Rather curiously, “how do you play six bells at once?” is one of the questions that comes our way now and then. The funny thing about it is summed up something like this:
- We have a slight familiarity with how to set up what’s called “six-in-hand”. Somewhere along the way we learned, perhaps in a workshop on “multiple bell techniques”, how to interlock the handles of three bells so that they can be picked up together without any fear of losing any of them. We also learned – again, from somewhere, how to “paw” three bells with one hand (one as a four-in-hand “primary”, one as a four-in-hand “secondary”, and one between the ring and little fingers parallel to the secondary bell) – only to understand that you really need long enough fingers to use idea effectively.
- We have even less personal experience with actually trying to play six-in-hand. Situations requiring the technique just don’t cross our path with any appreciable frequency, which means we don’t get around to applying the tiny bit of intellectual knowledge we possess.
- But it’s rather odd that we could probably teach someone how to play these six-in-hand methods. As some wag said long ago, “those who cannot do, teach.”
The truth of the matter may have something to do with electricity. Videos are created by a camera, usually by taking little pictures 30 or 60 times per second. When those frames are played back at the speed at which they were recorded, the stop-motion is so rapid that it tricks the eye into thinking that it’s viewing continuous motion. You get the same effect with electricity, because alternating current pulses at around 100 cycles per second, and so you get a similar “framing” effect. By the way, you can observe this framing effect by turning your head back and forth as you view an electric light source against a sufficiently dark background – if you do it correctly, you’ll see stop-action images of the light source, thereby proving that the transmissive nature of the light is not continuous but time-discrete.
I think that’s why our four-in-hand ringing looks as if we have six bells each; the light is playing tricks, and the stop-motion you see superimposes the images of bells at (slightly) different locations on your retinas. So you might see six images of four bells. There was a funny little photo of Carla that could be submitted as proof – on this single photo, the motion of one of her hands resulted in the appearance of that hand holding three bells (which I tagged on Facebook as “Klingon weapon”).
So if you see us playing four-in-hand and think it looks like six-in-hand, and ask about what you (think you) see, our answer probably will be “we don’t play six bells; it only looks that way.” Regardless, enjoy the music!
