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Alternative Surprise Major

In September 2014 I arrived in London to start university and my nearest tower was St Mary Abbots, Kensington, which you could see from my bedroom window in halls. The Kensington ringers were regularly ringing methods from the Standard Eight Surprise Royal, including Superlative No. 2. I wondered what that method would be like if squashed down to eight bells, and came up with a very interesting method, the first lead being:

12345678

21436587    78365214

12463578    87356241

21645387    78532614

26145378    87532164

62413587    78351246

26143857    73852164

62418375    37581246

26481357    73518264

62843175    37152846

68241357    73512486

86423175    37154268

68423715    31754286

86247351    13572468

68274315    31527486

86723451    13254768

87632541    13527486

As the half lead is irregular, you have to have place notation 18 for Plain Bob lead ends. This is interesting as - despite the irregular half leads - the method is very nearly Double, were it not for the mandatory 12 place notation at the lead end (which prevents the method from coming round at the first lead end, as is the case with Bob Major.)

Bells 3,5 make a place in the first quarter lead, mirrored by bells 2,4 in the next quarter lead, and the same pairs then swap back over again in the following half lead. This entails that 4-bell combinations at the back in the first half lead are mirrored off the front in the following half lead, like in Bob Major. But unlike Bob Major, the rows in the two half leads are not complete mirror images of each other - the irregular half lead prevents that.

 

I found this method and its unusual properties all very interesting, and a quick search confirmed that it had not been named. I well remember turning the method over in my mind while at the cinema with some of my new Freshers buddies in September 2014. However, not realising the hidden merits of the method and probably put off by the EO falseness, I didn't give it any further thought.

February 2017

Fast forward to almost two and-a-half years later and I was now working on my dissertation. The Kensington ringers had made Superlative No. 2 Surprise Royal their focus method from the Standard Eight and we rang it at a practice night. This reawakened my attention to the interesting unnamed Surprise Major method, and I realised that all of the in-course tenors together falseness was confined to the middle leads of the method. Bearing in mind that the method is lead end group a, this means that calling bobs at 5ths and 4ths in every course produces a clean 5-lead course with no in-course tenors together falseness whatsoever.

 

Aesthetics of the method and the 5-lead course block

I very quickly saw the great aesthetic potential that this method, and that this particular way of ringing the method, has to offer.

  • As the clean course is only 5 leads long you get to each course end quicker, giving a faster and more intense tempo

  • Bells 7 & 8 interact with each other beautifully and rhythmically throughout the clean course. The Superlative start causes them to dodge together at the back for longish periods - indeed the Treble occupies every relative position when 7 & 8 are at the back, meaning that if you rang the 60 different clean courses for a peal of 9600 changes, you would get every change ending xxxxxx78.

  • After dodging together at the back, 7 & 8 will follow each other straight down to the front of the change and dodge there, before heading straight up to the back again. This adds to the fast-paced fun of the method. The Superlative start means that you still get those pretty combinations after the Wrong (xxxx7568s, etc), but the places in 5-6 cause 7 & 8 to immediately rejoin each other at the back

  • Any roll-up at the back in one half lead is mirrored off the front in the next half lead

  • Even when the tenors are split for one lead, they still interact with each other and cross over in 6-7 at the half lead, meaning that changes like 23456781 are still possible

  • Though I don't ring by the Blue Line, I am still interested to see what the line looks like for methods that I have devised. I was delighted to see that the line for this method is remarkably consistent. Part of the work includes hunting straight down to the front to double-dodge and lead, double-dodge and hunt straight up to the back before doing exactly the same thing again TWICE OVER. I'm sure that this pattern contributes to the unique rhythm of the method

  • Though the half leads are irregular, you can still sneak in regular half leads to a composition, and these are then mirror images of half leds from the plain course. You can sneak Back Rounds into a composition.

  • The Superlative start means that you get Queens in the plain course - but unlike in Superlative, this occurs in the first lead!

Composing

I have very happy memories of February 2017, when I filled several pages of my compositions pad with schemes and figures for this new method. It was a precursor to May 2017, when I had an unexpected spate of devising several new Treble Dodging Major methods and purpose made compositions. As this method is clearly a close relation to Superlative, I named it Comparative. I then discovered that a band had already given this name to a Surprise Royal method, so I settled on the name Alternative Surprise Major.

 

Of the eight peals of Alternative that I initially composed, here are three examples. My second composition in the method is based purely on the 5-lead course plan, and focusses on 56s and 65s, with Back Rounds deliberately incorporated too. Having no full courses deprives the two tenors from ringing all of the work, and makes 5678s off the front an impossibility. However, it does mean that a band can settle down into a superb and consistent rhythm, held together by the qualities of the relentless 5-lead courses. For this reason, the composition may also be suitable for handbells.

 

No. 7 is based solely on the 24 possible courses with bells 5,6 coursing on either side of the two tenors. Remarkably, these courses run true to Alternative because there is no B falseness, and even the O falseness allows for all 24 courses. This peal is a considerable contrast to No. 2, as the 5-lead courses are quite infrequent compared to the full courses. With all of the coursing going on, this peal would be especially suitable for handbells. Although I don't like statistics in composition, it might be worth noting that this peal has all of the 24 possible 56s and 65s off the front and back (however, every one of these occurs while the treble is moving between dodging positions, meaning that you only get one roll-up at a time due to the internal places.) The peal has a snap start and finish, to get straight into the right course-type.

 

No. 8. This is probably the most balanced peal out of the three. It has a mixture of 5-lead courses and full courses, with an episodic alternating between the two which is helped by the two-part structure. The 5-lead course blocks are specially designed to incorporate all of the plain course xxxx5678s, and the full courses are the courses where bells 5,6 course on either side of the tenors. The challenge was to neatly join these blocks to form a true peal. Extra bobs at M, H in the joining courses shunt the part end from Rounds to 24365. Unfortunately the full length is 5568, so a block of 3 has to be omitted from somewhere. The three bobs on 1xxx7685 is the least painful concession. I have subsequently come up with variations that use 6th place bobs to shorten the joining sections.

 

This was the composition that we used to name the method, on Friday 7th April 2017. We rang it on the light 8 at Shoreditch, which was the ideal octave for the method and composition. I was pleased that the method lived up to my expectations.

 

Afterwards some of us had a drink at an excellent pub called The Astronomer, where we toasted Alternative Surprise Major.     

 

   

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