Ringing Forums

some handbell ringers learn new methods by their place notation and can translate that into a blue line in real time — Rosalind Martin

You ring plain hunt with two [extra] rules: hunt below an even place and dodge above; hunt above an odd place, dodge below — Graham John

Yes, I agree with that ... with a few extra thoughts:

For me, it's not a translation to a handbell-blueline as such: it's to a combined pattern of my two bells. So for example CambridgeSMinor in tower has five placebells to remember 2,6,3*,4,5 (two and a half if you turn them upsidedown around the 3* symmetry) and if you can do the Bobs, that's the same with a plain course or a touch: in hand there are ten different lead-patterns: 34,45,25*,26,36; 56,23,46*,35,24 it's still (a symmetric) five-leads in a plain course but there are two sets, and bobs ae likely to take a pair-of-bells from one set to t'other.

Graham's advice works with Forward methods: those which plainhunt (placenotation X) between every backstroke to handstoke: then the places to learn/remember are all from hand-to-back. In CambridgeSMinor the sequence goes: 3,4,2,3,4,5*,4,3,2,4,3,2* where the *are respectively the halflead and the leadend changes.

YorkshireSMajor also has a straightforward sequence: 3,4,5,6,2,3,4,7*...,2 where the ... is the first-half-lead sequence reversed. In Major there are three sequences of seven-leads to work out: 34,48,58,25*,26,67,37; 56,27,36,47*,38,45,28; 78,35,24,68*,57,23,46. In tower CambridgeSMajor is different and maybe more complicated: in hand there are the same seven-lead sequences in the same order, but within every halflead there is the extra complexity of a 1258 change where four bells lie still and four alter position. In the second half of the first lead the 56-pair finds itself making both second's place and fifth's place concurrently: that feels very unusual.

All of this is covered well in TinaStoecklin/SimonGay's books here.

how many ringers have rung a peal and how many have rung more than one? Do we have any statistical data that shows roughly what percentage of the ringing population have rung one peal and what percentage have rung 50, 100 or 500 or more? — Simon Ridley

Well that's used up a Sunday morning with the Yorkshire Associan report and a spreadsheet ...

Well, before you scroll down to the answer, try this formulation of the question:
How Many peals has the Median Ringer rung ?? The Median Ringer is the ringer-in-the-middle: the number of ringers who have rung more peals than the Median Ringer is the same as the number of ringers who have rung fewer (or the same number) ??

For the impatient, just click below :-)


OK, for those who have resisted the clickbait above, my data is from the 2020 Yorkshire Assocition Annual Report, and we have a few caveats:
- the Report is primarily data from before the pandemic.
- the Yorkshire Association (imho) has a quirky view of using personal data: there is an electronic database of all these peal records which we could ask about, and would be more accurate, but would (perhaps) take from now-to-eternity to agree to analyse
- I will have typed the occasional number in the wrong column (in anticipation of my lunch)
- Ringers ring peals for other Associations, and the data only includes those for YA. With a bit more time we could take a sample of peal-ringers and compare with Pealbase data to understand the impact/extent of this.
- Handbell peals are included (and could be investigated with Pealbase as above)
- Yorkshire membership is direct to the Association: some towers pay for their ringers to be members, out of their central funds, and some collect the money locally and pass on their Branch Treasurers. There is no concept of a Tower being affiliated, so 'YA towers' are primarily defined geographically.
- Some ringers are listed under more than one tower, and I may not have weeded them all out.(Also in anticipation of my lunch)
- I have analysed into the bands as below. As ever, a better logarithmic scale would be 0, 1-3, 4-9, 10-31, 32-99, 100-316, 317-999, 1000+
- OP asked for 1-peal ringers, which (lunch again) I haven't specifically counted.

So here are the results:

• 1641 Ringers (of whom):
• 13 have rung 1000+ peals (less than 1% rung 1000+)
• 19 have rung 500-999 peals (2% rung 500+)
• 74 have rung 100-499 peals (6% rung 100+)
• 63 have rung 50-99 peals (10% rung 50+)
• 157 have rung 10-49 peals (20% rung 10+)
• 58 have rung five to nine peals (23% rung 5+)
• 224 have rung one to four peals (37% rung any peals)
• 1033 have rung no peals (63% rung no peals)

The spreadsheet also has the data by Branch and (for example) that of 415 towers (including 3-bell towers), 175 have no YA members ...

Is the Median Ringer's No Peals in any way surprising ?? ... Discuss :-)

...organisations that are run by a mix of volunteers and paid staff retain volunteers as policy makers but relieve their load with paid staff to 'do the work'... — John Harrison

and charity law requires, for charities, that it be that way round.

