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

Tabling A Bell

Once you've lifted, rung, and damped the bell, you usually have to put it back on the table (unless you've table damped it, in which case it's already there, or you're at the end of a piece, in which case it doesn't completely matter). Here are the basic operational principles involved:

• Free fall is the easiest way to put a bell down. This, of course, is because it requires no effort on your part.
• Free fall is a really bad idea when releasing bells. If you actually do this, the bell you release will bounce, roll, fall, and even break - so don't do it!

However, there's some validity to using something close to free fall as long as 1) the bell's downward path is under control, and 2) the bell lands safely and softly on the pad. This means you have to exert some amount of force to control where the bell is going. The trick is to learn to minimize that force so that you can conserve your strength as you play. So here are a few ideas on how to put your (bass!) bells back on the table:

• Use two hands. As it is with lifting the bell, using two hands affords greater control because the load is spread between the hands. You can settle the bell wherever you need to put it, and you can make sure it behaves from both sides.
• Curl the handle into your wrist. That is, flex your wrist so that there's less tendency for that joint to pivot as you set the bell down. The best time to do this is while the bell is still vertical so that the moment-of-inertia response is perpendicular to the force of gravity - that way different muscles take each part of load - but you actually can curl the bell pretty much any time between stroke and tabling. This will allow you to use the larger arm and shoulder muscles to control the bell's landing.
• Damp the bell on your waist. This makes it easier to put the bell down smoothly because it's a smaller distance from your side to the pad than from your shoulder to the pad. An added bonus is that it's fairly natural to add a wrist curl to a waist damp as an added safety feature.
• Use your leg. If you have sufficiently good balance and muscle control, you can damp the bell, then lift a knee and let it drop onto your thigh, and then use your leg muscles to help with lifting the bell back up to the pad.
• Slide the bell down your body after a shoulder damp. This gives you more control because of the extra lateral support for the casting, and because you then have a second guide for the bell's downward path.
• Put a thumb and index finger around the edge of the disc (collar): Doing this takes advantage of the larger gripping surface of the disc's edge, and also moves your gripping point a bit farther forward toward the bell's center of mass. By the way, I've also found that this is a good method for controlling martellatos with larger bells (but remember that the prevailing theory is that you really shouldn't mart bells below G3...).

There are a few sounds to avoid as you damp bass bells:

• "Whomp": Usually is a result of an incomplete table damp. Be sure to press the casting firmly into the pad.
• "Clunk": An unintentional martellato. If this happens, you either need to control your tabling more carefully, or else you can rotate the bell 90 degrees so that the clapper swing arc is sideways to the direction in you the bell's going as you put it down (actually any significant rotation of the clapper swing direction off vertical will help, but physically 90 degree is the most effective)..
• "Clink": When you hit buttons and buckles on your clothes as you lower the bell. Be careful of what you wear when you ring!
• "Clank": A result of hitting other bells with the one you're damping. Be sure to look where you're going!