There is nothing quite like Plain Bob. Being merely a course of Plain Hunt lengthened by dodges before each lead repeats itself (effectively a type of q-set), Plain Bob is undeniably one of the 'purest' possible methods.

​

Some might think that Bob Major is one of the easiest Major methods to compose peals of, in view of the fact that there is no internal falseness at all. The only kind of falseness apart from repeated sections is to ring an earlier section in reverse - which really is just another form of repetition!

 

However, I actually think that it is very difficult to compose a 'good' peal of Bob Major. As there is no internal falseness, composers can easily cram in as many roll-ups and statistics into a composition as they choose, but this isn't the means of producing a good composition. Having such a pure structure, with so much plain hunting, and the coursing order so clearly exposed throughout the entire course, these courses that contain lots of roll-ups - tenors together or otherwise - are rarely pleasant sounding (apart from the fleeting moment of the actual roll-up itself, and even this isn't really what you would describe as 'nice' sounding, but more of a 'high' - a superficial delight.)

 

That's why the composer has to choose very carefully which courses are nice to listen to - courses that have some kind of 'tune' all the way through. This isn't something that fashionable composition dogmas can teach us - only our intuitions, and it is very effective to cast the dogmas aside and try and remember what you found pleasant to listen to in your early days of ringing. Bearing in mind the pure structure of Bob Major, it is also more important than in Surprise methods to make compositions episodic, and to transist from one episode to the next as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

​

Because of this, I have categorized two kinds of Bob Major composition. Pretty course compositions, and episodic compositions (though these can overlap.)

​

                 Pretty course compositions

​

As mentioned above, in my opinion courses of Bob Major that are pretty to listen to are often not those which include lots of roll-ups or runs. Instead, it is better to use courses that are pleasant to listen to all the way through the lead, from one lead to the next. Obviously it is difficult not to be subjective here, but I strongly believe that there is a certain kind of objectivety to the quality of these kind of courses, and that most people would agree that they sound nice (just as most people agree that 468s sound nice.)

​

For starters, I am a huge fan of the courses in which the 4th is in sixths place at the course ends, and many old compositions, and the contemporary writings of their composers, seem to pursue this. Such a course would be the one that starts 15623478. These courses are particularly enjoyable for the xxxxx748s that crop up. An extremely pretty subgroup of this are the courses where the 6th is in fourths place (so bells 4 and 6 are swapped over from their normal plain course positions, with bells 2,3,5 in any other combination thereof.) These are the courses that start 12365478, 13265478, 15362478, 13562478, 12563478, 15263478. It is hard to describe why I think these sound so good, but they are definitely special, and add a great sparkle and beat to the ringing. Though I wouldn't advise falling into the trap of superficial statistics, there are certain concrete features of these courses that seem to contribute to their aesthetic quality. They include xxxxx748s, 468xxxxxs, and the 12563478 course inlcudes combinations of 1,3,5 and 3,5,7 to match the combinations of 2,4,6 and 4,6,8, etc. The courses starting 1xx65478 are particularly good, as they include the sequences xxx56748 at handstroke, followed immediately by xxx65478 at backstroke (also a favourite in Triples, though better at the opposite strokes in that case.)

 

The courses starting 1xxx6478 are good too.

 

Courses where the 4th is moved to fifths place at the course end are nice. These include 748s off the front of the change instead of at the back. The 1xxx4678 courses are excellent, as are the 1x6x4x78 courses (which are very close to the 1xx6x478 courses described above. 

 

The courses near to the plain course, with bells 4,6,7,8 in their home positions at the course ends, also sound very nice in Bob Major.

 

You may have noticed that pretty courses seem to be much more focussed on combinations of bells 4,6,7,8 than 5,6,7,8 - a fact that I think is often overlooked in ringing.

