Instead, hold the mallet shaft loosely between your thumb and index finger, using the other fingers just to control where the shaft goes. When you strike the bell, allow the mallet head to bounce off the casting naturally. The purpose of the Shake is to produce a long sustained sound which can vary in loudness. Bells are percussion instruments, after all, and the sound begins diminishing immediately after the strike. By striking repeatedly, the ringer can sustain the loudness across the length of a long note, or even get louder.
Rapid shakes can also be a poor-man's trill.
In this technique, the bell is rung as normal. The hardest things are touching the bell to the pad hard enough to cause a change in tone without either damping completely or causing the clapper to strike the casting, making for a mart instead of a wa-wa. Up arrow followed by down arrow Another dangerous move. In this technique, after the bell is rung it is swung at more or less arm length to a position next to the leg, and then back up to normal ringing position. This produces a small Doppler shift, and sounds a little like swinging tower bells.