Bells "Change ringing"

Dutchman · Post by **Dutchman** » Wed Jun 25, 2025 1:32 pm

On the European continent, we know the dull Ding-Dong of church bells. In some British cities and villages, however, you can hear a completely different sound from the bell towers, more like Dinge-Le-Dang-Deng-Dung-Le-Dong, in any case, a playful game of multiple bells in varying order. I had known that kind of bell ringing for some time from British TV series like 'Midsomer Murders', which have a fondness for nostalgic villages and old customs.

"Change ringing" is a central theme in the Midsomer Murders episode titled "Ring Out Your Dead". The episode revolves around a series of murders within a bell-ringing team in the village of Midsomer Wellow, just before a major bell-ringing competition. The episode features actors learning to ring changes as part of the storyline.

I recently learned that such a playful way of ringing bells is known as 'Change ringing'. It is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as 'changes'.
Googling that term opened an unexpected new world of music, technology, and creativity.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing
and https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/defaul ... ells_P.pdf
A very interesting movie on the history of related tuning of church bells by Nigel Taylor is on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEJkMalMVv4
More info from Nigel Taylor on church bells and tuning can be found on https://www.ringing.info/nigel-taylor/

Because I am a complete novice in musical matters, I saw it as a challenge to make "Change ringing" audible in Smart Basic. Therefore, I started with the most basic 'methods': the "Plain change" and the "Plain Hunt". The image below gives some examples of the printed output.

: Change ringing examples.jpg (95.7 KiB) Viewed 29 times

A midi-file can also be generated. However, those midi files are not compatible with the Apple 'QuickTime' player. The open-source 'VLC player' does play them.

Plain Hunt on 8 bells.mid: (1.35 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

Playing the successive sequences, one bell after another, sounded so dull that I decided to work with multiple 'tracks' so that several bells could sound simultaneously, but with a small starting pause in between. However, I have not yet taken into account the method of 'changing' through speed control.

In change ringing, speed control is fundamental for coordinating the bells and creating different sequences (changes). Sufficient control of the speed is only possible because the bells swing through a full circle and can be held momentarily near the point of balance at either end of the swing. The bell can be stopped and left in a safe position just past the balance point using a device known as a stay and slider.

So in my program it can happen that a bell overlaps itself in two different tracks, which is physically impossible.

==== How to install
• Download the files to your iPad
• Move the files to the folder, e.g. "From forum", where you want the folder "Bells" to be created
• Remove the extensions ".txt"
- file "Install-Bells.sb" is the program which will extract the files from the archive
- file "Bells.archive" contains the files for the system
• Run the install-program "Install-Bells.sb"
- Program will generate the folder "Bells", including contents.
• The file "- Read me.txt" contains information for use.
• Run "Change Ringing Bells.sb"
==== Downloads

Install-Bells.sb.txt: (1.41 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

Bells.archive.txt: (5.41 KiB) Downloaded 3 times