It has been too long!

Some news – we recently welcomed a new ringer to our group. She has rung handbells in a church choir for many years (and is talented in many other ways). But this is her introduction to change ringing. Welcome Twyla! So far she has made it to one rehearsal, and that wasn’t tonight.

But tonight we had 4 ringers: Andrew, Becca, Jane, and Randy. Becca has not been ringing with us for long, and is most comfortable ringing the tenors in Plain Bob major and minor. Tonight she decided to branch out and ring the 3/4 position. We started with simple course of Plain Hunt until she was comfortable with that, with Randy on the trebles, Andrew on 5/6, and Jane on the tenors. We then taught about dodges and lead ends for this pair. By the end of the night, we rang a complete course of Bob major with Becca on the 3/4 pair! We collectively decided that this was an accomplishment worth remembering.

Between attempts of Bob major, Jane, Andrew, and Randy decided to ring a touch of Bob minor. Randy on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Andrew on the tenors and calling. We rang a fairly simple touch (essentially Bob at home 3 times), but rang quite quickly. Quickly enough that it felt much like a tower, needing to anticipate your ring place without the ability to wait for previous bells to ring. It was very exhilarating!

All in all, a very nice evening of ringing.

After working on this for way too long, we have finally rung a quarter peal on Major!

We were 4 tonight, Maggie, Randy, Jane, and Andrew. After catching up, we jumped right in. Maggie was on the trebles, Randy on 3/4, Jane on 5/6, Andrew on the tenors, conducting. We rang a composition of Plain Bob Major that Andrew and Jane found on complib.org. I can’t say that it was the cleanest quarter peal. But we did it. And this is our record of our accomplishment.

If you want to see the details of the composition, you can view the Bell Board record here.

WE DID IT!!!!

For the past season, we have been working on 3 separate tasks.

1. Ring a quarter peal of Bob Major
2. Ring a plain course of Kent Major
3. Continue to teach our new ringer

Our new ringer was not in attendance tonight, and so we started ringing a long course of Bob Major. Maggie on the trebles, Randy on 3/4, Jane on 5/6, Andrew on the tenors calling the course. Andrew has a quarter peal in mind. We didn’t complete the quarter tonight. And in fact, crashed in the middle of the third course. Since we are on handbells, we figured out where we could pick it up, and continued on. We made it through a couple more courses before Randy swapped his bells, and so it came to rounds much too soon. So we decided to change course.

And decided to see if we could ring Kent Major, which we haven’t attempted in a few weeks. Maggie on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Andrew on 5/6, and Randy on the tenors. We were very happy to get to the end of the plain course without needing to stop and regroup! We call that a result. Yes, the last lead was a bit rough. But we powered through, and it came to rounds. Yay!!

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything. We’ve been working on a couple of major large accomplishments, and all I would be able to post is progress reports, without actually having accomplished our goal.

So, what have we been working on? The first thing is a quarter peal of Bob Major, called by Andrew (rather than by Jane, who is the usual conductor). The method we are working on is a very standard one of “wrong, home, wrong 3 times, single, and then wrong, home, wrong 3 times”. This is a list of when Andrew calls “bob” while we are ringing. “Home” refers to calling a bob after a full plain course, and “wrong” refers to calling a bob on the first lead after a plain course. (This is not quite right, but will do for our purposes tonight.) We have rung the first half of that (stop before calling the single), which is quite a long length (720, if I recall correctly). Tonight we rang a full course, then called a single and continued from there. Sadly, we were not able to complete the method to the end, which would have been fun. We were able to do that on Minor a couple of weeks ago while Jane was gone.

For this method, we have Maggie on the trebles, Randy on 3/4, Jane on 5/6, and Andrew on the tenors. When we actually get the quarter peal, we will celebrate with a jubilant blog post!

The other thing we have been working on is a plain course of Kent Major. For this, we have Maggie on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Andrew on 5/6, and Randy on the tenors. We have rung the entire method, but have always had to start partway through and continue (something you can do on handbells fairly easily!). That happened last week, and it felt pretty good. But we are working on ringing the entire method from start to finish without needing to stop and start part way through. When we get to that point, I will certainly celebrate with a blog post!

Until then, we continue ringing. If you are in town, we always welcome visitors.

