Hi, I’m Daniel Gibby. I love composing and arranging for hand bells.
I have always enjoyed music. I started learning to play the piano when I was 5 years old. I also sing and play the organ. I sort of kind of play the guitar, bass guitar, drums and I got to try out a harp for the first time last year. That was a lot of fun!
In 2010 my wife said I needed a hobby. 🙂 She also found an advertisement in the newspaper that said the Bells at Temple Square was holding auditions. My journey began!
Having a background in piano playing is very helpful for playing handbells. In case you don’t know how handbell choirs play music, here’s a quick rundown. The sheet music looks like a piano piece, except there are many more types of markings on notes for different articulations. Each ringer is assigned a number of bells and rings only those notes. When you play the piano you can control everything: tempo, dynamics, articulation & space between notes. When you play with a bell choir, you rely on those around you, and those around you rely on you. It is very technically challenging, which is why it is a blast!
Bell Choirs
I began playing handbells in 2010 with the Bells on Temple Square and started composing and arranging shortly after. I was a part of BoTS through 2017 when I felt directed to take a 3 year sabbatical.
The Bells on Temple Square was renamed to the Bells at Temple Square, so I decided I needed to come back to be a member of BTS instead of only part of BOTS. Sometime I’m hoping we play a cover of Dynamite (I’m mostly joking, but it would be pretty cool!)
Besides practicing bells every week for over 10 years, I have also helped teach bass bell ringing classes at several Back to Bells fall tune-ups, and have also helped with try outs for the Bells at Temple Square.
In addition to time with the Bells at Temple Square, I have also participated with Bells of Joyful Sound with Mary Moffett and most recently the Bridgecreek Bells with Scott Hixson. Through the years, I have performed at some wedding receptions, in church services and in many concerts.
Malmark Bells Sound Font
As I created arrangements, compositions and transcriptions over the years, I discovered that I could never create a good digital midi sound from the pieces I created. I started out using the orchestra’s Tinkerbell sound pitched down an octave… boy was that terrible! I moved on to a pretty good Bells soundfont I found, but it isn’t the Malmark bells I have come to love.
So after many years of searching, I finally decided to delve into the world of creating a sound font. I recorded individual bells in my home studio, but found the recordings were almost too good. They were so loud and pure that every little overtone that you can hear when you plan an individual bell on its own came through and overwhelmed the overall sound.
So I tried a different approach and recorded bells again using just my cellphone, holding it in one hand at arms length, while ringing the bell with the other hand at arms length. Now the bells recordings were consistent with each other since I was playing them at a consistent 6 foot distance (I’m 6′ 3″ tall) and the pitches that came through were a little less full of overtones.
Then I ran the recordings through Audacity with a few filters and used a Soundfont creator to create my first sound font. I recorded the bells again while malleting, and again while marting, and singing bell, etc. I’m still working on recording them for thumb damps and plucks.
Having a good bells soundfont makes all the difference in the quality of the output of my composition software. It takes a lot of work to make sure that I use the correct font for each type of ringing, but the end result is well worth it. It still doesn’t sound like a live recording, but I’m getting much closer!
As you can see, this is a lot of work, and still a work in progress. If you would like to buy the Malmark bells soundfont or support me in the process, I would really appreciate it. Maybe eventually we can scourge the world of bad bell recordings on all of the handbell music download sites!
Android Handbells Practice App
Because I already had recordings of bells, I found time during the pandemic to start a making practice app for me to be able to ring a real handbell on my android phone.
My goal is to make it so you can two-in-hand with the app and set it to whatever two bells you would hold in that hand, ringing one direction to ring one bell, and then twist your wrist to ring the other bell, like real two-in-hand ringing. It sort of works so far. I’ve got to get the geometry math right. See kids, you might use math in your real life.
If you’d like to buy the English Handbells android app, let me know. My plan is to sell it for cheap so that anyone who wants it can buy it, but I don’t want to make it free and have there need to be ads on it or something, because that is lame. I’d appreciate the support as I make it work completely. At least you can already ring a real handbell. (Not a dinner bell, not a bellhop dinger, not a cow bell, a real Malmark English Hand Bell.)