Living Water - Dissertations - Bass Ringer's Notebook - Damping A Bell

Damping A Bell

Once the bell's sounding, you eventually are going to arrive at a point where you have to make it stop. When we learn to ring smaller bells (usually C5 or higher), we learn to shoulder damp by touching the lip of the bell to our clothing there. This works nicely for small bells, but not so well for large ones. The vibration of a large casting can't be killed rapidly by just touching its lip - there's just too much metal there for it to be silenced in that fashion. A quick damp on a bass bell requires a couple additional factors: 1) you must damp much more of the surface, and 2) you must use firmer pressure for a longer period of time.

It turns out that the waist of the casting is the best place to damp it, therefore, the ideal damping surface will match its shape. This gives rise to the general rule "Big round bells are damped on big round places" (when I state this maxim in a workshop, invariably someone announces that they are Quite Proud of their big round places...). Here are a few ways to damp a bass bell:

• Shoulder damp: This is very similar to the shoulder damp for smaller bells, except that you must roll the casting into yourself to damp its waist.

• Side damp: Roll the waist of the casting into your side firmly. You'll probably want to be careful of hitting your ribs, because getting whacked there with six or eight pounds of metal can be a less-than-fun experience.

• Hug damp: Essentially, this is a shoulder damp which is augmented by putting your other arm around the front of the casting. My personal preference when doing this is to use the "ridge" part of my hand (the side of the index finger facing the thumb) to do the damping from the other side.

• Table damp: I know that your table is anything but round, but you'll need to know how to do this in those passages where you have to pick 'em up and put 'em down rapidly. To execute a table damp, push the casting firmly into the pad until you've stopped the sound. However, the fact of the matter is that often you'll need to get on to the next bell more quickly than that, so a fairly standard practice is to put the bell on the pad early and allow the residual vibration to die out - if you do this well, the sound will stop at the end of the note.
  

One thing I'd add to the damping section is the added use of foam "crescents" for the bass bells to nestle in.....they also help keep the bells from rolling off the end of the table (as one did once with a friend who was vigorously malletting a slightly higher bell...the bass bass simply eased its way off the end.)   The cresent also completely damps the waist section of the bell when table damped.   Cheers! Kath Note: The Raleigh Ringers also call them "bell cradles", and they work nicely unless you're changing layouts in transit and need to move the cradles - they tend to grip corduroy table covers a bit. And, yes, I remember a time when a piece of foam would have kept our C#3 from rolling - S-L-O-W-L-Y - off the end of the table...

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