Tag Archives: YouTube

New Music for Handbells – To God Be the Glory

Here’s our latest addition to our 8-bell hymn repertoire – a new arrangement of To God Be the Glory.

We play this as a 4-in-hand duet, of course, as there are only two of us. However, there are no special techniques required, and it’s suitable for 2-4 ringers.

Would you like to play this arrangement?

If you’d like to play To God Be the Glory, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.

When you buy handbell music from Choraegus, please note that it will come to you as a PDF file. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music scores, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchase of this 8-bell piece entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your handbell group. Don’t pay for more copies than you need to!

If you haven’t bought music from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this to take you through the process in a stress-free way.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, please check our Frequently-Asked Questions, in case the answer is there. If you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

To God Be the Glory - 8-bell

The 2015 Bay View Week of Handbells Starts Today!

Bay View 2015 copy

Today marks the first day of the 2015 Bay View Week of Handbells! The next four days will be full of music at the John M. Hall Auditorium, as more than a hundred handbell musicians rehearse together under the direction of Carl Wiltse.

You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our recent post about the Bay View Week of Handbells and taking a look at our gallery of photos.

Come to the concert!

If you’re in the area, and you’d like to attend the free concert, there’s no need to book tickets in advance. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 8:00pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund. You should plan to arrive in plenty of time to get good seats, because it’s a popular concert!

Here’s a recording from last year’s Week of Handbells – it’s Larry’s original composition A Snail’s Pace.

As usual, Pierpont Productions will make a professional recording of the concert. If you’d like your own copy of the recording, you can order one from Pierpont Productions at 231-347-4488. Alternatively, fill out the order envelope available on the day of the concert.

We’d love to see you at the 2015 Bay View Week of Handbells!

New Music for Handbells – Praise Him! Praise Him!

We interrupt our preparations for the Bay View Week of Handbells… to bring you a new 8-bell piece. Here’s Praise Him! Praise Him! This one is fun to play! We recorded it on a beautiful, sunny day in Los Altos.

Would you like to play this arrangement?

If you’d like to play this piece, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus. We play it as a duet, since there are only two of us, but it’s suitable for 2-4 ringers.

Please note that Choraegus handbell music will come to you as a PDF file. You’ll be responsible for printing your own copies of the score, and won’t receive anything in the mail. If you’re new to buying our music, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this with pictures, to help make the purchasing process as stress-free as possible!

Your purchase of this piece entitles you to print up to 4 copies of the music for your handbell group. Please don’t pay for more copies than you need!

Any questions?

If you have questions, you’re welcome to check our Frequently-Asked Questions, and you might find the answer there. If not, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!

Praise Him Praise Him - handbells

New Music for Handbells – Wrong Foot Forward

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!

Wrong Foot Forward - handbells

New Music for Handbells – Come Christians, Join to Sing

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!

More Music for Twelve Bells!

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.

Farandole

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

Morning Has Broken

My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

(with apologies to the rather surprised-looking lady who appears in the background at around 1:20!)

O Worship the King

Shenandoah

There is a Fountain

Any questions?

If you have any questions about buying or playing Choraegus handbell music, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!

Music for twelve bells - Choraegus
Choraegus – Bringing Music to the People

Handbell Duets at the Chapel of the Chimes, Hayward

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!

handbell duets at the Chapel of the Chimes

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!

New Music for Handbells – our Second “Surprisingly Easy” Hymn Collection

Following on from our first Surprisingly Easy™ Eight-Bell Hymn Collection – here is a new collection! Once again, it’s all the music, but without the twiddly bits.

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!

Hymn Collection - 2nd surprisingly easy handbell music
Choraegus – Bringing Music to the People

New Music for Handbells – A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

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!

New Music for Handbells – Greensleeves (with Squirrel)

Greensleeves is one of our current favorite 8-bell arrangements. We performed it for the first time at the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Conference in May this year, and again at our concert with Philadelphia Bronze.

Greensleeves is a traditional English folk song. The melody is frequently heard in the USA as the popular Christmas carol What Child Is This. If you’d like to play this piece, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.

This video was recorded during one of our rehearsals in February – and what makes this video special for us is the appearance (just after the first minute) of a squirrel in the background.

That squirrel was a sweet little distraction throughout our rehearsal that day, and made several appearances to pose for photos!

Greensleeves for handbells

How to purchase the sheet music

If you’d like to play Greensleeves, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. 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!