Change Ringing - Permuting The Bells

Permuting The Bells

The simplest way to use a set of bells is ringing rounds, which is sounding the bells repeatedly in sequence from treble to tenor: 1, 2, 3, etc. (musicians will recognise this as a portion of a descending scale). Ringers typically start with rounds and then begin to vary the bells' order, moving on to a series of distinct rows. Each row (or change) is a specific permutation of the bells (for example 123456 or 531246) — that is to say, it includes each bell rung once and only once, the difference from row to row being the order of the bells.

In call change ringing each row is specifically called for: one ringer (the conductor) tells the others how to swap their bells' places from row. In method ringing, by contrast, the ringers have learned a "method" — an algorithm to govern the swaps which they can thus perform on their own like clockwork; a conductor's intervention is needed only periodically, when a slight variation in the pattern is necessary, or to correct errors by the ringers.