My friend Alex went to a wedding party last night and met a man who told him about his hobby - Change Ringing. It turns out that there are loads of people who love to go to churches with real-bell belltowers, stand in a circle one person to one bell and ring in various patterns.
The patterns are based on centuries old songs, math, and probably some sort of Masonic ritualism or something. Looking at a 'score' for a 6 bell Bristol Surprise Maximus you would see this:
23456 M W H
42356 1
52364 s s
43265 1 4
63254 s s
23456 s 4*
4 = s--s; 4* = --s-.
I'm not going to explain that to you - go look for yourselves. The thing that amazes me is the number of resources for it on the internet. I know, I shouldn't really be surprised but look at how many people are into this! Pretty interesting stuff really. Some of the sites have audio samples and the bell ringing is really beautiful.
Posted by dmason at February 29, 2004 01:31 PM