Back in 2013, as part of a list of ways in which I wanted to improve my handbell technique, I wrote:
I must confess, which I think I have written before, that I have never been much of a Stedman conductor. Our recent campaign of ringing Stedman Triples regularly has given me the opportunity and motivation to try to work out how I can see more of what's going on. One...
Last week we attempted another quarter of Stedman Triples, this time with me conducting. We didn't get it, partly because of internet problems. We tried again yesterday and succeeded. I rang the tenors, which (as expected) reduced the task of ringing Stedman and putting the bobs in to a manageable...
I have run a couple of online conducting courses recently, and it was pleasing to see that one of the students, Lindsay Powell, has just called her first handbell quarter. One of the ideas I discussed in the course was getting to know certain coursing orders that produce musical...
I'm on a run of five consecutive successful quarters in Ringing Room, which might be a personal record.
For quarters of Cambridge Minor I usually call three wrongs, three homes for the short block, giving 600 and a quarter peal length of 1320. Many people prefer to call something slightly shorter, and one well-known calling for a 576 is to call the tenor 4ths, wrong, home, 4ths, wrong, three...
I have written before about how following the coursing order can help with remembering a composition, and here is another example.
On Monday we are going for a quarter of Bristol with Alex Frye (it's going to be on Ringing Room because we currently have a local lockdown in...
Three years after our last attempt at Grandsire Caters, today I called a quarter in Ringing Room. It took us a little while to get into it (actually it took us a little while even to get started, because we met with seven people of whom two were expecting...
We rang a peal of London Major on Monday, which was a satisfying achievement. It's not at all easy, and everyone did well. Conducting from a pair other than the tenors was a challenge for me, and afterwards I realised that it completed the Standard 8 as conductor on working...
For the first time ever, we failed to complete a single quarter peal at a Scottish Handbell Day. And yet, it was a very successful event. How are both of those statements true?
We have been spreading the conducting load around a little lately, in an effort to develop our...