May 15

Here’s the “Surprisingly Easy”™ eight-bell “O Worship the King” (LYONS)!

We started writing “Surprisingly Easy”™ variants of many of our eight-bell arrangements years and years ago. That was to provide a faster-to-worship learning time, especially for duets, trios, and quartets who are newer to four-in-hand and ensemble ringing. If you aren’t already familiar with our easier eight-bell scores, they’re generally equivalent to a Level 2 on the Handbell Musicians of America difficulty scale.

Today we’ve added a “Surprisingly Easy”™ version of “O Worship the King” (hymn tune LYONS). We knoPuw you’ll enjoy playing it, and that your congregation will love to see you play it!

Purchase includes permission to livestream, record, archive, and post to social media, including church websites!

May 12

ENGELBERG (Handbells, 2 octaves, Level 2+)

We’ve published a new arrangement of the hymn tune ENGELBERG today. In case you’re happier with hymn titles, ENGELBERG has been paired with several texts:

  • All Praise to Thee, for Thou, O King Divine
  • When in Our Music God is Glorified
  • We Know that Christ is Raised

This arrangement is for two octaves of handbells, and is Level 2-, so if you have a smaller handbell choir and need something that will come together fairly quickly, this one will work for you!

Purchasing the handbell choir version of this arrangement grants permission to print and maintain up to fifteen copies for your handbell ensemble; purchasing the single copy version grants permission to print and maintain one copy. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs.

May 10

The Flip

Playing handbell duets is both art and science. The art is about making the music happen, and the science is what has to be done to achieve that physically. The combination/interaction of the two is what you see in our videos and live performances.

When we play our really fast music, we each might be zipping along at about eight or more notes per second. When you boil that down to actual music, a rate like that translates to a string of sixteenth notes at a metronome mark of 120 to the quarter note, so that’s not abnormal. Lots of instrumentalists achieve this rate all the time; for instance, it’s a pace you’d expect from lots of music by J.S. Bach. Anyway, the fun bit is that this is equivalent to about 27,000 notes per hour. It’s amazing how much more impressive the bigger number can sound even though it’s really the same amount of playing.

One of the issues that we must conquer when we play eight-bell duets is knowing which bells we have. From there, we also have to know where each one is (which hand, and position in that hand), and when it plays. After that, we also have to know when to damp each bell (that is, turning it off). And that’s just the basic mechanics, because we also have to manage the volume of each note. And after that, we get to interact with each other, such as in fast passages where we play alternating notes.

Anyway, we have a term for when we play two consecutive notes with the same hand, one with each bell, the “flip”. It seems to be an appropriate choice, since it’s playing the two bells not-quite-at-the-same-time (NQATST); that results in a motion that appears to be a bit twisty and, well, “flippy”,

The problem of accuracy is the big deal here. That’s because a motion that makes NQATST has to be done in such a way that the time between the two notes matches the speed of the music. So the part you might not see is that our fingers flex to make one clapper strike, while the hand/arm makes the other strike. Physiologically, it makes a lot of sense, because then different parts of the body are accounting for each action; then they’re independently manageable.

The next trick, of course, is to play multiple flips (for instance, A-C-A-C-A-…) with one hand. These occur fairly frequently in handbell music, so knowing how to use the action for one bell to help the other reset for the next note is essential. But… until you master the single flip, that’s a skill augmentation for another day!

Here’s a video of our eight-bell arrangement of It Is Well with My Soul. Enjoy.

May 05

“How Do You Play Six Bells at Once?”

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!

May 02

New video of (Level 1) “Newness”!

Newness is one of our very special compositions for handbell choir. In addition to being written for three or five octaves of handbells/handchimes, it’s possible to play it at Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3. The difference between the Level 2 and Level 3 versions is simply whether or not you choose to use chimes (for Level 2, just play all the chime notes with bells). The Level 1 version could be performed from the Level 3 score by playing only the notes that are on the beat, but it really was a gentler approach to create a separate Level 1 score so that those playing it wouldn’t have the distraction of seeing notes that they don’t play.

Because the scores are mutually developed, it’s possible to play them simultaneously in a multi-ensemble event! Each team would play the version of their choice, and everything would mix together nicely. You could play this at any festival, and everyone could stay within their musical means!

