I learnt to ring when I was a young boy at Roche, I learnt quickly being the annoying youngster who picked it up with seemingly no effort. I thoroughly enjoyed ringing and grabbed every opportunity to ring which included going out to St Wenn, where I learnt to rise and fall in peal. At University in Leeds, I learnt method ringing and found the challenge of successfully ringing a new method on strange bells fascinating and rewarding. For several years I found myself attempting to ring at least one peal a week and several quarter peals.

Since finishing University and returning to Cornwall I have found that my interest in method ringing has waned significantly to the point now where I now very rarely ring any methods at all. Most of my ringing now consists of ringing rounds and rising and falling every peal. I occasionally ring call changes, when one of the old boys prompts me to call a few by saying, “Good Key!”

One observation that I would make is that method ringing and ringing rounds and rising and falling are entirely different skills. A good method ringer can not necessarily ring decent rounds or rise and fall and vice versa.

Call changes are a way of adding variation to the normal order in which bells are rung which is in rounds, down through the scale from the highest pitched bell, the treble to the lowest pitched bell, the tenor.

To ring call changes each bell is given the relative number in which it rings when ringing rounds. On a peal of six bells the treble rings first on is 1 and the tenor ring last and is 6, the intermediate bells filling in hence the sequence for rings rounds on six bells is 123456.

During call changes someone shouts out an instruction for two bells to swap their relative position, so for example if the call is for 3 and 4 to swap when ringing rounds on 6 bells the order would go from 123456 to 124356. Further instructions or calls can move the bells into a variety of complex patterns some of which have their own names e.g. Queens 135246.

All call changes are made in the form:                                           “X to Y”

This means that bell X should now follow bell Y and the others bells should stay in the same relative position. This is usually written down as X – Y on cards or sheets which the caller may use as a reference.

Usually when ringing rounds it is polite for the caller to shout “Look About” before making any calls. This warns the other ringers that they are about to ring call changes and allows them to move into a suitable position where they have sight of the ropes of all the other ringers.

Calls to change are made on the handstroke of the leading bell and the change should happen on the handstroke of the next round following completion of the current round.

There are a couple of ways of calling call changes which need to be understood, the principle behind each is exactly the same however the action and notice that each ringer has to take of the bells around them differ somewhat.

The assumption made when calling up is that the bells called are next to each other in the relative sequence. The first bell named currently being followed by the second bell name. The call then simply instructs the first bell to follow the second bell called. For example starting from rounds 123456 the call 3-4 would cause the sequence to change to 124356 as 3 would now be following 4, instead of 4 continuing to follow 3 with the other bells staying in their same relative positions.

There are a few simple rules which help to understand what you need to do when ringing:

• If your bell is called to follow another bell, follow it.
• If another bell is called to follow the bell you are following, follow the other bell
• If the bell you are following is called to follow you, follow the bell they were following

The golden rule is that you should always know which bell, the bell you are following is following

• If your bell is called to follow another bell, follow it.
• If another bell is called to follow the bell you are following, follow the other bell
• If the bell you are following is called to follow another bell, follow the bell they were following

The golden rule is that you should always know which bell, the bell you are following is following.

Comparison

The calling down method has two flaws which often cause confusion:

1. Out of the two bells called only one bell is affected. The second called bell does not change the bell it is following unlikely in the Calling Up method where both bells change who they are following

2. It can be ambiguous, unlike with Calling Up the logic does not always give one possible answer. From rounds 123456 a call of 3-1 tell you that 3 now should follow 1. There are however two possible ways that this can occur 132456 or 213456.

Mixed Calling

Sometimes callers will mix their calls using both of the previous two systems. This is perfectly valid when teaching learners and you use both methods to explain what is happening on a single call.  For example from rounds 123456 with the learner ringing 4 the call 3-4 is made followed immediately by 4-2 this helps and tells the learner that they should be following 2.

Changing the Lead

It is often the case that the bell leading or ringing first in the sequence changes during call changes. As the lead bell follows the tenor bell on the opposite stroke it is often a good idea to add the call,”Lead” immediately after the call change to remind the called bell that they are now following on the opposite stroke to the tenor. For example to change the lead from rounds 123456 the following call would be made “1 to 2 Lead” changing the order to 213456. This is commonly written as 1-2L.

Named Call Changes

Some patterns that the bells can ring in are thought to be somewhat musical and have been given names. The musical aesthetic of these patterns is somewhat controversial as musicians will rightly point out that a peal of bells in one key, ringing a particular pattern will musically be very different from a peal of bells in a different key ringing exactly the same pattern.