This post is for ringers who have passed through the initial stages – they can manage Plain Hunt and want to learn methods.  There are a number of good books that give great advice on how to do this – I especially like Steve Coleman’s series of books, and I would strongly advise ringers to get the one relevant to their level of expertise. In particular, I like

• The Bellringer’s Early Companion; and
• The Method Ringer’s Companion

The Bellringer’s Early Companion has a great deal of help on how to develop your first stages of Change Ringing and there is no point in me trying to re-write this.  It really will save you hours of frustration in the belfry if you get the book and study it.  I appreciate that book-learning has rather gone out of fashion, but ringers are intelligent and will vastly and quickly improve their knowledge and skills if they make the (considerable) effort.  But we are all impatient, so hear are some of my own thoughts on learning change ringing.

Simple methods
Simple methods like Plain Bob and Grandsire can be learnt by thinking of them as Plain Hunting with additional dodges.  You can buy books showing the extra dodges in a ‘circle of work’ – e.g. for Plain Bob Minor this would be 4-3 down, 6-5 down, 5-6 up, 3-4 up, 2nds.  This is fine when you are first trying to move beyond Plain Hunt, but it doesn’t work for anything much more than these basic Plain methods.  Moreover, if you get into the wrong place, it is pretty difficult to get right again.  For example:

• You might know where you should dodge next time, but you have got out of place, so don’t know when that will be.
• You are in the right place, but have forgotten what your last dodge was, so can’t be sure what your next dodge is.

Passing the Treble
The best approach for plain methods is to keep an eye on where (which place) you ring over the treble on your way to the back, as this will tell you your next dodge, although the next dodge will depend on the method you’re ringing, so you will have to learn a different rule for each method.  Take Grandsire Doubles for example.  If you ring over the treble in fifth’s place, you are in the hunt, so keep following the treble down to lead.  If you ring over the treble in fourths place, you dodge 4-5 down; if you ring over the treble in 3rds place, you’re 4-5 up and if the treble takes you from lead, you’re going to make 3rds.

This system extends to Grandsire on any number of bells, although it isn’t as helpful on high numbers, but hopefully your ropesight will have improved so that you’re not needing it as much.  The same system can be used for Plain Bob, although the work is different of course.

Course Bell
The other system is to know and watch your Course Bell.  This is the bell that you follow down to lead (except for the one lead after you have made seconds/thirds in Plain Bob/Grandsire.)  Knowing your course bell is very important, especially on higher numbers of bells.  A common problem for new ringers is making the dodge correctly, but then heading off in the wrong direction.  For example, dodging 4-5 up in Grandsire Triples and then going back to lead.  If you know your course bell, you would realise your error, as you must not return to lead until you have run behind over your course bell.  Also, even if you forget the dodge entirely, you mustn’t overtake your course bell, so you can swan around for a whole pull and come down after your course bell.  Of course, there will be a terrible clatter and a risk of putting others wrong, but if they’re on the ball, they will be able to keep right too.

So, make sure you know your course bell at all times.  In simpler methods, it remains fixed for some time before a bob or single changes it.

Your ‘Duty’
Until the beginning of the 20th Century, this circle of work (or ‘duty’ as the authoritarian Victorians liked to call it) was sufficient for the methods being run by most local Sunday Service bands, but this cumbersome system limited what people could ring.

For example, the book by Sir Arthur Heywood on his new method, Duffield, written in 1888, makes it clear that he thinks it’s difficult. He includes a diagram in which the path of one bell (the tenor) uses bold type. Nowadays that would sufficient to learn the method. However, Sir Arthur goes on to describe the work of each bell in seven pages of text, with hints as to keeping right.  (He expends many pages on Royal and Maximus too.)

However, it is clear from his diagram that  the structure of the method is simple and obvious.  You double-dodge on the back, hunt down to thirds, up to sixths and run through to the front where you double dodge and lead, then reverse this.  I would go as far as to say that it is simpler than St Clement’s College Bob Major, although you do have to become adept at seeing and striking in the right place.  Sir Arthur recognises that less-experienced ringers need help at finding which bells to strike over, and that is what much of the text is about.

Blue Lines
Sir Arthur did show the path of a particular bell in bold type, but he doesn’t really acknowledge that each bell follows this same continuous path, each bell merely starting at a different place along it.

This didn’t really happen until Jasper Snowdon published his revolutionary work ‘Standard Methods’ at the end of the 19th Century.  This contained a set of ‘Diagrams’ in which the Plain Course of each method is laid out in Blue Type with a line through the path of the 2nd bell and a red line through the path of the Treble.

Despite the effort Snowdon put into these Diagrams, he still describes the ‘Duty’ of each bell in exhaustive detail,  and he elaborates on the differences between the successive methods he describes.  The diagrams are merely an adjunct to illustrate the text.

However, ringers soon realised that they could learn the blue line more easily than the exhaustive descriptions of ‘Duty’.  This is partly because there is regularity and symmetry in the blue line, and because the differences between methods become clear.

However, there are some problems if you only know the line – we all experience memory blanks when you suddenly can’t remember where you are, or another bell is crunching with you but you don’t know which of you is wrong.  I’m going to try to give some hints and tips on dealing with these, so that your ringing doesn’t ‘fire out’ in a peal or quarter peal.

Learning those Pesky Blue Lines
Becoming a good method ringer needs two things: the ability to recall the blue line instantly and the ability to see which place you are ringing in.

Let’s deal with the first of these: memorising those pesky blue lines.  You need to find a way of thinking about the lines.  I’ve heard people chanting them out as a series of numbers such as

1 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 8 7 8 7 8 8 7 8 7 6 5 6

Some people may recognise this as the seconds place bell work in Cambridge Major.  Everyone will recognise that it would be desperately easy to lose you way, due to the repetition.

Most ringers would divide this into blocks – the first part is Cambridge Front Work.  Then ‘dodge 3-4, two and one (dodges) on the back, dodge 5-6 down at the lead end’. (This is more-or-less how the work is described in Snowdon’s text.)  You must learn to translate this verbal image into a visual (or aural) pattern in order to be able to ring it.

With this ability, 6th’s place bell becomes ‘lead and dodge up to 5-6 places, dodge behind and become 7ths place bell’.

Likewise, the work of each bell can be distilled into a few words.  We can describe methods far more difficult than ‘Duffield’ quite simply, although you still have to memorise them.

I will expand on this in due course, but why not consult one of the books I’ve mentioned?