With tower-bell ringing in the District cancelled for the foreseeable future, here are a few things to do, watch or think about.
Please do send any comments, suggestions or questions.
Here's another tower photo quiz. Following on from the "Beat the Bounds" ride, I aimed to photograph the rest of the ringable towers in the District, plus any others that I passed.
This piece on Graphs looks at ways of seeing the possible connections between the rows in methods or between the lead heads in touches, by drawing diagrams in two or three dimensions.
I also recommend Sarah Hart's recent Gresham College lecture on "The Mathematics of Bell Ringing".
Here's another tower quiz. I challenged myself to "Beat the Bounds" of the District, photographing as many of the outermost ringable towers as possible, plus any others that I passed.
Here is another piece suggested by Methodoku puzzles. The clues sometimes refer to "Plain Bob Lead Ends", so I look at the various types of Lead Head (as they are formally known). I'm sure you'll be impressed by my artistic skills in the illustrations...
You might also be interested in some impressive 4-in-hand ringing of Christmas carols by the young Steeple Aston handbell ringers.
Where did the time go? Apologies again.
This article is about Palindromic Symmetry in methods. It looks at the effect this has on the blue line of the method and goes on to explore links between the bells that swap over at the half-lead change and the lead-end that results. This might be useful in solving some of the Methododku puzzles devised by Mark Davies and described in his recent webinar.
Here's the rest of the article about Twin-Hunt Methods, featuring methods where the second hunt bell is not plain hunting.
The September Central
Council YouTube competition had the theme of "Best showcase of
school or university ringing", but the playlist doesn't seem to be available
yet.
October's topic is "Most effective instructional video", which could
be handling, maintenance, rope splicing, etc.
It's always interesting to keep up with Simon Linford's blog as President of the Central Council - the latest issue (number20) is here.
Sorry about the long gap in articles; it was a bit of a shock to the system going back to school!
Anyway, here we are, with a bit about Twin-Hunt Methods, such as Grandsire. I hope to write more at a later date, about methods where the second hunt bell is not plain hunting.
The August Central Council YouTube competition had the theme of "Best video demonstrating change ringing not on tower bells" and was won by the Pillaton and St Mellion Handbell Ringers ringing a plain course of Plain Bob Triples by the lapping method. See also the article from 27th May on Lapping.
This week features a bit of history, which I hope will be of interest even to those of you who don't have links with Whittlesford and Meldreth. Cycling near Munden earlier this week, I was reminded about a Striking Competition in 1966, so today I had another ride, to take a photo at Wendens Ambo church, and here is a short account of that Competition.
This week's topic is a bit academic - Odd and Even or The Nature of Rows. However, don't let that put you off; I've missed out the exciting maths and it tells you why, among other things, you need Singles in Grandsire and Stedman Doubles, but not Plain Bob.
Recycling is good. And recycling is a vital tool in learning methods too, so that you don't have to start from scratch each time. Using bits of one method in another method is taken to the next level here, where we get new methods without any new learning to do! We look at separating methods into their work above the treble and below the treble - Above and Below.
The results, judged by Wendy and Graham Bloom, are now in for the CCCBR July YouTube competition. The theme was "Best striking on 8 bells or more" and the winner was The Bells of Bridgerule, Devon, ringing cartwheel call-changes. The Handbell Touch at the 2019 College Youths Dinner (including several familiar faces) came second. The full shortlist is here.
Here are a few comments about Calling Simple Touches. As well as looking at what to call and when to call, I also attempt to look at some of the underlying patterns in how the touches are constructed, so that they can be applied to other methods too.
This week, prompted again by the social distancing rules, I look at which combinations of bells sound best. I start off by looking at the relationships between the notes used in our rings of bells generally, but try to do this without too much musical terminology. Then I look at combinations to use within those sets. Please do let me know if you have any other favourite combinations of bells which you've tried at your towers - Music.
There is a huge wealth of educational material in the video webinars available on the St Martin's Guild website, from Plain Bob Doubles, passing the treble and the use of Methodology to Place Notaton, handbells and composing.