So for our hypothetical, employed, Central Council Leader, they would have to be some sort of Chief Executive, reporting to a wholly-volunteer trustee board, which would probably need a Chairman ...

Advert says "Salary pro rata FTE £30k for 40 hr/wk" and taking account of holidays, that's about £16/hr. The webpage suggests "a 30 minute introductory lesson" and that "To make any real progress will take a lot longer, and a much cheaper rate will be available to those who pay in advance for a minimum of three hours of lessons"

ART has always advocated paying for training and paying those who provide the training. Bellhandling on a paid basis (rather than just managing volunteers doing the job) ought to cover its costs: when I was charged out professionally this was at least three times annual salary, so the lessons might reasonably be about £50/hr. The niceMrGoogle suggests £60/hr for golf with a PGA professional, which seems a reasonable benchmark activity.

This afternoon I was invited to do a demonstration and taster bellhandling session for three people who had booked the parish centre for an activity unrelated to ringing or the church. It was fun and no money changed hands. Of the three, all of similar middle-age and none with any bellringing experience, one would have been handling a bell on their own with, say, four hours more ropetime, and the others would have taken a lot longer - maybe plan for up to twenty more hours with a review-of-progress after ten.

So, as tutors, we should be describing to our students the commitment which we are seeking for them, and putting this in money-terms is helpful to that process, as well as (incidentally) raising some funds for ringing. With the student paying for tuition, they can expect a professional assessment of progress and prediction of further training and supervision needed.

With our prevalent voluntary system, there are lots of people who struggle to make any real progress, while everyone around is politely praising the indiscernable progress since the last-time, and we all suffer from the inevitable disappointment when some external trigger causes our hapless student to drift away ...

The Money would give us all more Focus.

Perhaps... (Discuss ...)

- Three weekly blogs — Simon Linford

This brings to mind the difference twixt biannual and biennial ...

... death of Queen Elizabeth and the ringing surrounding it as a subject worth mentioning ... — Alan C

Of the many words written, and to be written, on this subject, we will all be most interested in your thousand words of reflection ...

... the Council is seen as increasingly undemocratic ... — Jane Wilkinson in Ringing World

Of the many aspects of a democratic organisation, I posted here about the relationship between each ringer and the central ringing organisation (to use CRAG's terminology).

At our CCCBR AGM, I expanded on the point by encouraging all our member-Associations to see their membership of the Council as a positive selling-point to new ringers in their area.

Which is also a reminder that all of us at the AGM should be telling our member-Association's ringers what went on, what we thought of it all, and how it will (or won't) advance the cause of ringing. ...

For example, we all had a chance at the new mobile Ring; we can see how our donations have been used, or why we should be contributing and booking visits ...

The RW P/QP etc presentation looks particularly interesting, as a measure of how things are post-COVID. — John de Overa

RW Peal totals

RW QP totals

From my seat. If the year-key is not too clear, then an entertaining quiz ... :-)

Gosh, maybe they could help all this despite their silly name ... — PeterScott

Mentioned at the Central Council meetining this afternoon that the Yellowyoyo project could include the new name and branding for CCCBR.

RINGING-A-GO-GO , maybe ??

You read it here first. :-)

Top table apologised for the lack this year. Too complicated and expensive, they said.

We ought to be able to run a hybrid meeting, though ...

The Framework mentions 6.C.2.f) "Neither ringers nor conductor(s) used any physical aids to memory during the Performance" as a norm requiring reporting if not met.

Maybe the greatest help could come from an earpiece connected to a smartphone. If we can connect ringers-across-the-world with Ringing Room, and alter the Framework to accommodate the new environment, maybe a hint of the current coursing order, or what-to-do having fallen-off-the-line can usefully be in the ear. Indeed Hawkear could tell each of us how we are doing in time for the next row ...

As to visual aids, I created on our large screen visible to the whole band a display of the current callchange, operated with a footswitch to alter to the next one. That's very simple technology not requiring technical innovation. ...

https://cccbr.org.uk/2022/08/31/presidents-blog-67/We have been told that we should not give up on the idea of a single direct membership organisation for ringing just because it looks too difficult — Simon Linford

Excellent thought. The CC meetings at Edinburgh and Lancaster adopted the CRAG reforms, which were a package of visionary alterations, with an ambitious plan. This package included the much-more-powerful Executive, taking on most of the powers of the old CC; a new name for the Central Ringing Organisation to help an expanded membership relate to and understand the new organisation; the direct membership; the smaller and quicker annual meetings; ...

