Wrong Foot Forward is our latest handbell arrangement for 8 bells. If you’re looking for a fun challenge in 7/8, this could be the piece for you!
More information about the music
Wrong Foot Forward was written by Sarah Allen and Brian Finnegan of the Anglo-Irish band Flook. We arranged it with their kind permission. It’s a slip jig with a difference, and we’ve enjoyed learning it!
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus. We also have lots of other Irish jigs, hornpipes and traditional tunes. If you’re looking for music to dance to, you might find it on Choraegus!
Please note that Choraegus handbell music comes to you as a PDF file. This means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. If you haven’t bought music from us before, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this in an attempt to make the purchase process straightforward and stress-free.
Any questions?
We’re always happy to answer any questions about buying or playing our music. We put together a list of Frequently-Asked Questions, so you might like to look there first. If you don’t find the answer you need, please let us know!
While we were in Soledad for our #Pinnacles15 adventure, we played through some of our brand new, unpublished pieces. Come Christians, Join to Sing is one of these new pieces.
We didn’t want to annoy other hotel guests by playing handbells in our room. So we decided to find another practice location instead. We chose the pretty church of Our Lady of Solitude in Soledad. We played outside the church, as the sun went down and the light became poorer and poorer. Yes, it was pretty, and fairly quiet. No, it was not easy to see our music!
Here’s Come, Christians, which actually isn’t completely new to us. We’ve played it a couple of times recently in church services. For some unknown reason, we completely forgot to record or publish it until now. It’s a fun and lively arrangement of the Spanish hymn tune Madrid.
Would you like to play this arrangement?
If you’d like to play Come Christians, Join to Sing, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
If you haven’t bought music from Choraegus before, we recommend reading our step-by-step guide. Your purchase (pay once) entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full details.
Any questions?
If you have any questions, please get in touch, and we’ll be happy to help!
Unlike many of our handbell friends, we didn’t make it to this year’s National Seminar – Pinnacle – in Dallas, Texas. We read lots of news about this exciting event on Facebook. The whole thing was so awesome that it even had its own hashtag on social media – #Pinnacle15.
We’re not the kind of people to sit around and sulk because we were missing out on all the fun in Texas. Instead, we decided to have a handbell adventure of our own here in California. We packed our bells and equipment into the car, and away we went!
Here we are at our destination – PINNACLES!
Our very own handbell event
We checked in at a hotel in the nearby town of Soledad, and our handbell event – #Pinnacles15 – began.
Here’s a picture of the church where we held our Friday evening duet session. We played through some new and unpublished music outside the church of Our Lady of Solitude.
And here’s our opening night dinner. Hey, put your phone away, Larry!
Here’s Larry wearing our event t-shirt:
Here are some of our bells in the hotel room:
Here’s Carla wearing her “Hug Larry if you love Tico Tico” shirt:
Larry held a handbell polishing session:
Wait. Handbell polishing? THAT’S not how you do it, Larry!
Here’s Larry wearing his “Kiss me if you love Tico Tico” shirt. These shirts were worn by handbell musicians from Area 12 at Distinctly Bronze West in February 2015.
Here’s Carla, showing her skills at multi-tasking as she works on music for the Bay View Week of Handbells while drinking coffee!
We enjoyed the opportunity to do some sightseeing in the area too. Here’s a picture of the Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, where we played some of our duets inside and outside the chapel on Saturday morning:
And here we are at the Mission San Juan Bautista, which we visited on Saturday afternoon:
Our handbell event was over far too quickly, because we had to be home on Sunday morning, to play duets in a church service in San Jose. But we had a fun couple of days – and you can see more photos from our trip on our Facebook page!
We’ve had lots of fun with our eight-bell music. Sometimes it’s also fun to branch out and expand a little. Here’s some new music for twelve bells!