And the end of July saw the closing point for entries for the Central Council's YouTube competition. The theme was "Best striking on 8 bells or more" and the shortlist is here. There is some ringing from GSM, but it's by the Birmingham band. The Pipes feature again, in the handbell touch at the 2019 College Youths Dinner.
With social distancing in place as ringing cautiously restarts, Tom Ridgman suggested looking at methods that can be rung on three bells and kindly leant me his copy of the 2003 "Guide to Three-Bell Ringing", published by the Huntingdonshire Church Bell Restoration Society, edited by Ian Chandler from notes by Chris Higgins. I've also added details of many methods that have been named since then. Some of them look quite fearsome to ring, especially with the changes of speed needed when ringing on just 3 bells. The longest is Eastleach Martin, with 78 changes in the plain course, but there are many shorter and easier options to explore - see Singles methods.
I included Original briefly in my webinar "A Medley of Methods" back in May and Jonathan Agg also mentioned the method in his talk about "Short Practice Night Touches". This article looks a bit further at the method.
Apologies to those of you who have absolutely no interest in reading touches, but I am invoking the Magnus Magnusson principle of "I've started, so I'll finish" and here is the last part - Reading Touches on Higher Numbers.
As ever, please let me know if you have any questions you'd like answered, or topic requests for further Lockdown Learning articles.
Despite not being inundated with emails requesting this, here is a continuation of last week's piece on reading touches - Reading Touches of Plain Bob Minor.
Following on from Jonathan Agg's interesting discussion on Short Practice Night Touches, the website he was using to try out the touches was James Holdsworth's JSProve. To prove a touch of Plain Bob Minor, you first need to select 'Minor' for the Stage and 'Plain' for the Class, then click 'Load Method From Library'. There is a long drop-down list of methods (without spaces); find 'Plainbob' then type is a symbol to refer to it as, probably 'P', and click 'Insert Method'. Then '/' means Bob and ';' means Single.
The finalists in the Central Council YouTube competition for June have been announced. The topic was "Most unusual or interesting ringing video", which has prompted a wide variety of entries, which can be seen here. The Pipe family feature again, as well as some lapping and tapping, plus ringing at Saffron Walden. The winner will be deicided by the "Let's Ring!" youth group from Gloucestershire.
Stephen Burr recently gave an excellent introduction to calling simple touches, in Saturday's Drop-in Zoom session. Related to that, if you want to look up some other touches to call, you need to be able to understand how they are written. So this week's addition to these pages looks at the different ways touches may be presented - Reading Touches.
By the way, in case you didn't write it down, the website that Stephen used for trying out touches is part of Steve Scanlon's Change Ringing Toolkit at http://www.ringbell.co.uk/toolkit/editlead.htm. The navigation for the site is via the "hamburger", the set of three horizontal lines at the top left. You can select a method from "Popular Methods", then you'll need to come back to the touch editor page - "Lead Based Touch Editor".
Sorry for another late one.
Having enjoyed Adrian Sweeting's talk about the Standard 41 Surprise Minor methods last week (and looking forward to the second part tonight), I got to wondering about "Non-Standard" Surprise Minor methods. Have a read and make up the least standard method that you can!
I must also recommend the book "Forbidden Methods", by Karl Grave, available from the Whiting Society shop. It covers the history of various treble-dodging Minor methods, which were deemed "illegitimate" and condemned in even less flattering language, before in many cases dropping out of use. Many of these are very worth-while to ring.
Back at the end of March, as lockdown started, I wrote about dumb bells, model bells and simulators (March 25th, below). I've been interested recently to follow Steve Farmer's efforts to build himself a dumb bell, documented on YouTube. He takes us through the design, manufacture and problem-solving of the project.
One topic that was covered in Saturday's Q&A Drop-in session on jargon was the different uses of the word "Lead". As well as Leading Full, Point Leads, Leading Wrong and Leading Right, Point Leads, it can be used to refer to the section of a method which is repeated to give the plain course. Here is a bit more explanation, along with some examples.
