The Albany Quadrant weekly band and our experience at learning together is what inspired the beginnings of this blog. Starting with a very wide range of experience (from none to quite a lot), we have all expanded what we can ring in different ways. Besides learning as individuals, there is a separate 'band' entity, which has a dynamic of its own, different from when we each ring with other bands. Our weekly band consists (most of the time) of Simon, Tina, Angela and Jonathan, with occasional visits from Marcus and Nick.
Last week we rang a quarter of Plain Bob Major with Colin, which we had not quite managed to complete on handbell day. It went smoothly. For a change, I called this composition, which is a nice one-liner.
1280 Plain Bob Major
W B H 23456
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- 2 2...
It's been a while, but now I can get back to writing about ringing, instead of writing about writing about ringing. First, though, let me report that we went to the Ringing Roadshow and sold nearly all of the books that we took. There were also quite a few sales...
We did it! We rang a handbell peal on the exact 90th anniversary of the first Scottish Association handbell peal, at the same address: 66 Hillhead Street. In 1932 it was the home of Stephen H Wood, a member of the Glasgow band who conducted the peal. These days it's...
Yesterday Jonathan and Angela arranged a quarter of Anniversary Delight Major as a compliment to Martin Mellor, the SACR Publicity Officer, and his partner Ewan Halley. It's a variation of Pudsey, with the place notation x58x16 at the beginning of the lead replaced by 56x56.18 and symmetrically at the end...
A few weeks ago we temporarily suspended the Glasgow tower-bell practice and had a Ringing Room session. Peter and I found ourselves ringing two bells each for a course of London Minor, which was a first for Peter. Thus inspired, the next time Angela wasn't available for handbell ringing we...
Last week we had a live ringing session with Jessica, who we have been teaching in Ringing Room. We spent some time working on handbell ringing style and adapting to the delay between starting the physical movement and the bell sounding. After an evening's practice we were pretty well up...
We had a good crack at Cambridge Maximus on Monday, but didn't quite get to the end of a quarter. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying evening, as it's a while since we've tried it and usually we have struggled to ring a plain course. We've booked another attempt next Thursday...
It's been three weeks since my last article, and in that time we rang two quarters of 6-spliced surprise major (the old-fashioned standard eight without London and Pudsey). That made 9 quarters with no losses since we restarted live handbell ringing in June - a remarkable winning streak.
However, the...
Yesterday Nick dropped in for a quarter, as he was passing through Glasgow and had some time between trains. After a bit of debate and method revision, we agreed to ring spliced Cambridge, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Royal. It was the first time we had tried spliced royal with an Albany...
On Monday we had an expedition to Angela's house, for the first time in more than a year, and rang a quarter of Bristol Royal. This was very satisfying - although we rang a quarter with Nick a couple of years ago, after several attempts, we had not previously practised...