[r-t] New Grandsire [was Old methods]

Fri Jul 18 14:32:32 UTC 2008

My lowest common denominator approach was "true permutations", by which
I mean each bells strikes once and only once in each row.

By and large you're talking about things that have nothing to do with
"Decisions".  There are no official rules at the moment on how to judge
striking competitions, and I certainly wouldn't propose introducing any.
People can ring in a syncopated way now if they like - you don't need to
add more rules specifying things like this. 

Decisions on peals are different from decisions on methods. The
restrictions on methods are my main gripe.

Even under the current decisions you can be ringing peals that wouldn't
contravene the letter of any Decisions, but which go against their
spirit - there's no point trying to legislate for every eventuality.
People know the accepted spirit here.

-----Original Message-----
From: King, Peter R [mailto:ringing-theory-bounces at bellringers.net] On
Behalf Of King, Peter R
Sent: 18 July 2008 15:00
To: ringing-theory at bellringers.net
Subject: RE: [r-t] New Grandsire [was Old methods]

How far are people really prepared to go with this? Would you allow two
bells to strike together, or syncopation (these might be a problem for
judges of striking competitions whereby a typical Sunday morning hack
through plain bob doubles is actually a perfectly struck course of
"crunch bob doubles"). Do you require all the bells to strike in each
row? Why can't the treble set his/her bell, go off for a pint and then
join in twice as fast as everyone else for the rest of the time. In fact
I have rung numerous peals of John Cages' composition "5040 silence"
(usually in my sleep). What about other "rules", like retaining bells in
hand for hand bell peals or not ringing from manuscript. Of course
absolutely everything is possible and, as alluded to above this is
analogous to what has happened in modern music (& the arts in general).
Is there anything that you would define as being essential to change
ringing, an absolute minimum below which you would not go? eg all bells
must ring the same number of times, all the rows must be different - on
6 if you allowed chords or syncopation then you wouldn't be restricted
to 720 changes. Personally I suspect that no one would want to do these
things - but you only have to go to Tate Modern to see how far some will
go in pursuit of their art. Perhaps PJE is the Damien Hirst of the
change ringing world!

-----Original Message-----
From: ringing-theory-bounces at bellringers.net on behalf of Philip Earis
Sent: Fri 7/18/2008 2:21 PM
To: ringing-theory at bellringers.net
Subject: Re: [r-t] New Grandsire [was Old methods]

Matthew:
"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, and similarly with jump changes, if you can move 2 places, why
not 3? why not just move to any place in the change? It would be
impossible on bells of any weight, but on mini-rings or handbells you
could do it. Being able to ring any changes in any order? Is that the
way forward?"

Exactly! I think the message might be getting through.  All of these
constraints are arbitrary, so why not simply remove them all.  

My "framework" is that I don't think any decisions should put a "value
judgement" on any method - ie "this is better than that". Of course I
have my own views on different methods, but I don't try to impose them
by suggesting that things I don't like should fall foul of the official
"Decisions". 

Mine is not the radical view - it's the few in charge of the methods
committee and the CC that have the (unpalatable) radical views. They are
the ones who are happy to toss around words like "deprecate" in official
Decisions.

Some people are afraid of change. It's like protectionism versus free
trade. North Korea vs free markets. Live & let live.

Matthew again:
"Both of these examples are relating far more to compositions than to
the actual methods, to most ringers there is no real difference between
ringing a multi-extent block and ringing multiple individual extents"

Hmm.  The two can be surprisingly similar. Both were examples of CC
Decisions / pronouncements that, when liberalised, have led to good new
things.

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