 

Because of this, I find that multi-part compositions of Bob Major are often much more effective with bells 4,6,7,8 in their home positions at the part ends, rather than the modern dogma of using 5,6,7,8 in this way. In early 2016 I came up with a part block for Bob Major which forms a six-part peal, with 4,6,7,8 fixed. I'm very pleased with it, as it includes all of the course types mentioned above, and I find it very pretty to listen to as a result. It also uses calls at V/F to split the tenors for isolated leads, not only to join courses together, but to incorporate some xxxxx468s. Note that the notation should point out the following: the first lot of F, sM in each part should be called as sF, M in all parts EXCEPT the first part, where it has to be called as F, sM for truth. The adjustments in the other parts produces extra xxxxx678s.

 

                     Episodic compositions

As Bob Major has such a clear and pure structure, with the natural coursing order so easily apparent throughout each lead, I find that the form of a composition is very important for this method. In Surprise Major form is less important because a lead takes longer, and the bells genrally get more mixed up than they do in Bob Major, so there is already enough going on for the emphasis of compositional form to be lost. Other simple methods where form is taken seriously for compositions are Grandsire Caters and Stedman Cinques. Like a symphony made up of movements, it is important to form the composition from distinctive and contrasting episodes. Here is an excellent example of such a composition for Stedman Cinques.

 

Peals of Bob Major can also, therefore, be very effective when formed from a clear episodic structure. In 2012 I came up with this touch of 3856 changes, made up of five episodes. As this is short of a peal length I have composed several subsequent peals which add a sixth episode. The trick is to make sure each episode follows the preceding one as seamlessly and quickly as possible. Here are the figures, followed by a decomposition of each episode.

 

3856 Plain Bob Major

W   B   M   H

        2     63254

    2         54326

2       2     62453

    2         53246 Episode 1

2       2     64352

    2         52436

s   1       s 23564 Void

        -     53462

    2         62345

2       2     54263

    2         63425 Episode 2

2       2     52364

    2         64235

   V,F  -     32465

-  V,F  -     24365 Episode 3

-  V,F  -     43265

        -   s 25364 Void

-       -   - 43256

    1         35462

-       -   - 24356 Episode 4

    1         45263

-       -   - 32456

s  V,F  -     34256

-  V,F  -     42356 Episode 5

-  V,F  -     23456

 

Each episode is effectively a three-part touch based on bells 2,3,4 rotating, while 5,6,7,8 remain fixed. Though I said above that I prefer focussing on bells 4,6,7,8, this isn't so effective in an episodic composition where emphasis of form is intended, because it is more difficult for most people to spot when bells 4,6,7,8 are the fixed bells - 5,6,7,8 are much more obvious.

 

Episode 1 is a round block that starts with bobs at Middle, and ends with bobs at Wrong - in other words it extends to infinite repetitions of parts and will never come round because Middle comes before Wrong in the course! This very peculiar kind of round block is what I term a top-heavy block. The main purpose of Episode 1 is to include all of the in-course xxx5678 courses, without having any of the actual course ends.

 

There is a void between Episodes 1 and 2, but this isn't so bad as it is an extract from a later episode, so isn't an unwelcome outsider.

 

Episode 2 is the same as Episode 1, but this time using the in-course xxx6578 courses (again the actual course ends themselves are never reached in this top-heavy block.)

 

Episode 3. The 6578 course ends missing from Episode 2 are rung, along with the other two leads missing from these courses in Episode 2 (short courses of W,V,F,M are used for this.)

 

Episode 4. Quite a fun episode. This time the three out-of-course 5678 courses are rung. A bob at Before puts the back bells into the Tittums position for a few leads, and calls at Wrong and Middle return them to the 5678 position, in time for the course end. Having the bob at Wrong is nice, as it turns the xxxxx867s from the Tittums position into prettier sounding xxxxx857s, in readniess for putting the bells back into 5678.

 

Episode 5. Like Episode 3, this uses short courses to sweep up the three in-course 5678 course ends. It was important to have this after Episode 4, as it means that the peal ends flirtatiously with many 5678 course ends.

 

A prototype of this episodic composition was rung in 2012, though it is far from perfect, with q-sets of courses added within the episodes to make it up to a peal length, and thus compromising the emphasis of the clear form that is evident in the 3856 touch. Since then I have attempted to come up with several peals that include a seamless sixth episode to make the touch up to a peal length. 

 

 

 

​

​