[r-t] Methods [was Grandsire/New Grandsire, etc]

[Mark Davies]

Robin Woolley writes,

> Maybe it's me, but I can never get my head around those who *need* their 
> outre performances to be 'accepted' by someone else. Who do you ring a 
> peal for?

I covered this in my articles for the RW a few years back. The point is that 
the Methods Committee does all the work of recording names for methods and 
maintaining the method libraries. So if you want to ring and name a new 
method, you are forced to comply with their rules for methods and for peals. 
Yes, you could ring your method and call it what you want, but no-one is 
ever going to recognise the name, because it's not in the method libraries.

This is very very important indeed!

Matthew Frye:

> If you can ring 4 consecutive blows then why not 6? why not 8? why not 12? 
> why not 50? I personally don't particularly see a need for more than 4 or 
> 6 at most, but I am guessing that you would never be happy with any limit

I covered this in my Norwich axioms, too. It's very simple: allow any number 
of consecutive blows, up to but not including the point where one bell is 
ringing in the same place for the entire plain course. Because by that 
point, you've got a method on the next lower stage of bells, not on the 
current stage.

Peter King:

> Is there anything that you would define as being essential to change 
> ringing, an absolute minimum below which you would not go?

My belief is that, if it's changeringing, then we should be ringing changes. 
To me a change is a permutation from one row to another, where each bell 
only moves at most one place. (I've nothing against jump changes, I just 
don't think methods using jump changes are changeringing methods. They're 
jumpchanging methods. I know others disagree.) Truth of rows rung is also 
vital (otherwise why would we need changes). Other than that, anything 
goes - and not just goes, but should be nameable and classifiable.

MBD