Adventures in directing

I took over directing our church's handbell choir six weeks ago. Tonight we were working on Christmas music that'll be performed in worship in ten days. They're doing a setting of What Child is This that should be gentle and flowing, but sounded dull and stompy instead. Despite having the notes basically correct, the tempo kept dragging and the melody didn't sing.

When I've had that problem on keyboards, teachers suggested playing in a completely different style or tempo to break the mental block. So I asked the ringers to bear with me... and instructed them to thumb-damp, which creates a muted staccato sound, and set a very fast tempo. I told them we'd only do the first two pages. They were laughing as we started off. When I stopped after two pages, one person said it was really helping, and asked to keep going, and the others chimed in, so we played the whole piece that way. It slowed down a bit, but not to the previous slog.

After finishing the piece, we went back and played it with traditional ringing, and at a more appropriate tempo-- and finally the music sang and danced! We played it three more times, putting polish on specific spots. The last time, several ringers said "wow!" after the last chord.

It was incredibly satisfying to achieve that transformation!