The links that Jenny gave are repeated here:
John Harrison's Glossary of Ringing Terms
Pieces of Work, from the CCCBR Education Committee.
And, if you want the official definitions, look at the Central Council's Framework for Method Ringing.
It was mentioned in last Friday's webinar that Stedman could be rung on an even number of bells. In fact peals have been rung of both Stedman Major and Stedman Royal, back in the 19th century. Here I look a bit more at what happens to the method on an even number of bells.
As May has ended, the first Central Council YouTube competition has also closed to entries. The challenge was to find the best striking on 6 or fewer bells and they have produced a short-list of 28 videos. There's a great variety, from call-changes to methods, from handbells to tower bells (remember them??), from light to heavy and from near to far, including the Pipes' entry on handbells and ringing at Great Gransden and Caxton.
Did you see the piece about lockdown ringing on the BBC evening news last weekend? It featured the use of Ringing Room and interviewed ringers. If you missed it, you can see it on the Central Council YouTube channel.
Following on from last week's lapping, David Lilley got in touch, to say that, some years ago, the Ickleton ringers' party piece was to ring a bobbed course of Grandsire Cinques by lapping, or "rolling" as they called it. They also rang Kent Maximus in that way, which sounds like fun.
This time we return to handbells, with a demonstration of Lapping. But, for those of you without access to a set of handbells, there are a couple of other ways for you to try this at home...
The title 'Lead End Variants' sounds a bit daunting, I fear, but don't be put off, as it gives a useful way of using a method that you already know to ring a different one.
The page above finishes off with Bologna Surprise Minor. Here is a fantastic British Pathé film from 1934 of the Bells of Bologna. I think "Health And Safety" would be more worried about that than Covid-19! There are several other Pathé films of bells on YouTube, including the dedication of the bells of St Clement Danes in 1957 and an attempt on the extent of Major in 1954
Finally, some carillon music from the Domtoren in Utrecht, in the Netherlands. It's 'The Model', by Kraftwerk, played by Malgosia Fiebig, as a tribute to Florian Schneider, who died recently.
Today's addition is concerned with handbell ringing, featuring ringing four-in-hand, lapping and tapping.
Greg Pearce did a great job in Saturday's Drop-in session on Zoom, talking about the naming of methods. Here are a few more thoughts on the subject, including Bob, Place, Treble Dodging, Treble Place and Double methods. You'll be glad to hear I didn't have space to include Stedman and Grandsire at even stages, Little Bob at odd stages, Slow Course methods and even "pas-alla-tessera" and "pas-alla-tria".
It's surprising how things have changed over the years. Another nugget I came across while researching method names was the old rule that "For methods with hunt bells at least one of the hunts shall be unaffected by all calls in a given composition"!
If you want to know more about using Abel, Roger Booth has put together some short YouTube videos:
Getting Started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm22YvuVzNM
How accurate is my striking?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zaPy5AG6M
Help, I cannot hear my bell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5z_QTGCzk
Call Changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi5cT__IC_o
UPDATE - there are now two additional videos in the series:
Covering by listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI5Zte1VqU8
Covering by watching to develop ropesight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4S6K9oQZ-w
David Pipe and Mark Davies both referred to coursing order in their recent webinars, so I just wanted to explain a bit more about this concept, which is not only vital in conducting and composing, but can help at every level of ringing. And in fact you probably use it already, even if you don't give it that name.
You might have seen the recent performances using Ringing Room and Handbell Stadium. Both can now use motion-sensitive gaming controllers as dummy handbells. But this picture, from a quarter peal of Cambridge Major, shows Lesley using an interesting technique to add a bit of weight to her controllers...
And now for something different. Here are recordings of Liss Campanile, from the 1980s: here and here.
A bit of history for you today; a look back at the Ringing World of 1911. There are mentions of Barrington, Chesterton, Fen Ditton, Foxton, Fulbourn, Great St Mary's, Ickleton, OLEM, Sawston, Stapleford and Whittlesford.
