Early Practice / Practice · 2013Jun04Tu

Early Practice · Four ringers:  Bobbie, Carroll, Lynn, Thomas.  We muffled and raised 124.

• Bobbie worked with Thomas on raising and on good ringing motion.
• Lynn and Carroll raised bells and worked on their own.  Lynn has been working with the Tempo Advance iPhone metronome app and a bluetooth earpiece, to learn to count while ringing and to synchronize the striking of her bell with a count.
• We lowered the bells and removed the muffles.

Practice · Nine ringers:  Anne, Carroll, Jim, Judy, Ken, Lynn, Marguerite, Nancy, Thomas.  Tonight was a heavy-bell practice focusing on Plain Hunt.

• We had six ringers at 6:00pm, the scheduled start of practice, and raised the back six 345678 in peal.  The rounds were fairly rough but we will improve with practice.  We raised 1 and 2 later when the last few ringers arrived.
• Rounds on the back six.
• Plain Hunt on Four with two covers, on the back six.  Our newest Plain Hunters Anne and Nancy rang working bells.
• Plain Hunt on Five with tenor behind, on the back six, still with Anne and Nancy on working bells.  When Ken arrived I relinquished the tenor and stood behind ringers.  We were able to ring some clear and often well-struck leads, and rang several leads in succession a few times.  Overall everyone was in their correct sequence and often striking in their place.
• When the last ringer arrived, I redeployed everyone for Plain Hunt on Seven with tenor behind:  Anne, Jim, Judy, Ken, Marguerite, Nancy, and Thomas hunting and Carroll tenoring behind “on big Bob” as she says and keeping everyone honest by ringing steadily.  The technical challenge of fitting each strike in an eight-beat flow is still beyond many of us, so we did not achieve any complete leads in correct sequence.  We did however ring leads in which many strokes were audibly in correct sequence, and usually made it through the first half to the Back Rounds row and a bit beyond before getting muddied up.  Even when the band was not staying in completely correct sequence we did not fall apart, and arrived at the lead end more or less together.  Well done all, and especially our newer ringers!
• Rang down in peal 12345678.  Possibly some of the ringers were tired, because it appeared that some simply gave up on staying in place and just rang down, unfortunately.

An excellent practice overall, and ringing of which the band can be proud.