Churches often provide free sheet music for their bell-ringers, although they tend to be of the much larger variety.
There are a number of websites that offer free sheet music for hand bells with www.freesheetmusic.net/ and www.music-scores.com/handbells/composer.php a couple of examples.
Musicians can listen to any of their works free of charge and also view the contents. However, only members of the site can download and print the works marked with free music sheet icons.
They have been created to play the music to a good style and can be used to help improve your skills, as well as understand the dynamics of each piece. There is a sample page for first-time visitors to see how easy it is to use the site.
As hand bells are a rather unusual musical ensemble it is no big surprise that the music scored for this particular group is unusual as well. In hand bell choirs, each player is responsible for just a few of the music's pitches rather than an instrument with its own full range of notes, so it's important for players to take a studied approach to reading and preparing their parts.
It is advisable to study the score to get a full sense of the music. Most hand bell music is written much like a piano part with all of the parts represented as stacked notes, or in a chordal notation, on a grand staff. This means that you can see all of your fellow player's parts and how they'll interact with the notes that you play. Players need to work out which notes they are responsible for once the conductor has handed out individual assignments they should see which pitches and octaves are marked on your bells. The octave numbers refer to which octave the pitch would be on the piano; as a point of reference, middle C is ""C4"" with higher-pitched octaves having larger numbers and lower octaves having lower numbers.
There are a number of websites that offer free sheet music for hand bells with www.freesheetmusic.net/ and www.music-scores.com/handbells/composer.php a couple of examples.
Musicians can listen to any of their works free of charge and also view the contents. However, only members of the site can download and print the works marked with free music sheet icons.
They have been created to play the music to a good style and can be used to help improve your skills, as well as understand the dynamics of each piece. There is a sample page for first-time visitors to see how easy it is to use the site.
As hand bells are a rather unusual musical ensemble it is no big surprise that the music scored for this particular group is unusual as well. In hand bell choirs, each player is responsible for just a few of the music's pitches rather than an instrument with its own full range of notes, so it's important for players to take a studied approach to reading and preparing their parts.
It is advisable to study the score to get a full sense of the music. Most hand bell music is written much like a piano part with all of the parts represented as stacked notes, or in a chordal notation, on a grand staff. This means that you can see all of your fellow player's parts and how they'll interact with the notes that you play. Players need to work out which notes they are responsible for once the conductor has handed out individual assignments they should see which pitches and octaves are marked on your bells. The octave numbers refer to which octave the pitch would be on the piano; as a point of reference, middle C is ""C4"" with higher-pitched octaves having larger numbers and lower octaves having lower numbers.