The District tower below, visited on a recent cycle ride, had bells in 1911, but doesn't now. Where is it? (Click on picture for larger image.)
Have you tried to write out Cylindrical Doubles? You know that the hard bit in Plain Hunt is the changing speed, turning round at front and back? Well, here each bell carries on ringing at the same speed. So that's got to be easier, hasn't it? See here.
Here's some more ringing for you to listen to; the Central Council has put together a YouTube playlist of "Top Quality Ringing" - see here.
And, for something a bit different, does anyone remember Boudewijn Zwart's mobile carillon from the 2008 Ringing Roadshow at Stoneleigh? Here's a recording, made in Belgium in 2011.
Following on from Stephen Burr's excellent talk about place notation and blue lines, I've got a few more examples and a couple for you to try too. See here and here.
And here's a bit of Easter bell-ringing for you. Firstly from Russia, then Jerusalem and, finally, some half-muffled Stedman Caters on the harmonic minor 10 at Worcester Cathedral on Good Friday.
Being Holy Week, we wouldn't be ringing tower bells anyway, so today I shall look briefly at a bit of handbell ringing, which is what we did at Meldreth on Tuesday in last year's Holy Week.
Method ringing on handbells is usually done with each ringer having a pair of bells, one in each hand. (It is possible to ring "four-in-hand", which means two in each hand, but that is even more brain-mangling, which makes Simon Melen's feats all the more impressive; for instance, he rang a peal of Orion Surprise Maximus four-in-hand.)
The easiest way to start off is to ring Plain Hunt on a coursing pair of bells. In Plain Hunt, your course bell is the bell that leads immediately before you do - and it also lies behind just before you do. (And your after bell is the one that leads and lies immediately after you.)
You can see from the diagram that bells 1 and 2 (in red) are a coursing pair, as are 5 and 6 (in blue). Each pair meets at the front and back and swaps over there. Between front and back there is always one other bell in between them. Incidentally when a tower bell conductor tells the 5th to "follow the 6th down to the front" what she (or he) means is not to literally follow the 5th, but to ring two blows behind each time, then lead after the 5th does. In this way, you are not trying to remember two separate blue lines; as long as you know the place of the first bell of your pair, then the other one will be two blows later - until you get to the back or front, where they ring consecutively.
There is lots more information on handbell ringing out there, including a new book by Tina Stoecklin and Simon Gay, an article published by the Whiting Society, a web page by the Hull Ringers and a guide by Frank King.
Finally, I leave you with a video of Plain Hunt Maximus being rung on handbells. Again coursing is the key; the bells are laid on in coursing order and the technique relies on the fact that once one bell has rung, the next bell in the coursing order rings two blows later.
I'm sure that many of you, like me, enjoyed Gareth's fascinating talk on Ringing in Cambridge in the 16th and 17th Centuries. One of the questions he tried to address was what people were ringing back then. He mentioned the first instructional book in bell-ringing, Tintinnalogia, published in 1668, and I wanted to look a bit more at the Plain Changes that I mentioned below (23rd March).
Plain changes seem to have been the first development from Call changes, with just one pair of bells swapping at each change, but presumably without any call being made. I suspect it would have been quite hard ringing them in practice, precisely because there were so few changes; although it's easy to stay in the same place for a while, you have to know exactly when to move out of it. The author of Tintinnalogia writes, as Gareth quoted, "I will here insert two or three old Peals on five Bells, which (though rejected in these days, yet) in former times were much in use, which for Antiquity sake, I here set down."
Firstly Twenty All Over, which I often recommend to people starting to call changes. Each bell in turn is called up to the back. We have rung it at Little Shelford without calls, changing at every stroke, which makes a good challenge too. The intention is to encourage observation, watching the bell that's coming up, so you know when to move out of its way, and, when you're leading, watching when the bell going up reaches the back, so you know when it's your turn to start moving.