Of course, we can only play four bells each at one time. It’s a problem when we suddenly have 12-bell music, and don’t have a hope of playing it on our own! That’s when we turn to J.C for help. J.C. doesn’t do this stuff on a regular basis, but he has plenty of musical talent, and very little fear of scary handbell music situations. After all, he used to play in Low Ding Zone!
On this occasion we didn’t have a lot of time to spend together. We decided to read through the music, and record as many pieces as we could in as short a time as possible.
Here are the resulting videos from our recent sight-reading sessions. They’re all from either the first or second attempt at playing them. For that reason, the following demonstrations are far from polished. However, they should give you an idea of how the new pieces could sound with a bit more rehearsal!
Although we’re playing these pieces as a four-in-hand trio, they could also be played with up to 6 people, with just 2 bells each. Click on the titles if you’d like to find out more about each piece.
Have you ever heard about the tradition of “love padlocks”? A couple of years ago, we read about a bridge in Paris, France. This bridge was a famous location for couples to place padlocks known as “love locks”. We read more – and found out that a “love lock” is a padlock that a happy couple can lock onto a bridge or fence, as a symbol of their love. The lock usually has names or initials on it. By tradition, the key is thrown away, to show that the happy couple’s love will last forever.
We read that there are “love locks” locations in many places across the globe. Sometimes the local authorities view the locks as a public nuisance, and remove them. However, in other places, the padlocks are considered a romantic tourist attraction, popular with locals and visitors alike.
Finding a love lock of our own
Being a pair of hopeless romantics, we didn’t want to let an opportunity pass us by! We weren’t making any plans to visit Paris any time soon, so we looked online for a “love locks” location closer to home. There was a place that looked perfect – a purpose-built structure at the Museum of Art in Los Gatos, California.
We ordered an engraved padlock from a company called “Make Love Locks”, and this is what it looked like. Note the extreme purpleness:
A place for our love lock
On Valentine’s Day 2014, we drove to Los Gatos to lock our padlock in place. We found the Museum of Art, and saw a fence-like structure, with some padlocks on!
We locked our padlock in place, but didn’t do the traditional thing of throwing away the key. If we ever needed to remove the padlock, we’d prefer to do it without having to hack it apart! Here is the padlock in place, in all its purple glory:
Fast forward to June 2015…
We read online that authorities had removed 45 tons of love padlocks from the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. Apparently, the weight of the locks had been bringing down parts of the fencing on the bridge. We were very relieved that we hadn’t put our padlock there! It seemed like a fun idea to go back to Los Gatos and check that our lock was still in place.
We arrived at the Art Museum late in the afternoon, and headed straight for the love locks fencing. Where was our purple padlock?
We had a few moments of panic, until we looked more closely at some of the padlocks in front of us. Suddenly we saw it! Of course, we’d been looking for purple. Sadly, our padlock hasn’t fared very well in the strong sunshine, and has faded to more of a lilac-grey. Still, we were relieved to see it, and glad that we could still read the words on it.
Do you have a love padlock too?
So, that’s the story of our love padlock. We hope to go back and visit it again some day! If you and your partner have a love padlock of your own somewhere, why not let us know on our Facebook page. We’d love to see a photo too!
What do you do when it’s the Fourth of July, and you’ve finished eating party food and having fun with family and friends? The answer is… play handbell duets, of course!
An impromptu handbell duet performance
We were in Hayward, California for a family gathering, and we decided we needed to burn off some of the calories we’d consumed at lunch time. We were driving in the direction of home, and noticed the Chapel of the Chimes. Suddenly looked like a great location for a Concert With No Audience!
The Chapel of the Chimes is a 61-acre cemetery, crematorium and funeral home complex. It didn’t appear that we’d be disturbing anyone with our music, so we set up our table and bells. We played duets for around forty minutes! It was a great opportunity to play through some of the music for our visit to Los Altos Lutheran Church the following day. We also brought out some of the older pieces we hadn’t played for a very long time!
We had the usual interesting challenges that go with outdoor performances – a strong breeze, traffic noise, and even some festive firecrackers! The location and the sunshine also made it a very stripy-looking performance, as you can see from the video!