We were three tonight – Jane, Andrew, Randy. We have been practicing Kent, and so attempted to ring Kent Minor tonight. Randy on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Andrew on the tenors. Normally Maggie is ringing the trebles, so this was a switch for Randy.

After a few false starts, we were able to get through three of the five leads, and do so fairly consistently. So we decided to start at the end of the third lead (which has a nice rollup of 165432 on a handstroke). And after a few attempts we were able to get from that point to the end.

Kent is a strange method, because it sounds like a jumble just before it comes around to rounds, and so getting to the end of the method can be quite a surprise for those who are new to ringing it. We discovered that tonight. It also has a funny thing happen just before and after the lead end, in which the bells in the third and fourth positions make places for two changes, which also feels very odd to ringers used to Plain Bob.

Once we had both halves down fairly well, we just needed to put them together. So starting from the beginning, we rang. And again, it took one or more attempts, but we were able to finally ring Kent Minor with this band! It felt like a real accomplishment.

Afterwards, we talked about the coronation that took place this past weekend. Jane had watched it (had recorded it and watched it later, due to the time zone difference, and to allow skipping some of the pre-show crowd chatter). There is a lot of history in the coronation, in case you didn’t watch it. Pieces of regalia that are more than 1000 years old!

We were four tonight, and rang a lot of Major. We are learning Kent. For the past few weeks we have had only three people, and so have practiced Kent Minor some. Today was the first time we tried Kent Major (at least, the first time with this band). We had Maggie on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Andrew on 5,6 and Randy on the tenors.

Jane was doing a great job teaching us, and had even printed out sheets for each of us with our blue lines. We didn’t use them while ringing (of course!!), but they were nice to have. Yes, there is software that shows that for each pair, but it was nice not having to dig around, turn on phones, make sure you’re looking at the right pair, etc. Just look at your sheet.

We went lead by lead, trying to figure it out. There were a lot of stumbles, and we would pick it up somewhere in the middle of a lead, or at the beginning of a lead, or something. After an hour or so, we were able to fairly confidently ring two leads, and get most of the way through the third. We called that a result.

So, to celebrate, we decided to ring a touch of Plain Bob Major. We switched bells (well, Andrew and Randy swapped pairs), and went to it. Randy had been away for a few weeks, and after concentrating on Kent had a bit of a struggle to remember what he was doing on 5/6, and after two failed attempts we decided to ring a short touch. But a silent one – Jane would ring a Single at the end of the method so we would do it all again with the 3/4 pair swapped, and then ring another Single to come round after two plain courses. And this was successful. Not only that, but we were able to ring at a fair clip. It sounded and felt very nice!

Next week – a longer touch of Plain Bob, and then back to Kent!

Yesterday (Sunday, 5 March) we rang some prelude and communion changes at San Dieguito United Methodist Church (where Andrew is the children’s choir director). We have been talking to the music director for a while about doing this, and yesterday was the day. There were 4 of us (Maggie on the trebles, Jane on 3/4, Randy on 5/6, and Andrew on the tenors). We had a 5 minute countdown for the prelude, and just rang a plain course of Plain Bob major, and some call changes when we finished to round out the time. We then rang some larger, more sonorous bells for communion, again ringing a plain course of Plain Bob major. We had some comments about our ringing, as most of the (~200 member) congregation had never heard change ringing. And we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and isn’t that the point?

We were 3 today, so rang a bit of minor. Andrew, Maggie, and Randy gathered. We have been working on a quarter peal of Bob Major, called by Andrew, with a very specific composition (calling bobs at wrong, home, and wrong, three times). Since we only had the three of us, we decided to practice that composition on minor. We had a single false start, but then were able to ring to the end on the second attempt! We were thrilled at the accomplishment, and especially Andrew who made all the calls in all the right places. Maggie rang the trebles, Randy rang 3/4, and Andrew rang the tenors.

With that under our belts, we decided to work on St. Clements College Bob, by passing our bells to the left (so Randy on the trebles, Andrew on 3/4, and Maggie on the tenors). We haven’t rung this in a while, and we struggled a bit. But after a few attempts, we were able to ring a plain course. By this time we had been ringing for more than an hour, and decided to reconvene next week.