Mar 07

New Music!

We’ve just posted two new eight-bell arrangments!

“O Sacred Head” – the well-known Crucifixion hymn is here, and just in time for you to be learn it for your Good Friday service!

“Kingsfold” (aka “Oh, Sing a Song of Bethlehem”) is a fairly easy hymn arrangement that would be great for your season-end concerts (or Christmas)!

Enjoy!

Feb 13

Lenten Piece

Need an easy handbell piece for Lent? “Meditation” (formerly “Lenten Piece”) should fill the bill! It’s HMA Level 2+.

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.

Feb 03

Our Second “Surprisingly Easy” Collection

We have a new “Surprisingly Easy” collection in our catalog! For lack of a more flamboyant title, it’s called the “Surprisingly Easy Eight-Bell Collection (The Second One). Most of the selections therein are from the United Kingdom, and Waltzing Matilda fills out the set nicely. We hope you take a look at the videos, and that you’ll play the music!

Feb 02

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

A dear friend sent email today… “I’d like to purchase the pdf of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen…” Another asked whether she could get “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” – so both bass handbell ensemble arrangments are now available for various number of players.

It’s nice to have a very-easy-to-manage e-store! It’s been added! 🙂

Jan 18

Gig Time

We’re continuing to see how wonderful it is to have our own line of eight-bell pieces. Only two four-in-hand ringers are needed (or you can play them as quartets, too), and no tables are needed – just put the music on a stand, and get the bells out, and you’re rolling.

That means we can pack light, and move quickly, so we can pick up gigs without having to go through severe logistical hoops that you’d have to negotiate with a full choir. No, it’s not the same sound… but it’s a good one. Our pastor has said things like “I never knew you could get that much music out of eight bells”, for instance.

More music will be released soon – we just have to record the videos. Keep checking in!

Dec 31

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Carla and I have been really busy ringing this holiday season:

  • Twelve hours at the Salvation Army kettle. One time our relief didn’t show, so we just stayed for an extra couple of hours… and on Christmas Eve we took both two-hour shifts. We decided that ringing the usual little bell wasn’t enough, so we took our own handbells and played our eight-bell duets. Reward: By the end of our Christmas Eve shifts, people were having a bit of difficulty stuffing money in the kettle!
  • Two two-hour sessions ringing in the gift shop at the San Francisco Zoo’s “Zoo Lights” event. We had a wonderful time the first time, and even more fun the second time as people asked us about bells and how we ring them.
  • Two hours at Macy’s in Sunnyvale, CA. This was just a kind of whim, and our friend Teri coordinated our visit with her manager. We were placed near one of the customer service desks, and so were in view and earshot of lots of people as they passed by. Teri noted that there was a lot of “stealth listening” going on. 😀
  • Two of the Christmas Eve services at Los Altos United Methodist Church. We rang with the bell choir, and also added a duet at the 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. services. We love playing for the family at our home church.
  • We also contributed to Immanuel Lutheran Church’s presentation at The Meadows (Los Gatos, CA).

So now… we’re going to relax for a few hours, and then we’ll get going on our other music!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Dec 04

Advent!

Advent is here, and we’re looking forward to Christmas with anticipation. Carla and I have had a wonderful time sharing our eight-bell music with the world. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re aiming to record a video of us playing each piece when we add them to our catalog. Of course, it also means we have a lot of scores that we haven’t yet mastered completely enough to post!

However, the ones that we have posted have turned out well. We also find ourselves becoming better four-in-hand ringers because of it! If you’re a ringer, we hope that you’ll give these arrangements a try… or that you might get three of your friends to join you and play eight-bell quartets, or maybe even get your start in ringing!

And… if you’d prefer just to watch the videos, you’re welcome to visit here again and again. We promise we’ll keep posting more music… well, when we learn it! 🙂

Oct 18

Finally! Finally! :D

At long last I’ve gotten to the point of having new music to sell! It took a lot to get there… and now that Carla, my wife and ringing partner is here, we can make videos of the new eight-bell arrangements. (Other ideas are in progress for working with bigger-than-duet compositions…). You’ll find them under Ring->Eight-Bell Music.

Have fun – there’s a lot more to come!

Feb 01

Slow Goin’

I notice that life has caught up with me, and that I haven’t been here in awhile. Perhaps I’ll get to the point where I’ll be back to making progress again soon… but for now I’ll have to zip off to tend to other things! Grrrr.

Dec 03

Progress!

So far, building the Choraegus website has been a good experience. Among other things, I love how the new platform makes sweeping changes possible with a very small amount of effort. A little more effort, and you can do even more interesting things, too!

I still have to uplink my music PDFs, and add a PayPal interface, but I’m well on the way. This time, the public-downloadable PDFs will be print-locked, thereby requiring a purchase to obtain the music… but that’s not such a huge change after more than fifteen years of download-and-pay-by-honor-system operations!

Thank you to all of you who’ve been using my music over the years.