COMPARISON IN ENGLISH STYLE “IN-HAND” AND “OFF-TABLE” RINGING TECHNIQUES

There are two basic techniques of ringing handbells and a host of variations based on them. The most common method used by teams with handbell sets up to two octaves is the “in hand” method and the most common technique used by teams with sets greater than two octaves is the “off table” method. However the style of ringing which you choose to adopt need not be governed by the size of the handbell set which you have, for both methods have advantages and disadvantages.

IN-HAND RINGING

This ringing method is as it sounds. Each member of the team throughout the piece of music holds on to the bells to which he/she has been allocated. The handbell clapper swings in only one arc thus provided two handbells are held with their clappers at right angles to each other they can be rung independently with one hand. Using such a method a person can handle up to four bells, two in each hand. Teams using this style of ringing usually possess two and a half octaves of bells or less. This is because with a larger set (a full five octave set has 61 bells) at least fifteen people would be needed and the number of times some of them would ring during a piece of music would be minimal. The in-hand technique goes back about 400 years and is the one in which the numerical system (developed over the same period) is most commonly found.

OFF-TABLE RINGING

Here again the words describe the actions. With off-table ringing the bells are laid on a table or tables which have previously been padded with foam rubber and a table cloth. The bells allocated to a particular ringer are set out in front of him/her on the table usually, although not necessarily, in the rough form of a piano keyboard. Because of the space required it is not usual to have more than two ringers sharing a piece of music. As the notes to which the ringers has been allocated appear on the music so he/she picks up the appropriate bells from the table and rings them. Unless a bell is needed to be rung twice in quick succession, the bells are rung on the "up" stroke. With this style of ringing one ringer can look after up to fifteen or so bells depending upon how often they play in a piece of music. Traditionally off-table music is written staff notation. Ringers seldom have more than two consecutive diatonic notes and thus their allocation of notes often spans more than an octave. This is because of the need for bells in a run to be allocated to several ringers so that the run can be rung quickly and evenly, unless the team is using a “long set” of bells. The notes allocated to each ringer therefore are usually picked out on the ringer’s music with a coloured felt tipped pen for ease of reading. “Long sets” of bells, traditionally found in the north of England where the off-table style was first developed, typically consist of 5 chromatic octaves in C, 4 duplicate chromatic octaves in G and sometimes 2 or 3 triplicated chromatic or diatonic octaves, in C or G. With “long sets” of bells ringers are usually allocated consecutive bells, and if they cannot ring them in a particular phrase then the ringers with the duplicate or triplicate bells do so.

AMERICAN STYLE

This style of ringing is a mixture of the two English styles and, as its name suggests, is used by at least 90% of all American, Japanese and Korean teams. Although the bells (usually 3-5 octaves) are set out on tables, each ringer tends to look after four bells only (four consecutive chromatic notes) holding one bell in each hand and only occasionally substituting a semitone. American style music is written in staff notation and the bells are rung on the down (or out) stroke.

Philip Bedford ©1986

Webmaster:  Drew Sullivan - webmaster@handbells.org.au