Then An Eight and Forty, which is more of a challenge, especially for the treble, 2nd and 3rd. It's interesting to look how the piece is composed, based on the 4th and 5th bells hunting down to lead and back, in turn, while the other three bells gradually ring Plain Hunt Singles amongst themselves. A Cambridge Eight and Forty is harder still, with a different construction, mostly based on sets of 6 changes in which the middle three bells hunting amongst themselves.
Another link with the Plain Changes is in this Maths Art Challenge, Permutahedrons, starting with Single and moving on to Minimus. Note that in the Minimus section, you're only allowed to us plain changes; swapping both pairs of bells is not included. For more on representing the transpositions between permutations, see Ringing Shapes by John Harrison. For more diagrams, see the Ringing World from 1985 (pages 29 and 167), discussing White's No Call Doubles and more. Diagrams can also be used for composing touches, including 240s and 720s of Plain Bob Doubles; see Ringing World (1985 p. 341, 1994 p. 778, 1995 pp. 67, 930 and 1996 p. 365).
And, finally, this is rather delightful - a post from the centre of the ringing chamber at Walsgrave church, showing each bell who to follow in an extent of Minimus. It's actually an extent in Plain Changes, what we would now call Double Canterbury.
The obvious thing to think about today is April Day Doubles. No, this isn't a joke, it's a real thing - and if you can ring Plain Bob and Grandsire Doubles, you should already be able to ring it. Strictly speaking, April Day is a variation, rather than a method, as it takes one method, in this case Plain Bob Doubles, but uses a different call from normal. Here the call is a Grandsire Single. To read more, see here. You can also ring April Day Triples in the same way.
Perhaps this video on YouTube of some three-bell ringing that didn't quite go as planned is also suitabel viewing for today.
A new way of ringing while at home might be provided by Ringing Room, a new multi-ringer simulator app developed by Bryn Reinstadler and Leland Kusmer in the USA. Each ringer can press a key (or keys) on their computer, to control their bell (or bells), in order to ring together. It has been tested already with quarter peals, such as this.
And if you want more, the Central Council has put together as playlist of YouTube videos, entitled 'Oddities & wonders of ringing', which, coincidentally, starts with the ringing at Broughton mentioned above, and includes ringing at East Bergholt, in Italy, a musical experiment from Birmingham, ringing blindfold and ringing on 24 handbells, among many others.
Today should have been the Eliminators for the National 12-bell Striking Contest. The Cambridge Youths (Great St Mary's) band were due to ring at Walsall, for a place in the final at Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 20th June. The test piece was to have been Cambridge Surprise Maximus. For the non-12-bell-ringers amongst you, don't just take one look at the method and think "that's impossible"... Sit down, catch your breath (and grab a glass of something, if it helps) and look for all the bits that are familiar to you.
If you can plain hunt, there's definitely some of that. If you can dodge, there's plenty to keep you busy. And if you know Cambridge Minor, there's nothing new here. Just more of the same. Even if you've never rung Cambridge Places (the long sections where you stay in a pair of adjacent places for 16 blows), you can see that the same pattern occurs several times, in different places. This motif is just a series of dodges and place-making, with all the places being made (as you're used to) right, that is, at handstroke, then backstroke. And the middle dodge is with the treble each time.
If you are used to ringing touches of Plain Bob Doubles, you'll be glad to know that there's no new work to learn for Bobs, just the same old running in, runnning out and making the bob. And, unless you've particularly upset the conductor, there's only a three-elevenths chance of being affected at a call. Not only this, but by the time you have run in, run out and made the bob, you'll have rung more than enough for a quarter peal!
Here's a video of the Birmingham band ringing Cambridge at Great St Mary's in 2018. The band went on to win the 12-bell contest (held in Cambridge) that year.
Thanks to Alan Winter, here's a quiz for you. Can you identify these District towers, visited on a recent cycle ride? I should warn you that they don't all have bells hung for full-circle ringing, but they are in the right order, if that gives you any clues...
All this talk about ringing, but it's all theory. How can we actually ring at the moment? Today's jottings are about dumb bells, model bells and simulators.
