Bringing It Round

Bringing It Round #

We’ve been through a lot of material together! This last section is just for compositions to get you good practice at “bringing it round,” so to speak.

Composition collections #

The skills and techniques you’ve learned can be applied to nearly any composition, including those from the chapter on Calling. However, it’s sometimes useful to have access to a small list of compositions to choose from which are uniquely suited to one’s needs. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a few compositions for you. There are two CompLib collections which I think you might enjoy:

  1. Calling It Round: Good quarters for practice is a collection that has 13 quarter compositions for Major methods.
  2. Mix and Match: Simple Quarter Peals of Minor is a collection that does what it says on the tin! It has several 720s (extents of minor) and a few bits less than that to add up to make a quarter.

Both of these collections tend towards simple, commonly-rung quarter peals. Many have a very limited set of calling positions, and where possible only 3- or 4-bell coursing orders to keep track of.

Other resources #

If you are interested in finding other compositions with which to practice, I can recommend the following online resources:

  1. Composition Library, run by Graham John, has an extensive collection and a good search engine.
  2. ringing.org, run by Don Morrison, also has an extensive (though perhaps slightly more curated) collection all very well-organized under different headings and easy to browse through.

I almost always check both places when looking for a composition.

As far as print resources, there are many good ones.

  1. A favorite of mine is The Ringing World Diary, published each year by The Ringing World with a very carefully curated selection of good touches, quarter peals, and peals. It can be purchased here.
  2. There are also a variety of compilations by John Longridge, such as Composition 500 (for peals), Quarter 500 (for quarters), and Standard 90, which contains touches, quarter peals, and peals alike. John Longridge’s books can be purchased through the support website for his books.
  3. There are also many collections available through the Whiting Society but I have not personally read any of the books in this collection.

The print resources, especially the older ones, may follow slightly different conventions than I have in Calling It Round; but variety is the spice of life and now it’s up to you to figure out what you like best! There are also many other wonderful sources of compositions both on the internet and in print.