Thinking allowed

Bristol Surprise Major: the plain course and bobs

Armed with a con­tinu­ous blue line, as described in the pre­vi­ous post (but see also this later post), we can write this more com­pactly as a single lead:

12345678
21436587
12346857
21438675
24136857
42316587
24135678
42315768
24351786
23457168
32541786
35247168
53427618
35246781
32547618
23456781
24365871
42638517
46235871
64328517
46238157
42631875
24368157
23461875
32416857
23146587
32415678
23145768
21347586
12435768
21345678
12436587
14263857

We can also write out what hap­pens when “bob” is called. The front two bells are unaf­fected, and run in and out as in a plain course to become the 2nd and 3rd place bells. The bell in 4th place, which would have run out to 5th and become the 5th place bell, instead makes the 4th-place bob and becomes the 4th place bell. The bells above 4th place each dodge back one place, which brings them back to their start­ing pos­i­tions, so that they simply repeat the same lead as they have just done. Like this:

23145768
21347586
12435768
21345678 bob
12436587
14235678

The bob per­mutes the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place bells. If called at the end of each of the first three leads this will bring the touch back to rounds – three leads of Bristol.

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learning Bristol Surprise Major

[Edit: Although I learnt Bris­tol Sur­prise Major in the way described in this post, I sub­sequently figured it out in what is to me a much more con­veni­ent way. You may find it help­ful to read this post on the struc­ture of Bris­tol Sur­prise Major instead. I think it’s much sim­pler. You may or may not agree.]

It’s been a long time since I wrote here about learn­ing a Sur­prise Major meth­od. In the inter­ven­ing peri­od I’ve learnt to ring six such meth­ods: Cam­bridge, York­shire, Lin­colnshire, Super­lat­ive, Rut­land and Pud­sey. These are six of the so-called “Stand­ard Eight” Sur­prise Major meth­ods, and in many ways they are quite sim­il­ar to each oth­er — York­shire, Lin­colnshire, Super­lat­ive and Rut­land are all the same as Cam­bridge when you are above the treble [edit: this isn’t true of Super­lat­ive], and Pud­sey is the same as Cam­bridge when you are below the treble. The oth­er two SM meth­ods in this Eight are Bris­tol and Lon­don and they are dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers, and from each oth­er. Sev­er­al times I have sat down to learn Bris­tol, but not got very far. Time to put that right.

So I’ve spent an hour or so look­ing at the “blue line” for Bris­tol, as well as a couple of guides. From it I can see that:

  • Bris­tol is a double meth­od, so that once you have learnt a quarter of it you should know all of it
  • There are basic­ally three or four pieces of work that you need to learn in that quarter; I call these: 
    • the “front­work”, though you also do this at the back
    • “Sted­man” and “fish­tails”
    • “light­ning work”

I’ll look at each of these in turn.

First we’ll look at fish­tails. These are single blows where you reverse dir­ec­tion after each blow, so on the front it might be: lead, 2nd, lead, 2nd, lead:

x-
-x
x-
-x
x-

Next, the front­work. Bell 2’s work con­sists of doing half the front­work one way, and then mir­ror­ing it to do it the oth­er way:

  • dodge 1–2 down with the treble
  • lead right
  • fish­tails
  • lead wrong
  • out to point 4ths
  • lead right

and then do the same thing in the oppos­ite direction:

  • out to point 4ths
  • lead wrong
  • fish­tails
  • lead right
  • dodge 1–2 up with the treble

(And then, instead of mak­ing 2nd place over the treble, go out to 3rd place and become the 3rds place bell.)

Then there’s “Sted­man”. This is like a whole turn in Sted­man: lead two blows, point 2nd, lead two blows. As in Sted­man, one of the pairs of lead­ing will be right (i.e. hand­stroke fol­lowed by back­stroke), and one will be wrong (i.e. back­stroke fol­lowed by hand­stroke). But in Bris­tol this doesn’t just occur on the front. It’s also done in 4ths — 4th, 4th, 3rd, 4th, 4th. And because Bris­tol is a double meth­od it appears at the back (8th, 8th, 7th, 8th, 8th) and in 5th place (5th, 5th, 6th, 5th, 5th). Each of these pieces of work occur twice, once with the first two blows right and the last two wrong, and once with the first two wrong and the last two right.

Armed with this inform­a­tion we can write out what bell 3 does:

  • dodge 3–4 up
  • 4th place
  • dodge 3–4 down with the treble
  • an extra blow in 3rd place
  • Sted­man on the front
  • out to 4th place
  • Sted­man in 4th place (4th, 4th, 3rd, 4th, 4th)
  • plain hunt down to …
  • fish­tails on the front (2nd, lead, 2nd, lead, 2nd and out)
  • dodge 3–4 up
  • out to 5th and become 5ths place bell

We’re nearly there, and all that remains to do is to look at the “light­ning work”:

  • hunt out to the back
  • one blow only at the back, then turn around and
  • hunt down with
  • two blows in 5th place
  • two blows in 4th place
  • down to the lead
  • one blow only in the lead, then turn around and
  • hunt up to 6th place

This path crosses the treble as it does the places in 4th and 5th:

--x-----
---x----
----x---
-----x--
------x-
-------x
------x-
-----x--
----x---
---1x---
---x1---
---x----
--x-----
-x------
x-------
-x------
--x-----
---x----
----x---
-----x--

That cross­ing point is also one of the pivot points of the meth­od, i.e. the point where you move from doing things on the front to doing things on the back, or where the blue line rotates through 180 degrees.

Bell 5 begins with the light­ning work as described above (the first three blows in the dia­gram are of course the last three blows of bell 3’s work).

After this point we repeat the work already described, but as places from the back, rather than places from the front. This enables us to write out a com­plete plain course, as is shown in the full article.

(more…)

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