Do you need special sheet music for handbells?

There is special sheet music set especially for handbells, but you can also use any other music as long as the tonal range fits.

If the notes are not set specifically for handbells, reading the notes can be more challenging for the players. For example, on other instruments, depending on the melodic progression, notes between treble and bass clef are sometimes notated on the auxiliary lines below the treble clef or above the bass clef. In this case, the player must keep both staves in mind. With handbell notes, on the other hand, these notes are always set on the same staff, so that the player only has to read one staff.

There are special symbols for playing techniques, these are only found on notes set for handbells.

Typical for handbell sheet music is the listing of all required notes for the piece in the so-called Handbells-Used-Chart on the first page before the actual notes for the piece. This gives you an immediate overview of which handbells are required for the piece, and you can then remove handbells that are not required from the table to have more space.

Last update on 2022-06-26 by Jörn Diedrichsen.

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