[r-t] Descriptions (was: A date to pencil ...)

[Graham John]

John Harrison wrote:

> Likewise, the ordinary ringer would understand
> what was meant by ringing Cambridge on the
> front six and London on the back six of a
> twelve but would struggle to understand it
> described in any other way as a Maximus
> method.

I am not sure that it would be a struggle to understand, any more than
people would think it strange to describe this construct as Minor when it
is on twelve bells. People do not have a problem now with ringing Cambridge
above and London below the treble, and referring to it as York Surprise
Minor.

While ringing London Minor over Cambridge Minor seems fairly
straightforward, there are many more bizarre examples. For example, what if
the front six ring Rounds for six blows before ringing Cambridge Minor, and
later a method is rung on the middle six while the front and back four ring
Plain Bob Minimus, then Grandsire Doubles is rung on the front five while a
bell lies in sixths while another method is rung on the back six. Writing
down what was rung without resorting to a string of place notation for the
whole performance gets tricky. One answer to this is to codify what was
rung as methods at the stage being rung - Maximus in this case. The band
can choose how this is split up depending what makes sense, e.g. Spliced or
as a single method. The names of the compound methods get recorded in the
collections and the performance and composition reporting is easy, as is
what the conductor actually needs to say when calling it.

In the definitions, this requires a statement that one method and only one
method is ever rung at any point in time (i.e. per row). It is simple yet
versatile. If deemed desirable, a new method class could be introduced to
cover these cellular combinations. The ringers would just learn that London
S Minor over Cambridge S Minor is called Barchester Cellular Maximus, say.

Graham

On 8 September 2015 at 10:15, John Harrison <john at jaharrison.me.uk> wrote:

> In article <Pine.GSO.4.64.1509071519590.26089 at pascal.math.ubc.ca>,
>    Alexander Holroyd <holroyd at math.ubc.ca> wrote:
>
> > Yet again the debate seems to have got sucked into the rabbit hole of
> > trying to legislate about how people should describe perfomances.
>
> It seems to be an occupational hazard.  I think it helps to remind
> ourselves that we should not be describing 'rules' (which carries the
> connotation of what people should or should not do) but a 'description
> service'.
>
> To make the latter efficient it needs a codification scheme based on the
> type of things that people mostly ring but it must also be capable of
> describing (probably less compactly) anything that might plausibly ring
> within the area of interest of the community being served, ie 'change
> ringing'.
>
> Describing the fringe areas is likely to work better if it takes account of
> readily recognised ideas.  Ringing a method like Plain Bob or Cambridge in
> whole pulls clearly comes into that category since the vast majority of
> ringers would understand what it meant - far more than would understand the
> concept of a new method with alternating identity and non-identity changes
> in its place notation.  Likewise, the ordinary ringer would understand what
> was meant by ringing Cambridge on the front six and London on the back six
> of a twelve but would struggle to understand it described in any other way
> as a Maximus method.
>
> In both cases the place notation fed into a proving program would end up
> the same, but we are talking primarily about the words and concepts used in
> performance reports.
>
> --
> John Harrison
> Website http://jaharrison.me.uk
>
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