[r-t] A Ringing Puzzle

[King, Peter R]

I must say that most of this discussion has become bound up with what the "rules" will or will not allow. Such as calls only affecting lead ends. What is wrong with having a call at any arbitrary position in a lead. Or on some concept of value or worth. This is too subjective to be useful. Personally I might not feel that Stedman is "worth" ringing for 3 hours, but plenty of people do so "worth" has no place. History will tell whether the community at large fell like ringing some innovative "method".

Perhaps one should start by scrapping all the decisions and ask what is the minimum number of conditions that everyone (or nearly everyone) could agree on to constitute a peal. I would be comfortable with requiring it to consist of at least 5000 different rows starting and ending in rounds, each bell appears just once in each row and all bells must appear in each row. You could restrict this further by requiring that the rows are linked by changes that require no "jumps" (although I have rung a 1/4 of treble jump minor that was perfectly fine as far as I was concerned).On 6 or fewer bells you would need to add some other  beach row appears at most Int(5000/n!)+1 times. I don't know that I would insist on 5040 changes in this case. Is ringing a 5026 of Grandsire Triples any less an achievement than ringing a 5024 of surprise major? I am also not sure I would add restrictions about the number of cover bells or number of blows in each place (if you really wanted to ring a peal of minimus at a 12 bell tower with 8 covers, then why not - I seriously doubt if anyone would want to).

The point is that with a minimum number of "rules" you could ring almost anything but let's face it 99.99% of peals rung (or even more) will nbe exactly the same as now. One or two "weird" peals may be rung but unless they provide interest or enjoyment for the band or indicate how this can be achieved beyond the standard canon then they simply won't be repeated.

The problem then is one of description nor taxonomy. I don't understand the concept of a "non-method". Any chunk of changes repeated enough times will come round and so constitutes a method. The fact that it has more hunts than working bells (or may be hard to describe in terms of hunts and working bells) is neither here nor there. Likewise being false in the plain course is not an issue, that fact would be captured in the fch. Does it matter if you can't get a peal composition for the method. If you wanted to ring it by itself then yes but if you rang it in spliced is there a problem?  Of course there can be ambiguity about how you describe something but that is usually resolved by how it was actually learnt and rung or how it was called. So you can describe any peal as original with suitable calls made along the way. But that isn't how people actually ring the peal or how it was called. Of course if someone did stand there and call out the place notation for 3 hours (and the band hadn't been primed ot know what the method was) then arguably you could describe that as original.

On the whole I think it is probably best to get away from the preconceptions that existing decisions have left and start again. If you were inventing change ringing now how would you do it? I think you would find that the fewer restrictions there are the easier it would be to capture the history as well.
________________________________________
From: ringing-theory [ringing-theory-bounces at bellringers.net] on behalf of Robert Bennett [rbennett at woosh.co.nz]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2014 12:13 PM
To: ringing-theory at bellringers.net
Subject: Re: [r-t] A Ringing Puzzle

        Non-method blocks appear to be the campanalogical equivalent of dark
matter in the universe, or black ops in TV programmes.

        "if any of your team are caught or killed ringing this non-method,
the peal secretary will deny all knowledge..."

        If we have to have restrictions on ringing, then they should be based
on producing interesting ringing that is pleasant to listen to, and
which fits in with 400 years of tradition, not on legalistic rules.


        I don't see the point of requiring more working bells than hunts for
example. Why?

        Or why try to ban peals of Bob Triples (because of the 4 blows
behind), when it had been part of  ringing history, and it
should have the same changes in it as any other peal of Triples?

        There are some innovations , like variable cover, that are probably
not worth ringing, but that should be a matter of taste and good
judgement, not some committee ruling.

        There are some perfectly legal peals, such as ringing the same PB
Minimus course 210 times, which must be a little tedious to listen to,
to say the least.

        Maybe, ringing non-methods is turning the clock back to a time where
the truth of the "peal" as a whole mattered more than the method,
where the calls were placed etc.

        A lot of peals of grandsire triples are based on 3-lead bob courses,
and they have absolutely nothing to do with the plain course.

        A lot of peals have for years had what might be termed a non method
block in them, where there is a fearful muddle, and the conductor
succeeds in getting everyone back in order after 2 or 3 minutes.


----- Original Message -----
 From:ringing-theory at bellringers.net
To:"Ringing-Theory Mailing List"
Cc:
Sent:Thu, 5 Jun 2014 01:38:06 -0400
Subject:Re: [r-t] A Ringing Puzzle

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 1:25 AM, Don Morrison  wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 4:48 AM, Graham John  wrote:
>> ...
>> So, the answer is that method B is a Surprise method, but method A
can't
>> exist as people would learn and ring it.
>
> Thus an even more straightforward example of a non-non-method than
Dixon's.

No, I'm sorry, on further reflection I now believe that both Graham
and I were mistaken about this. Method A can easily be a bona fide,
CCCBR approved non-method: you just have to ring it in a peal of
spliced. For example, it is easy to put together a thoroughly
unattractive, true peal consisting of mostly Method B, with one lead
of Method A stiched in.

Which I suppose makes sense in some way, as the original impetus for
non-method blocks was their use in spliced.

--
Don Morrison
"It is much easier to strive for perfection when you are never bored."
-- Daniel Kahneman, _Thinking, Fast and Slow_

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