Happy New Year! January begins and with it new beginnings, a crisp winter landscape is your canvas to paint on, full of new possibilities. As you look to the second half of your ringing season now is the time to look towards new challenges and opportunities for your bell choir. Is it time to try something new-like processing into the worship service while playing, ringing a call to worship prior to the prelude, or taking the step to add an obligato or just chords to a few stanzas of a hymn. These "service music" bell additions don't just have to happen when the bell choir is already playing in the service, you can add them to a service as standalone ringing opportunities. These appearances help your congregation understand that the bells can be an integral part of the worship experience beyond the anthem. So, in this New Year, if you have been an anthem only bell choir, I challenge you to step up to ringing beyond the anthem. If you have already been ringing beyond the anthem why not challenge your ringers to try something different and new outside your current routine. One idea I have buzzing around my head is a marching bell choir. I have been reading the Mark Schweizer "Liturgical Mystery" series, in "The Organist Wore Pumps" a marching bell choir is featured in the St. Germaine Christmas Parade-I thought why not? Ashland has an annual Festival of Lights parade the Friday after Thanksgiving, a few 12 Bell Christmas pieces would work wonderfully-short, not too heavy of bells, tunes well known to listeners and ringers. So, this fair warning to the bell choir I direct-keep your Friday after Thanksgiving open as we will be marching in the Festival of Lights Parade. Happy 2015 and here is to many wonderful ringing experiences in the coming year!

     Whew! Christmas is over. If any of you are like me the past 6-8 weeks were a blur: rehearsals, performances, planning, programs, publicity, extra rehearsals; and then, wait, actual Christmas?   The season for a musician can be murder. And then ... ah ... break time.

     What? Break time is over? Wait a minute, you can't be serious? Already? Ok, now what?

     So January is here and it's back to work. But doing what? How can our church bell choirs be effective in January in just a couple of rehearsals? Resources and thinking out of the box, that's how.

     How many of us actually use the Tips and Tools section of our Overtones? I know I rarely do, which is silly. For one thing it's FREE! The music provided is always timely and relatively easy to prepare. I took a look at the Nov/Dec issue and came up with 5 ways I could use this month's version: Fanfare and Allegro by Jim Smith.

• As special music: I know this seems obvious, but we often think our special music selection has to be hot off the press or really challenging. It doesn't. This piece is 31 measures long with a built in repeat, - substantial enough for special music and easily learned by a level 3 choir in a couple of rehearsals.

• Take part of it and use as an introit or prelude:   If you have less time or a more inexperienced choir, just take the last section (start at ms. 22) and use it for a prelude/introit/postlude.

• Take another part for an offertory: Take the center section (ms.8-19) and use just the melody on a bell tree or in octaves with suspended mallets. You could repeat as many times as necessary and end with an Eb maj. chord.

• Use as a warm up: This piece is full of techniques - mallets, marts, shakes, dynamic changes. Pull a section and warm up a specific technique your choir needs work on.

• Sight reading practice: We all wish our choirs were better sight readers, but do we ever practice it?

     These are just a few ways to use this month's Tips and Tools. Think if we used each month's edition this much! We might be able to ease our budget and our stress level.

     Another great resource that I was fortunate to find in my file cabinet when I started is Five Easy Celebrations by Michael Keller. It contains five short pieces that can be used in much the same way: play just opening sections or repeat center sections to lengthen. They are big and grand sounding, but easy as can be to put together. Every director should have this in their library!

     Do you have a full piece sitting in your file cabinet that you could dissect and use part of? I am learning this from a friend of mine: the printed page is not always sacred. Take something apart and use what you can. Just think, when you do go to play the whole piece, part of it will already be learned!

     So think out of the box a little; our worship participation doesn't always have to be a full piece, especially this time of year. This is true for startup time in the fall as well. The important thing is to get back to ringing!