[r-t] Ringing one method to the tune of something else...

[Philip Earis]

I hesitate to send this, as I'm not sure how much "ringing theory" is involved, but I think this is an interesting diversion...

Nearly all change ringing is based around ringing to an unchanging, regular and even rhythm.  There are sometimes very slight variations to this (eg different preferences for the size of the handstroke gap, or some ringers liking a covering tenor to be hacked in very close to the working bells), but the overall aim is regularity.

Now of course, orchestral music is based very much around different rhythms. I think interesting effects can be obtained by exploring other, "irregular" rhythm when we ring bells.

From the outset, I should say that I'm not interested in ringing conventional "tunes" on bells. Instead, I'm interested in the effects you can get by applying variations in rhythm to the usual change-ringing framework of "true permutations".

Firstly, are there any existing examples of change ringing with an irregular rhythm?  Well, although not common, two spring to mind:

1)       Weasels - it's not that rare when ringing five bells down in peal to catch them at the end in "weasels", which uses an irregular rhythm - ie something like (1      4     2 3   5). This is rather jolly.

2)       Extra wraps - when we ring handbell peals of minor, sometimes one of the ringers will eliminate the handstroke gap completely if this brings up a wrap of rounds or reverse rounds.  This disruption to the rhythm for a row is enjoyable and interesting. eg between the 2nd and 3rd rows below

6

5

2

1

4

3

Handstroke

6

5

1

2

3

4

Backstroke

5

6

2

1

4

3

Handstroke

6

5

2

4

1

3

Backstroke


Yesterday, during a fairly dull talk I was attending, I wondered what it would be like to (paraphrasing a radio 4 program) ring one method to the rhythm of something else.  Careful selection needs to be made of the applied rhythm, so the whole thing "scans" with the beats and number of the bells.  Something simple is also good - I can envisage this getting impossibly difficult to ring very soon.

For some reason, the bawdy limerick about well-known ringer Simon Farrar sprang to mind. [Many apologies to Simon - it's not really about him - I hope he doesn't mind being the whipping boy here] This is attractive as it has either eight or four syllables on each line:

Whilst ringing the third to plain hunt
The Farrar went wrong on the front
The ginger sod
Thinks that he's god
The rest of us think he's a .....(reasonable tenor ringer)

I thought this would work nicely with 8 bells ringing plain hunt or something similar.  To make a recording, I tried to use Abel - however, this will only let me ring 4 bells at once, and so I tried to ring some plain hunt minimus instead.  An unpolished attempt can be listened to here:

<http://www.cantabgold.net/users/pje24/limerick1.mp3>

Any comments are very welcome. I think there could be some scope for development here.

Actually, about 18 months ago I put together a possible handbell dinner touch that also used irregular rhythms.  The first half was just conventional Erin Caters, rung to the usual regular rhythm.  A single bob brought up 1234569780 at the course end - this row was to be rung with the back five bells spaced to really emphasise the weasels.  From this point on, the method was changed to a simple cyclic royal method to maximise the incidence of weasels at various points in the row - every time it came up it was to be rung in the weasels style.  I thought the overall effect was quite magical.  I put together a sample using "Noteworthy Composer" (just about the only free music software I could find) - I might try to dig it out.

I also did a 12-bell variation, again with Erin to start, but with weasels on both the front five and back five.  These were exploding through the various changes.  Nice.

A final thought was to use ring with a conventional rhythm, but with the back 5 coursing down with appropriate bells between them in such a way that if accented, this would form a weasels effect by itself. Ie the five tenors coursing in the order     1 - - 4 - - 2 3 - - 5.  The only problem is you need about 30 bells to make the effect work and sustained...

Anyway, I think some of these ideas could be worth developing.

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