From Plain Bob Doubles to Triples

This post is aimed at ringers who have recently “moved on” from Plain Bob Doubles, and those who teach such ringers. Plain Bob Doubles has a lot of features that aren’t often explicitly taught, usually because it would be too much information at once for the ringers learning. But continuing to work on it and notice additional features can help ringers understand important concepts in method ringing generally, and advance more easily later on.

At last year’s SACR training day at Tulloch, Jonathan Frye said something I’ve been repeating a lot: the biggest difference between good ringers and excellent ringers is resilience, which comes from having multiple strategies for ringing a method. This way if you mess up one of the strategies, you have another to fall back on, so you’re both less likely to make mistakes and better able to recover from any mistakes you do make. In this post I’m going to share a variety of tips aimed at improving resilience in Plain Bob, first on Doubles and then on more bells.

Plain Bob Doubles

Interacting with other bells in the plain course

I remember I learned quite early on that in (a plain course of) Plain Bob Doubles I have a “dodging buddy”: the 2 and the 5 do both dodges with each other and the 3 and the 4 do both dodges with each other. Your dodging buddy is different from your course (before) and after bells! These are the bells that lead before and after you lead, and lie behind before and after you lie at the back. We’d usually say you “take your course bell off lead” and “your after bell takes you off lead” (same at the back—you take your course bell off the back and your after bell takes you off the back). If you’re ringing the 2, the 5 is your dodging buddy, and that only leaves two inside bells so they must be your course and after bells: 3 and 4! The 3 always leads right before you lead (except at the very beginning when you lead after the treble has led) and the 4 always leads after you lead (except at the very end when the treble leads after you lead, so it’s time to make 2nds).

A note particularly for teachers

If you have multiple ringers working on Plain Bob Doubles, it might seem reasonable to put all of them or at least more than one of them in at the same time. I think it’s actually quite risky to do this. Even with only two learners ringing inside bells, either one is coursing the other so that there’s a greater chance of swapping or simply not knowing when exactly to lead because the other has gone wrong, or they are dodging buddies and could accidentally swap at a dodge or struggle to learn to dodge cleanly. I can imagine some learners actually being motivated to ring a dodge well by knowing that another learner is depending on them, but that’s not all learners! If at all possible, try to have only one learner at a time on an inside bell for Plain Bob Doubles, with a strong band around them. This will allow the learners to progress faster, to the point where they join the strong band!

Interacting with other bells after a bob

It’s very common to ring an extent of Plain Bob Doubles (all the permutations of five) by calling a bob three times when the same bell is making long 5ths. A bob will always change your dodging buddy! A touch with three bobs means each of the other inside bells will have a turn being your dodging buddy. For example, if the 5 is called unaffected and you’re ringing the 2, you’ll dodge with the 5 as usual, after the first bob the 3 will become your dodging buddy, after the second bob the 4 (the only bell left!) becomes your dodging buddy, and the third bob will bring it round right away. If a different bell is called unaffected, you won’t have finished with your plain course dodging buddy so you’ll come back to them at the end. Though if you’re affected, you’ll only actually do two dodges with the same bell once—with the other buddies, a call will come at the point you would have done the second dodge. Since your dodging buddy changes, your course or after bell has to change too but usually one stays the same (it’s most complicated when you make the bob). When you run in or out, the other bell running in or out was your course or after bell and still is! The chart below lays out this example, ringing the 2 when the 5 is called unaffected.

An Extent of Plain Bob Doubles from the 2

Course Bells: What Are They Good For?

The Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) Learning the Ropes scheme includes learning the theory of course and after bells with Plain Bob Doubles, but I think even in towers using the scheme this aspect gets neglected. I suspect there are at least a couple reasons for this:

1. There are many other features of Plain Bob Doubles to be learned, especially if this is someone’s first method!
2. Course and after bells don’t have as much obvious practical relevance on Doubles as they do on higher numbers of bells.

But knowing your course bells can have a lot of practical use on higher numbers of bells and even on slightly more advanced Minor methods. Taking the time to understand the concept in Plain Bob Doubles can have a huge payback. Learning about course bells isn’t like memorizing the order of who to follow. It’s learning that between calls, every time you lead the same bell will take you off lead, except maybe one time when it will be the treble. And anyway memorizing who leads before and after you increases the likelihood of good striking in first and second place, and gives you a good recovery point if needed. In Plain Bob on even numbers, there are no dodging buddies—in a plain course every inside bell will dodge once with each of the other inside bells. But you still have only two course bells! And these are the bells you’ll dodge with at the back.

Onward: Plain Bob Triples

Interacting with other bells in the plain course

In Plain Bob Triples everyone has TWO dodging buddies. In a plain course 2, 5, and 6 only dodge with each other and 3, 4, and 7 only dodge with each other. Once again, these are different from your course and after bells. Unlike doubles, there is one bell that is neither a course bell or a dodging buddy. My immediate thought was to call this bell your enemy but that’s probably not the best name! Maybe “opposite” would be better. Your course and after bells to start out will be the ones immediately on either side of you in the sequence 75324675 etc. Up the evens, down the odds (this is true for almost every method people ring, not just Plain Bob). So from the 2, your course bells are 3 and 4, your dodging buddies are 5 and 6, and the 7 is your opposite—it will make 2nds when you do long 7ths and vice versa.

Calls

At a bob in Plain Bob Triples, if you run in or out BOTH of your dodging buddies will change. Otherwise one will change and the other will stay the same. If you’re dodging in 5-6 at a bob, the bell you’re dodging with is obviously still your dodging buddy! At a single, no dodging buddies will change! Or rather, the order you meet your dodging buddies might change but which bells they are won’t change. If you make 4ths at a bob, both your course and after bell will change, but for everyone else at least one of these bells will stay the same. This is part of what makes it more useful to know your course bells on triples—they’re more stable than on doubles.

In conclusion

I noticed these features of Plain Bob Triples when I was preparing to conduct a peal of it last year. I was trying to find ways of relating the abstract concepts of coursing order and transposition to what I actually see while ringing. Ringers who conduct things are probably the most likely to notice these aspects of method structure, or find the occasional source where things like this are written down! But studying what your course bells do and how calls affect them can be helpful even for ringers who never plan to conduct anything. If it helps keep you from going wrong, it makes the conductor’s job easier!