The following pieces are on the video:
America, the Beautiful
Come, Christians, Join to Sing
Drink to Me Only
Beautiful Dreamer
A Mighty Fortress
Moreton Bay
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Danny Boy
Botany Bay
Earth and All Stars
I Need Thee Every Hour
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
Allegro
We hope you enjoyed our handbell duets at the Chapel of the Chimes. All the pieces we played are available (or coming soon!) from Choraegus. If you’d like to book us for a performance with an audience, please let us know!
If you’re looking for some new handbell pieces to enhance your worship service, but you don’t want them to take too long to learn, this collection could be the answer. If you’re part of a duet, trio or quartet, or your handbell choir is enthusiastic but small in number, these hymns could be what you’re looking for!
The hymns included in this second collection are:
All Creatures of Our God and King
Just As I Am
All the Way My Savior Leads Me
It is Well with My Soul
Amazing Grace
Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
Praise Him! Praise Him!
Would you like to play these arrangements?
If you’d like to purchase and download this hymn collection for your group to play, it’s available from Choraegus. Each of the hymns is also available separately.
Please note that Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded as PDF files. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything by mail. Please read our licensing agreement for full details. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to make the purchase process stress-free for you!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, you might like to check our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
The weekend is here, and it’s time for some more new handbell music! Here’s our 8-bell arrangement of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; one of the best loved hymns of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. Martin Luther wrote the melody and words around 1529.
If you’d like to play A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.
This arrangement has no bell-sharing, no picking-up of accidentals during the piece, and no need for tables. It’s suitable for 2-4 ringers.
Information about buying Choraegus handbell music
Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials.
Please also note that our music is designed as downloadable PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide, designed to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
We were recently in Philadelphia to perform our concert with Philadelphia Bronze – our first-ever visit to Philadelphia! This seemed like an ideal time for a tour of the Malmark handbell factory. It’s the place where our handbells were made!
The Malmark Bellcraftsmen factory is located in Plumsteadville, PA. We were strangers to the area, but still managed to get on the right road and find the place we were looking for. This big sign helped a lot:
Our tour started in a room full of history. We were able to see the “1st production” Malmark handbell, made in December 1974, and a selection of various handbells made many years ago and in other countries. Our tour guide, Martha, talked about the process of making the bells, starting from the design itself, where the sound and overtones are determined by the shape, diameter and wall thickness of the bell. Handbells are made of bronze; 80% copper and 20% tin. You can read about the casting process at www.malmark.com.
The smallest and largest handbells ever made!
Here’s a picture of the largest and smallest bells ever made by Malmark; the G0 and the C9.
Larry’s a bass bell specialist, and he was pleased to be allowed to try playing the G0 bell – with great care! People have observed that it sounds more like a gong than a bell.
We visited the machine shop next, and admired the obvious skill and dedication needed to operate the lathe and tune the bells in the next part of the tour. It’s precision work, and a fascinating process to watch. We have to admit that all those golden, gleaming turnings – the shavings from the bells, which sparkled all over the machinery – made us think of Christmas!
The polishing department was an exciting place! It was impressive to see the difference between the bell at the start of the process and after machine-polishing.
So many shiny bells!
We discovered that walking into a huge room full of bells can be an awe-inspiring experience. Was Carla the first person to CRY when she saw this? We don’t know, but ohhh… so many bells! So much bronze! So much SHINY!
Skilled and dedicated people
Something that really impressed us at the Malmark factory was the obvious skill and dedication of the people working there. It’s great to meet people who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the work they’re doing. They are all aware of the important part they play in the creation of the finished product. If we lived near Plumsteadville, we’d definitely want to work there!
We found out that bells can be “rejected” at any stage of the production process. This can even happen in the very final stages, when they’ve already gone through several stages of tuning, been polished and given their handles and clappers. Some of the rejected bells are returned to the foundry to be melted down again, while others become beautiful gifts.
