How to Develop Your Listening Skills

Experienced ringers are in agreement that the foundation of good ringing is the skill of listening.  

But how do we develop this essential skill?

For many of us when we are learning, the stress of handling our bell, remembering where we are and who we are following and the blue line of a method stretches our capabilities to such an extent that we don’t seem to have any capacity to hear what the sound output is, let alone make any judgement about its quality or do anything to improve it.

But there are ways we can work on improving this skill set.

By studying videos of good ringing which are available online we can train and condition the unconscious parts of our brain associated with hearing and listening. The secret to the effectiveness of this technique is “active listening” – concentrating and considering in detail what we are listening to.

We’ll use this fine example of six-bell ringing, below. It is an excerpt from a quarter peal of 1260 Grandsire Doubles rung on the back six at St George’s, Clun, by regular ringers at St George’s.

To get the most out of this process it’s important to play this video a few times. The first time through simply gets a feel for the sound. Then we can play it again and try to identify the open handstroke at the beginning of each row. Also try to identify how regular the rhythm is. These ringers are obviously very good and their rhythm is excellent but, as with all human endeavour, not perfect all of the time. Occasionally one bell or other is a little late or early and interrupts the smooth evenness of the ringing.  See if you can identify these occasions.

Finally, there is also a more advanced exercise we can do which will help enormously with our method ringing: try to identify by sound when the treble is leading. Remember that the treble is the highest pitch note and the bell that is leading comes immediately after the handstroke gap.

Why might it be helpful to hear when the treble’s leading?  When we are learning our first methods we often concentrate on remembering the “order of the work” – that is the order of the dodges and places.  In Plain Bob those dodges (and places) happen when the treble leads and sometimes, when you may have drifted off or got into a muddle and forgotten what your next work is, hearing the treble leading tells you to “dodge now”.  This is especially helpful on higher numbers of bells where it’s easier to forget what work you did most recently – hearing the treble leading stops you from sailing through a dodge which is so often the cause of catastrophe.  It continues to be useful in all methods as your repertoire develops and becomes particularly helpful when learning by place bells.  In Grandsire, by the way, the dodges happen just after the treble has led so hearing the treble leading tells you to dodge (or make thirds if you are just leaving the front) on the next handstroke. 

By actively listening to online videos of good ringing in this way, when our brain isn’t occupied with handling our own bell we will develop part of our brain which takes care of our unconscious listening skills which will then unlock a whole new aspect of our ringing which will bring a huge benefit to the quality of the sound we produce from our tower. 

Andy Waring