Two.
We're going to play the bell so I'm just telling you off the air.
Our church has a handbell group and when they come on, my wife always says, you're not
going to miss a sit-down because she knows I love watching them.
I love listening, but I just love watching how they do it with the bells.
Now, I told you one woman at the left, my left, has four different bells.
The guy at the right's got two.
I can handle two, but four and she never looks at the bells when she picks him up.
And if you pick up the wrong bell and you ring it, it's got to sound really bad to
the audience.
So how long have you been doing that for?
I'm coming up on 10 years of directing this handbell choir.
It's been a great time.
When I came into doing this, I'm actually a music teacher and I played trumpet.
So when I came into this church, I'm unpleasant, saying, hey, we need a trumpet player.
I'm here.
Let me know.
I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds great.
What about directing handbells?
I've never done that before, but I've been doing it for 10 years now, so it's been choir
ride.
When we get a jazz band here at Mount Pleasant Lutheran Church, we'll let you know.
Right now we need a handbell guy.
Okay.
So how many people do you have in the handbell choir itself?
Our handbell choir is 11 members, typically anywhere from 8 to 12 members is usually
about the max for most handbells in this area.
But for this festival, we've got five different churches performing with us.
We have almost 50 ringers going to be ringing at this festival.
Now when you set up, who's going to ring which bells?
If somebody says, oh, I want to handle four of them, do you look at that person say, no,
you can't handle four.
Let's move on.
I mean, do you, I mean, is certain type of person can handle four bells at one time?
Yeah, usually, you know, a lot of these people are usually instrumentalists.
You know, if they were like a piano player before or maybe they played percussion and band
before, you know, they have really good reading skills and, you know, all that kind of stuff
in.
Yeah, I'll be like, yeah, sure.
Take on some more bells.
You know, some other people, not so much, you know, depends on their ability.
So, yeah, this really depends on how they're feeling about and able to read the music.
I was telling you off the air too, I took piano lessons and when you do piano, every note
you can have to read, because every note's a different sound.
When you do, when you read music for hand bells, is it like reading music on a piano scale
on the sheet music, or is it just, you know, ding, ding, ding.
I mean, how does that work?
I never saw sheet music for hand bells.
Yeah, so essentially it really is like a piano sheet music.
There's a treble cleft in the bass cleft, just like a piano, except, you know, normally
piano is going to go with the ten fingers, so depending on how much of an octave that
is for those hands, for hand bells, we can have two, three, four, even five octaves.
So, there's a ton of notes on the page, but essentially the player just needs to worry
about their two notes or three notes or whatever they're playing.
All the different terminology and all the different effects that we do during the hand bells
when we play, the music can get kind of, you know, busy, but essentially just worrying
about your couple notes and everyone does their part and it's like a huge piano with
a hand bell.
That's a good way.
Look at it.
It's a huge piano with 15 people.
Right.
Okay.
Okay, so I also noticed when they're doing the hand bells, at certain times they hold
it straight up, so the bell top is facing the ceiling.
Other times they smash it on the covered table to get a sound effect.
Now, what is it when they hold it straight up, does that hold the sound a little longer?
Yeah.
So, I mean, we have, there's a clapper inside of the bell and every time it strikes the
bell vibrates.
So, depending on how loud or how long we want the bell to play, we'll have to hold
it at a certain angle.
So, when you're talking about hitting a table, all of our tables usually have foam on
it.
And so, there's special effects called like a maritalato where we strike the table and
it kind of gives them a plunking sound.
Yeah, yeah.
Or maybe you want a, yeah, or maybe you want a shorter sound, we'll use mallets or
we'll put a thumb on the back of the bell so it's a little more cicada sounding.
So, there's a lot of cool effects that we can make for a simple hand bell.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Now, to get the difference, I noticed the woman on my left who has had the four bells,
they're smaller, the guy who's all the way on the right who's got two, a lot bigger.
So, what is that like a bass sound, a deeper sound, I just noticed the different sides
of the bells.
Right, yeah.
The bigger of the instrument, the lower the sound.