Others are not so fortunate and end up gathering dust, as makeshift doorstops.
Bass handbells!
Next… those great big bass bells. Larry calls them “aluminum”, and Carla tries hard not to call them “aluminium” (there’s a subtle US/UK difference there!) . Whatever you call them, they’re large, and they start off very heavy before some of the weight has been tuned out of them. For the last few years, Larry has played these aluminum bells at the Bay View Week of Handbells, which takes place in Michigan every August. That’s where his t-shirt came from!
Malmark also manufactures Choirchime® instruments, which also go through a tuning process. It was unusual for us to see so many handchimes in one place!
We finished our tour of the Malmark factory in the Demonstration Ringing Room, where we rehearsed a few pieces for the following evening’s concert with Philadelphia Bronze.
If you’re ever in Pennsylvania, we’d recommend taking a tour of the Malmark factory. There’s so much to see there, and you’ll have the opportunity to meet a group of people who are really passionate about the instruments they create. Even if you don’t play handbells, it’s a fascinating place to visit. We took lots more photos, so please click on this link to see the complete set!
And no, Malmark didn’t pay us to write this!
Someone asked us if Malmark paid us to write this review of their factory tour – and the answer is no. We really did enjoy our time there!
We were so excited to make our first trip to Philadelphia to perform in a concert as guests of Philadelphia Bronze, a group of talented handbell musicians dedicated to excellence in the art and joy of handbell ringing.
We arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Thursday, May 28th, and had the opportunity to do some sightseeing on Friday, including a fascinating tour of the Malmark factory where our handbells were made, and a visit to the Liberty Bell. On Saturday we visited Valley Forge Park, and then spent the rest of the day meeting and rehearsing with members of Philadelphia Bronze, before the evening’s concert.
The concert took place on May 30th at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in King of Prussia, and the program was as follows, with our pieces shown in purple, and Philadelphia Bronze’s in… well, bronze-ish, perhaps:
Allegro, from Concerto in A Minor …………………. Antonio Vivaldi, arr. Larry Sue
Fear a’ Bhàta (The Boatman) ………………………… Sìne NicFhionnlaigh, arr. Larry Sue
The Butterfly ……………………………………………….. Irish slip jig, arr. Larry Sue
Fantasy on Kingsfold ……………………………………. KINGSFOLD, arr. Dean Wagner
Jazz Pizzicato ……………………………………………… Leroy Anderson, arr. Martha Lynn Thompson
Great is Thy Faithfulness ………………………………. William Runyan, arr. Larry Sue
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee ……………………….. Ludwig von Beethoven, arr. Larry Sue (with additional organ score arr. T. Paul Rosas, performed by Ross Boerner)
Silver and Bronze …………………………………………. Larry Sue (with Martha Alford, flute)
Fountains of Light, from the “St. Francis Suite” .. Kevin McChesney (Martha Alford, flute)
Grizzly’s Peak …………………………………………….. “Traditional” Irish-American jig, arr. Larry Sue
Greensleeves ………………………………………………. Traditional English melody, arr. Larry Sue
America, the Beautiful ………………………………….. Samuel A. Ward, arr. Larry Sue
Good Christian Men, Rejoice ………………………….Traditional, arr. Kimberlee F. Strepka
Spiritual Boogie! ………………………………………….. American spirituals, arr. Larry Sue
Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken ………………. F. J. Haydn, arr. Linda McKechnie (Ross Boerner, organ)
Here is a video of some of the highlights of the evening:
Our sincere thanks go to all the members of Philadelphia Bronze, who made us so welcome – with particular thanks to Martha, their director. We’re also thankful to Risë and Sarah for acting as our tour guides during our trip. We enjoyed every moment of our time in PA, and hope to go back there someday!
We’re always interested in collaborating with other groups – so if you’d like to book us to perform in a concert with your musical group, contact us and let’s find out if we can make it happen!
