[If you can’t see the video above you can watch it on YouTube, here.]
There is a quite remarkable video recording on YouTube of a band from Birmingham ringing Stedman Triples while blindfolded.
Spending 10 minutes listening to this and reflecting on the lessons we can learn from it will pay dividends on our own skill levels.
Obviously these are exceptionally skilled ringers, but what can mere mortals like ourselves who are struggling to improve our ringing learn from this?
Quite a lot actually.
The first thing is, to state the obvious, they are not relying on ropesight to see where to put their bell. They are not looking to see which bell to follow – they can’t! Instead, they rely completely on their sense of rhythm and listening to the sound of each of their blows to see how it fits with the overall sound, making micro adjustments as they go to ensure they are accurately fitting in.
Listen how long they take in rounds before they start. They are listening to the overall steadiness and pace of the ringing, identifying their own bell and judging how accurately it contributes to the overall precision. They are quite obviously highly proficient in this but we should take the lesson that this is a learned skill which is honed by practice. If we practice this ourselves we will progress towards the quality of ringing these experts produce.
It is a hallmark of inexperienced bands that, in our eagerness to get into the method, not enough time is taken to let the rounds settle. I often wonder how we can expect the method to be accurately struck if no overall rhythm has been established in the rounds. Much is gained by concentrating on getting good rounds before we “go” into the method.
Stedman is notoriously difficult to strike well, especially when leading, due to peculiarities of its construction which I won’t go into here. Rather than trying to learn these technical aspects here, I think we should just sit back and listen to the way they ring the method. Notice how even the striking is and how everyone preserves the open hand-stroke gap. They do this entirely through feeling the rhythm – quite a remarkable achievement, but one that perhaps we can all aspire to move towards.
As we approach the end of the piece the ringer on the 7th misses the sally. This might be disastrous for many of us even if we can see the dancing rope, but look how he handles it by simply pulling hard and straight on the next backstroke so that the sally arrives back at exactly where he expects it to be for the next handstroke. There is barely a hiccup in the striking. Remarkable to witness.
Finally, when it comes back into rounds they are a bit ragged which conveys that they are all so relieved the ringing has gone well so far that their concentration goes a little. This is very common in many bands, but notice how this band has a different approach: whereas we might be so relieved to have survived we are happy to call stand even though the rounds are ragged, the conductor in this band continues with the rounds until they are steady again. Once they are steady and well-struck he calls “stand”.
Only once they have stood their bells do they break their concentration and you can tell from their reactions how much they enjoyed the experience and achievement.
You can really tell how much fun they had doing it – and that’s the final lesson: experts ring for fun, too. And by improving our own skill-level we can increase our own fun-level which, after all, is why we do it!
What we learned from this ringing:
- It’s important to concentrate on getting the rounds good at the beginning.
- Rhythm and listening are learned skills which we can work on with practice in the tower
- If you miss the sally, don’t panic: you can recover it at the next backstroke
- We haven’t finished our performance until the rounds sound good at the end.
- More skill = more satisfaction and fun.
Andy Waring