So, usually on the right side, that's where we'll have our bass bells and so they get
quite large.
So, yeah, you're going to need some muscles to ring those guys and then all the way
on the left side, we'll have the really tiny bells and those are the extremely high
bells.
So, don't need as much muscle for that, so depends on what bell you're playing.
Now, how do they look at you, the conductor and the sheet music at the same time, and
I never see them look at the bells, I watch that gal on the left because on my left
because she's got four and she just amazes me as she keeps and she does it very fast
too.
And you got to put them down in the exact order you picked them up.
If you don't, you got a problem in a few moments.
She always puts them that she doesn't bang them into each other.
She never takes her eye off the music.
So, how do they watch you, the music and the bells at the same time?
Well, you know, that's the dream of having them look at me for a once in a while to make
sure they're all together.
You know, it really depends on the experience of the bells and the players.
But yeah, looking at the music, they should have a good understanding of their bells.
Like I said, those are like piano keys.
Typically, they'll have two bigger bells which are like the white keys, the main bells
that they're going to play the most.
And the black keys are kind of like the sharps and flats, so sometimes they will have to
play those, sometimes they won't.
So, they're kind of honed in on their two bells and then sometimes they'll have to shift
to a different bell, depending on the key of the music.
But yeah, the hope and the goal is that they would look up a little bit so they know
where the tempo is.
So, they're all staying together, but yeah, sometimes they're glued to that music, really
depends on the player.
And these are specially manufactured bells.
These aren't the bells you're ring, dinner time, you know, that's not the same bell.
These are specially manufactured.
I think they're probably expensive too.
Oh, very, very expensive, yeah, once you have them, they'll last you a lifetime.
If you take care of them.
Right.
Okay.
Let's review here.
We've got the, it's the Southeast Wisconsin ELCA and Bell Festival Concert.
It's coming up this Saturday, April 18th.
The concert is free, but it's a free well offering type concert where you can give as much
over as little as you'd like.
It does, it would give nothing if you feel that way, but it's a free well offering.
Again, Saturday, April 18th, 2pm at Mount Pleasant Lutheran Church, it's 1700 Green Bay
Road in Racine.
Get ready for all that construction.
Oh, yeah, it's going to be fantastic.
Tell me about it.
The radio station's getting landlocked.
We're pretty soon to have to parachute me in in the morning to get around here.
Well, I am, this is very good.
I love the hand bell concerts at our church and I love listening to them.
It's very soothing and it's just beautiful to listen to.
It's very calming too.
We have a wide variety of music, like I said, we have five different churches coming
in together.
We've got pieces that are going to be played by solo churches.
We've got NASPBELL pieces.
We even got some songs with Oregon and Flutes.
I mean, it's going to be a great time.
You playing a hard day's night by the Beatles?
No, I'm weakening.
Oh, you know, next time.
We didn't have enough time for that one.
This is, people are looking forward to this.
The bells ringing 2pm Saturday, April 18th, this Saturday at Mount Pleasant Lutheran
Church.
Again, some free will offering concert and bring the family and just get ready to relax
and be soothed by some great music from the hand bell kind of 15 people.
I'm used to like four or five.
I can't imagine 15 of them.
Well, that's pretty neat.
Well, it's 50, 50.
Do you say 50 hit 50 people?
No, yeah.
Oh, what they said 15 because I'm looking at this picture here and it looks like a lot
more than 15.
Wow, 50 people, how many, that's how many bells?
It's at least 50.
I'm probably going to have at least a hundred something hand bell, but yeah, 50 ringer,
she up.
Whoa.
I got to see that.
I got to see that.
You'll have fun.
Yeah.
All right, Greg, Greg Schroeder, everybody, and he's the conductor who also plays the bells.
And again, one more time, it's the Southeast Wisconsin Eels CA Handbell Festival Concert.
50.
He said 15, 50 hand bell ringers 2 p.m.
This Saturday.
It's a free world concert at the Mount Pleasant Lutheran Church, 1700 Green Bay Road
and Racine.
Gregory, thanks for joining us.
They do appreciate it this morning.
Appreciate it.