Have those rounds settled down properly yet? Nice even striking, with a gap at the handstroke lead, as we're not in Devon (or parts of Yorkshire which ring cartwheel too).
Let's have some call changes, then. Some like to say "called changes", which is perhaps more accurate, but I will stick with call changes. As with (almost) all change ringing, a pair of bells in adjacent places in the current row are swapped over. They might be called "up" (e.g. "2 to 3" takes you from 123456 to 132456) or "down" (e.g. "3 to 1" gives the same result). To be prepared for the next call, whichever system is being used, always make sure you know who the person you're following is following themselves. And it can also be useful to know which place in the change you are in, as well as who you're following (and who they are following, of course).
So, quiz time! Starting from Queens (135246), where does this sequence of calls take you? 3 to 5, 2 to 4, 3 to 4, 1 to 5, 1 to 4, 3 to 2.
Here's a list of some rows that have particular names, like Queens and Tittums.
Back to Devon, as that's where many towers still ring purely call changes and ring them extremely well. In the same way that we have well-known methods for our "scientific" ringing, they have named compositions of call changes. For instance, Sixty on Thirds; here the "Thirds" is a local name for Queens. This starts from Queens, then there are sixty calls before getting back to Queens, with each row produced before the final Queens being different. Details are given here. Here is a video of a performance at Shaugh Prior, including the raise beforehand and the lower afterwards. The calls start just after 2 minutes in; note that they don't say "to", merely (for instance) "4 5".
Another Devon peal, for 8 bells, is the Queens Peal. Again, you have to get from Rounds to Queens, then the sequence takes you back to Queens, before calling back to Queens. Each bell is called up to the back (as in Twenty All Over) in turn. Again, the list of calls and rows is here. The video for this one is one of my favourites; the Lamerton handbell ringers performing at the Devon ringers' carol service in 2010. They first simulate the bells being raised, then for the call changes, they physically swap bells! See if you can see each bell going out to the back in turn.
I suppose the obvious question, from a method-ringing point of view, is whether you can get a 120 of Doubles this way? And yes, there are several different compositions, for instance I'll Be Back Doubles, rung recently at St Dominic in Cornwall. The desire to get a 120 goes right back to the dawn of change ringing in the 17th century, with the "Plain Changes" in Tintinnalogia in 1668, although this was presumably to be rung with changes made at every stroke. The technique here is one of recursion, basing the extent at each stage on the extent at the stage below, with the hunt bell moving through all possible positions in each row at the lower stage. This technique also appears in Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", for listing all permutations of a group of items - see here (algorithm P).
Well, let's start at the beginning, by ringing the bells up; see here for a split-screen video of a bell being raised. You can see that the tricky bit, when you have to start looking after the sally, comes as the bell is swinging up to the horizontal. But, due to physics, this is also the point that raising the bell enough to let out another inch of tail-end requires the greatest amount of energy to be put into the bell. So that's why it's easy to get 'stuck' at this point when ringing up, as the fedaddle of getting one hand onto the sally and back reduces the efficiency of your pull, just when the maximum is needed.
OK, how about some rounds now, to get used to our virtual bells? Try this website, set the method (at the top) to "Rounds" and select the "Listening" tab. Instructions are given on the screen, but the idea is to move the sliders to get the striking perfect, reducing the "Striking Errors Left" to zero. I found it took very careful listening, judging which bell was wrong and at which stroke, to get there. To start off more easily, you can go to the "Settings" tab, to set "Maximum number of strokes with errors" to a lower value.
For the more experienced ringers, try spotting the striking errors while they are ringing a method... There are also several other fun things to do on the site, practising a method or trying to identify a method by listening!
Finally, for now, let's listen to how it should be done, from Great St Mary's. This is video of a visiting Devon band, so note that they ring 'cartwheel', i.e. without a gap at the handstroke lead. They also call their changes just "2 3", for instance, rather than "2 to 3".
More on call changes next time...
How about listening to one of the Fun With Bells podcasts?