of the bell (get it?). This is often easiest to bring about by using the base of the clapper as the center of a circle, and sharply pushing the handle away from you. This has the effect of pushing the clapper head towards you, to strike the back side of the casting. This also helps economize your effort. The casting itself remains motionless--only the handle moves. The advantage to this should be obvious--which is heavier--the casting or the handle?

Backringing itself has several advantages. For one, the ringing motion can be performed at the end of the lifting motion, rather than making the lift, stopping it, then starting the bell moving in the opposite direction again. It's faster and easier on the muscles. Some people find it easier to get really loud tones from the buckets by backringing. Also, for those who feel a little uneasy about controlling the weight of the really big bells, the strongest part of the motion is towards the body, not away. Thus, if anything unfortunate should happen, you're all set up to catch the bell with your body, instead of the bell bouncing away from you and wreaking all kinds of havoc.

But, one might say, isn't the backring a violation of the all-sacred Circle? Actually, it is not. The same circle is being observed, but the ring is happening at the top of the circle, not the bottom. For rapid passages, in fact, consider striking once at the bottom of the circle with a normal ring, then again at the top of the circle with a backring. Two articulations in one circle!

There's no law that says that the bells need to remain in the C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C order. If you have a piece with a lot of fast scale runs, such as the Handel/Griffin Passacaglia, consider assigning the bells in adjacent pairs rather than linearly. Thus, dividing C3-D4 between two ringers would look something like this:

Ringer 1          Ringer 2
C3 D3             E3 F3
G3 A3     B3      C4 D4
	  

Also, consider "farming out" an accidental which doesn't play very often but nevertheless manages to make your life miserable. If position 5 doesn't have much to do during those difficult measures, give that ringer the extra note which is causing the problems. There's nothing that says all the bells need to remain in keyboard order. For more suggestions on creative assignment strategies, check my assignments page.

Go back to: Bells Main

What did I forget? Tell me: kingsbur at unagi dot cis dot upenn dot edu