[r-t] Composing spliced treble-dodging major

[Graham John]

>From what William says, he has worked out how to compose the same way that
most composers have i.e. by self-study. He can produce touches of spliced to
achieve the effect he wants, and can check whether they are true using his
friend's proving program. This is a great start.

The fact is that composing spliced DOES involve a lot of trial by error, and
IS an inefficient and time-consuming process. Before computers, composers
used cross falseness tables and this process is explained in John Leary's
book (and an earlier one by Giles Thompson if you can get hold of it). This
is sort of OK for two methods, but after that it gets painfully
time-consuming. Chris Kippin used a collating system involving fragments of
paper and envelopes to produce great results for Spliced Surprise Royal. But
he must have been very patient.

For efficiency you need a good program to help you. So in a nutshell,
William needs a better program than the one he using - one which is
interactive, so he can see what is false as he tries things out. There are
not many available, so either you have to write your own, or look at the
handful which are commercially available, such as Ringing Master. It has a
free limited functionality download available from

http://www.ringingmaster.co.uk

I also suggest he has a look at Elf, MBD's online spliced composition
generator at

http://www.bronze-age.com/elf/index.html

Finally, the Ringing Roadshow in Newbury on 10 September will have many of
the available programs available for demonstration, as well as lots of books
to browse. 

Graham