The vision is intact: the timetable has slipped, and had done before the AccursedVirus. Even so, we have a small step this year towards a direct relationship for each ringer and the Central Organisation, in deciding on the 20p-per-ringer affiliation fee. Each affiliated organisation ought to be working out for which individual ringers it is making its payments. ...

... and that will create an incentive to justify to each individual ringer that the CC's work is valuable to them. There needs to be an opt-out, firstly for those who take a different view of the CC's value, and secondly for those who prefer their Central relationship to be managed by another ringing organisation (for example the Ancient Society or the Welsh Colleges). It will need the Executive to use its powers to change some Standing Orders to implement this one-ringer-one-relationship idea: that in itself will reduce the (currently artificially inflated) total-affiliated numbers, and hence the size of the annual meetings. Now we have Smaller Societies, there is no need for affiliated organisations to be worried about completely falling-out of the Central relationship ...

marketing and branding agency Yellowyoyo — Simon Linford

Gosh, maybe they could help all this despite their silly name ...

I sometimes wonder whether I specifically agreed to have my name in that peal record, or if I decided that this ringing lark was no longer for me, whether I would want my name still displayed in all those performances on Bellboard here.

Personally, my preference for tea and lemonade over coffee and ribena, as expressed in that NNNT-booking at that meeting, written on a piece of paper, carefully stored in an envelope and then attached to a ringbinder/database somewhere, is of less concern than my worries about GlobalWarming, the UkraineWar and RunawayInflation. Others may feel differently ... :-)

Do experienced Grandsire Triples conductors transpose and use coursing orders — Simon Linford

I've lots of experience in calling GT quarters that don't come round :-(

So the plain course has CO 5346 (2). The hunt bell is in brackets — John Harrison

Anyway, I think of the CO as 53(2)46 and that makes (some of) the transpositions similar to PB8.

JohnHeaton here expounds a similar idea. He names a 2dodge67v as "Middle" and 2dodge45^ as "Wrong". Does anybody else do that? It has the advantage that the PB8 transpositions work on the same sets of bells, with a cycling to CAB (instead of BCA in PB8).

CALL CHANGE 120 OF DOUBLES

There are some Doubles methods which consist of changes in which only one pair of bells swap. For example Yorkshire Place Doubles or Monmouthshire Place Doubles and it is faffy to create extents for these.

Call Changes have a natural solution, not based on Method ringing: a combination of the ideas behind Sixty On Thirds and an academic thesis (see Chap 2) of ringing permutations, proving that an extent on any number of bells is possible with single (Call-) Changes.

Start with the extent of singles
123
213
231
321
312
132
123

into which introduce another bell (4 in this case) starting at the back. Hunt it down to the front, and while it remains there move the other bells on to their next row in the extent-on-one-fewer-bells. Hunt the new bell to the back and, while there, move the other bells on to their next row again. Repeat this procedure until Rounds are reached.

1234 (1243, 1423, 4123)
4213 (2413, 2143, 2134)
2314 (2341, 2431, 4231)
4321 (3421, 3241, 3214)
3124 (3142, 3412, 4312)
4132 (1432, 1342, 1324)
1234

The extension to doubles uses the same rule as above by adding the 5, then with 6 to Minor and 7 to Triples. Further than that will satisfy the mathematicians, while (probably) being of no practical use to ringers.

By happenstance, the Minimus extent, in Method-ringing terminology is Double Court Place Minimus with the fourth as hunt bell. The Doubles can be defined as
12345
14235 Reverse Monmouthshire Place Doubles
42135 Reverse Yorkshire Place Doubles
21435 Reverse Yorkshire Place Doubles
23145 Reverse Monmouthshire Place Doubles
twice repeated, with the fifth in the hunt throughout.

The CallChanges, with a call every handstroke, create all these, in Method-ringing terms as whole-pull double-extents, which according to the current Framework, need different names, and different names again for the two-whole-pull (Quartet in my preferred terminology), three-whole-pull (Sextet) etc versions.

I started the thread with the thought that we need parallel structures for Call Changes alongside those we have for Methods, and as then, thoughts on any of this most welcome :-)

PeterScott

Roger Fox wrote in RW (1July2022 p621) that the Framework (for Method-) Ringing consultation received comments that there was no provision for Call Changes; he wished for them to have full recognition in the future, maybe as the Framework consultation says "there may be a case for adding [Call Changes] in a subsequent version of the framework if the ringing community thinks this would be useful".

