If you’re a musician, practice for anything starts weeks ahead. If it’s a big presentation like a church Christmas concert, then my experience has been that those rehearsals start about three months in advance. After all, we want to put our best foot forward on the evening when we have one of the largest congregations of the year!
We’ve been posting lots of music that you can play for Christmas (and the rest of the year as well!):
- Eight-bell music has been our biggest category of pieces. It’s particularly exciting to us that we now have enough Christmas pieces of this type to fill an entire two-hour shift at the Salvation Army kettle without having to repeat anything.
- Twelve-bell pieces – for four-in-hand trio, two-in-hand sextet, or anything between, build upon the existing body of twelve-bell music. Did you notice that Georges Bizet’s Farandole fits quite nicely into a dozen diatonic notes?
- Sixteen-bell music is a great idea for those times you have enough intrepid four-in-hand ringers who want to play some challenging music. By the way, we’re looking for videos since the two of us haven’t yet mastered Danny Lyons’ famous eight-in-hand technique!
- There also are other pieces for “regular” handbell choirs. They range from two to seven octaves, so there’ll be something for your group (even though those pieces may not specifically be for Christmas – no matter, it means you’ll have more time to practice before spring!
Do look around. We hope you’ll find lots of music to play, and that you’ll have a wonderful holiday season.