We’ve just added a demo video of the five-octave Level 1 version. That way, you can get an idea of how your bell choir will look when they play it (they won’t look like two set of septuplets, of course…). Here it is:

Newness – for Handbells (3 or 5 octaves, Level 1 version) – Larry Sue from Larry and Carla – Handbell Duo on Vimeo.

Purchasing the handbell choir version of this arrangement grants permission to print and maintain up to fifteen copies for your handbell ensemble; purchasing the single copy version grants permission to print and maintain one copy. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs.

May 02

What’s our easiest handbell choir piece?

Sometimes we’re asked which of our pieces for handbell choir is the easiest. Hands down, it’s Celebration. This piece is AGEHR Level 1; for those of you not familiar with what that means, the score has nothing smaller than a quarter note. The piece itself is composed of big block chords; if you’re ringing it, you’ll know instantly whether everyone is in sync.There’s only one position that has what’s called a “bell change”, so you can assign that to your most daring ringer if you wish.

I wrote Celebration for the bell choir I directed at my son’s school. We borrowed three octaves of bells from HMA (Handbell Musicians of America) via their CHIME (Chimes and Handbells In Music Education) program. Since we had no actual budget, I wrote easy pieces for them to play. Celebration was one of them.

Celebration has been available from Choraegus for some years, and during that time it’s proven to be a versatile year-round piece. One of my friends even says that when she’s down to a group of seven she’s had them play just the treble clef!

If you have a new handbell choir, or you need to pick a piece that will come together quickly, or if you just want your ringers to try something sight-readable, Celebration should work well for you!

Apr 29

Free sheet music is fun!

We love to give people a chance to see what we do at Choraegus. Like everyone else, we provide contact information so that you can ask questions or make suggestions. That’s all normal; you’re supposed to be available to deal with what happens.

However, we also want you to be able to try out a bit of our music, so we have a bunch of free handbell music. All you have to do is click on the word “Freebies” on the menubar, and you’ll see that we have about a dozen gifts for you. Most of them are eight-bell pieces that you can play for fun, such as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; or for parties, such as Happy Birthday. Note, also, that we have a second free version of Happy Birthday that will work with just about any handbell ensemble – so you can surprise someone with that special once-a-year song!

For church services, we also have a free arrangement of the Doxology. It not only is in the standard key of G major, but there are two slightly different arrangements based on the usual ways to ending each phrase (hold the last note? charge through to the next phrase?).

Please note that our free music is just that – a gift. We just want you to enjoy a bit of our music, and we hope that’ll give you enough of a (good!) taste that you’ll come back to shop around the rest of our website.

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Mar 26

Blessed Assurance (ASSURANCE) (Handbells, 3 or 5 octaves, Level 3-)

Blessed Assurance is one of Fanny Crosby’s all-time classic hymns. It speaks of faith, dependence, and triumph through having an absolute reliance on God and His power. Our arrangement is for three or five octaves, and will be a welcome addition to your ensemble’s repertoire.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

    This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior, all the day long;
    This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with his goodness, lost in his love.


Purchasing the handbell choir version of this arrangement grants permission to print and maintain up to fifteen copies for your handbell ensemble; purchasing the single copy version grants permission to print and maintain one copy. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs.

Mar 17

Bass Handbell Solo: “Danny Boy”/”Londonderry Air”

I arranged “Danny Boy”/”Londonderry Air” for bass handbells over twenty years ago, and after a run at a Silicon Valley retirement facility, finally dared to play in public at the 2004 Area 12 conferences. Unfortunately, technology of the time didn’t give us an easy way to make even a scruffy video of what happened then.

Fast forward to 2024, and we *finally* have a better-than-scruffy visual recording of the solo, which has been revised (and hopefully improved!). Before you enjoy the video, I do need to say that it wouldn’t have come together as it did were it not for Carla’s technical genius!

Mar 01

Update to “Dona Nobis Pacem”!

We’ve learned that there are some folks might not be able to play our G5- and F5-based scores of Dona Nobis Pacem. For instance, there are sets in England that have white keys C5-G6, and maybe F#s and Bbs, and therefore won’t have all the needed notes.

To help work with this, we’ve added C5- and D5-based versions of Dona Nobis Pacem. Do check them out – and if you’ve already downloaded this little arrangement before, it’s still free – you’re more than welcome to download it again!

Note: If you have only white-key bells with no A6, though, these still won’t work perfectly – but you could try playing A5 in the place of the A6s to get most of the pitches (and all of the harmonies). *Sigh*. But we ringers do what we can, right?