There is already some quirky provision. If we ring an extent - for example of Doubles - and crucially the Call Changes are at even intervals - every handstroke or every second handstroke or even slower - then the resulting Performance is "True" and can be used to give the "Method" a name. (Quirkily) the method with a call every handstoke would be different to the method with a call every second handstroke. Also a performance with one missed handstroke-call is false: the Framework norms are content for this performance to be reported: it's the allocation of a (new Method) name that is not allowed.

In 2020 our local learners-band achieved some Minimus here and here (Double Canterbury Octets Treble Place Minimus and its Dectets version). In passing, note that the Framework naming rules allow one or more covers and one or more leading bells

We were practicing for Doubles, which is harder than it might seem: sadly the AccursedVirus intervened, and we never achieved a Performance. However with the abbreviated Virusringing, it was fun to do a 3-bell Performance which allowed the method Plain Octets Singles to be defined. I adopted the convention that a call every fourth handstroke has 'Octets' in the name, in the hope that the next band to do this will continue with the Duets, Quartets, Sextets, Octets, Dectets ... convention, but the Framework doesn't mandate this.

I could go on ... to the Doubles compositions and how the Framework deals with 's Sonic mapping ...

And Going On Some More:

"Four" "Three" "Two" "Three" "Four" "Two" "Three" "Four" "Six" "Four" "Three" "Two". (repeated until rounds)
It needs context to understand how the band implement the calls. Here there were three ringers, with an electronic handbell in each hand; the calls were through Discord and some scary-looking men were ringing the other bells through Handbell Stadium. (Other technologies are available).

At each handstroke all the three adjacent bells in the row were crossed, and at backstroke the called place was made, while the other two pairs were crossed.

Are we in the Callchange Blackzone yet ?

Those brought up with the Method-ringing tradition might classify the above as a course of Ipswich SM with the fourth as the primary hunt.

I could go on ...
PeterScott

Moseley sounds fun - even in today's red-warning heat :-)

And having mentioned going on ...

Once we have two bells ringing Plain Changes simultaneously (as above, under separate mandate to ascend one place for each row), a piece of squared paper can show how to have another bell instructed to go down one place each change ... they may need to pass one another ... and this gives a technical challenge to those ringers making-way for the named bells to pass them, perhaps in different directions ...

The mandate for a bell to start Plain Changes could continue through its two blows at front/back: for example the treble in 60-on-thirds can make its own way up and down, saving the conductor's voice to better emphasise the treble-front/back changes. ...

It's worth noticing that any transition from Rounds to Queens on eight bells - written out by the places affected, and then applied again starting from Queens, will give Tittums; and applied again to Tittums will give Rounds. Maybe give a name to the transition and say "Go name". Similarly any transition could have a name and could be applied to any starting row ...

While it's possible to define Method-ringing in this way, we still have different emphases: Method ringing usually maximises the number of swaps-per-change (eg Rounds to 21 43 65 87) while Call Changes usually has only one swap. Mehod-ringing has each rowdifferent while Call Changes admits of repeated rows.

I could still go on ... :-)
PeterScott

'Median level' is a useful idea imho. More or Less (R4) defines the concept for each mention: for ringers, line them up in order of ringing ability and the median is the ability of the ringer-in-the-middle.

Taking SimonL's view that Bob Minor is the median ringing level, our band's ringers who are comfortable with Bob Minor are also comfortable with ringing Sixty-On-Thirds - probably at full-speed (one call each handstroke); that was also the equivalence-suggestion of ClareMcC.

That may help with a Call Change equivalence for more technically challenging methods. For example, a transition from Rounds to Queens on 10 can start with 8to9, then 6 is also called over the 9 in two changes (over 7 and 9 succesively) then 4 over 9 in three more changes and 2 over 9 in four more. It's therefore possible to define this last call "2 upto 9" to mean that 2 goes up one place each handstroke until it reaches the 9, while all the intervening ringers (3, 5, 7) adjust their positions accordingly and without any further calls from the conductor.

More challenging is to do the transition at double-speed (one position at each stroke), and which is a simple implementation of Plain Changes.

Those who ring Mexican Wave may be familiar with starting a new Wave while an earlier one is still progressing around the circle: analogously it's possible to call "2 upto 9" having just called "4 upto 9" but before that instruction is completed: at full speed or at double speed.

I could go on ... :-)
Peter Scott

Open handstrokes give structure for the listener, whether methods or callchanges.

"are we ringing 10 courses" much to our amusement

It's the way you tell them :-)