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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church - Goleta, CA
The Shepherd's Bells
| The Shepherd's Bells are the adult bell choir
of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. We ring music to the glory of
God with great delight using 5 octaves of Schulmerich handbells, 4 octaves
of chimes and an assortment of other percussion instruments, when the
piece calls for it. Sometimes we ring music written for bells and
organ, or flute, trumpets, or voices. As one of our ringers
puts it, the music is "awesome!" The bell choir rehearses between
6:15 – 7:30 on Thursday evenings. Visitors are most welcome to our "open
rehearsals" to watch and listen. The bell choir rings about once
a month in both the 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. services on Sundays (and occasionally
on the Saturday evening service). Email the director
if you'd like to know when the bell choir will be ringing next. |
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 Just
what are handbells, you ask? We have 61 bronze bells that are rung
in a variety of ways, shown at the left in this neat graphic! Handbells are "traditionally" rung with one bell in
each hand -- the largest of our bells weighs 7 lbs. 2 oz. and the smallest
weighs 8 oz. Handbells also can be played with mallets (suspended
or while the bells are resting on the padded tables), can be linked together
to form a "bell tree", and can be plucked (a sound that sounds almost
like a cello pluck, with the bass bells). More than one bell can
be held in each hand too (called "four-in-hand", even though it's really
only two-in-each-hand!) It's all great fun, and wonderful music!
If you're interested in hearing the choir play, please come to a worship
service (or a Thursday rehearsal) and rejoice as we praise God together
with music!
Contact the director, Joan
Barnett, if you'd like more information!
For more infomation about handbells in general, visit the Handbell
Sidenotes web page.
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