A brief explanation of Change-Ringing

The best introductory page I've seen is Change Ringing Information at MIT.

A simple method

Here is a simple method on 5 bells, Plain Bob Doubles. In the version with all the numbers written in, I've marked the second bell in bold text so you can see the pattern more easily, and in the other one, I've marked the second bell with a *. Except for some practice exercises for learners, ringing a method always starts at rounds, that is, all the bells ringing in order of their number, giving a descending scale of pitch. Observe that for most of the time, it is hunting, that is, simply moving between front and back, one place at a time, and making two blows at each end of its range. When the treble (bell 1, marked with a . ) is leading (i.e. ringing first in the change) the other bells dodge instead of hunting. The treble hunts continuously -- this is described as a treble hunt method. In all methods, the treble does something different from the other bells (there are also some principles, which are not methods, but are similar, in which all bells do the same thing; Stedman's is the best-known principle); either it hunts, or does ``treble bob'', which is more elaborate, or hunts just between places 1 and 4 (``little bob methods'').

Looking at these diagrams of Plain Bob, you can see that if the other bells did not dodge when the treble leads, all the bells would be doing plain hunt, and would come round (i.e. back to rounds) at each lead end, that is, when the treble makes its second blow in the lead.

To ring a longer touch, the conductor will call bobs and singles at the lead ends. When one of these is called, the bells do some variant of dodging, so that the touch will not come round yet.

John C. G. Sturdy

Last modified: Sun Jun 10 22:12:57 GMT Daylight Time 2007