3. Covering Toolbox

Covering requires good bell control, an ability to ring steadily in one place, good listening skills, and ropesight. Most ringers use a combination of listening skills and ropesight to strike the tenor accurately when covering. These skills might develop together, or someone might start off with one sense doing most of the work. There is no right or wrong way for someone learning to cover. However, do remember to talk about and teach both.

Handling the tenor

Covering requires a novice ringer to ring the heaviest bell in the tower. If your student is unable to ring your tenor, then they can still get the benefits of learning to cover by using another bell which is called into the last place in the row. It might sound a bit funny but it will allow them to develop all the other skills that covering helps to build.

It is a misconception that ringing the tenor takes great physical strength, as it is in fact more dependent on technique. Plenty of slightly built ringers can be excellent tenor ringers because their bell handling is efficient. If the tenor is rung standing on a box this could also take some getting used to. 

Whole pull and move to the right

As pulling off in rounds requires more forward planning with a larger bell, it’s worth spending some time polishing this skill before embarking on change ringing. Give your ringers plenty of opportunities to ring bells of different weights – moving gradually towards the front or the back, building up to ringing progressively larger bells.

Whole pull and stand

This is a game where all the ringers pull off in rounds, ring the following backstroke and stand on the next handstroke. This helps everyone practise pulling off in accurate rounds, and setting the bell.

A variation is to leave the tenor ringing steadily the whole time, so that everyone stands apart from the last bell. The other bells wait for two blows, then join in and ring rounds again. This affords an opportunity for the tenor ringer to ring consistently at a steady pace.

Teaching covering in incremental steps

Start by covering to bells moving just below the tenor in a regular manner:

  • Making places
  • Dodging
  • Kaleidoscope exercises
  • Plain Hunt

Once covering to Plain Hunt has been mastered, move on to covering methods. Different methods have different numbers of bells and patterns of bells coming to the back. These are listed in order of complexity (easiest first)

Ringing steadily and listening skills

Practising ringing the tenor bell steadily is a good preparatory exercise, in rounds and call changes. Develop listening skills by counting the bell striking in the last place, hearing whether it is either late or early, then adjusting.

Try this exercise with your student. Stand behind the tenor whilst it is ringing rounds. The tenor ringer will adjust their speed to ring more slowly, or ring more quickly. Try to spot what happens to the ringing generally and how the other ringers adjust. Notice just how much the pace of the tenor can affect the ringing.

You can also stand behind someone who is covering to a method. The tenor will always be the last bell down, but see if you can notice any pattern to the bells that are being followed. Ask to see a diagram of the method afterwards, and compare this to your observations.

Developing ropesight

If you are ringing the tenor to call changes, you can maintain a steady rhythm using your listening skills, but try to spot the bells changing below you. Do you notice any pattern? Start with trying to spot the last bell down. As you get comfortable with this, you may find you increase the number of bells you’re able to spot and the order they fall. Don’t worry if this is not immediately apparent, most ringers develop this skill gradually over some time as peripheral vision develops.

Remember that even very experienced ringers don’t always know in advance which bell they will be ringing over at the back, they will ring steadily and just have an awareness of which is the last bell down.

Teaching using a simulator
To develop ropesight

Try turning the simulator sound off so that the ringer can cover a method purely by watching the screen and spotting the last rope down. Striking review is a great way to aim for a best personal score if they have several goes at this.

To develop listening skills

Turning the screen display off is a great way for ringers to appreciate that it’s not necessary to always know in advance which bell they need to follow, and to develop rhythmic striking just by listening. Making the tenor sound louder, or even substituting it for a different kind of sound, can help a ringer who is struggling to identify which is their bell.

To develop fine bell control

Use the ringing simulator to get the pull off in rounds really precise, perfecting this on bells of a variety of weights. This is a skill which is often overlooked on a practice night because ringers can be keen to let the rounds sort themselves out, then start ringing more complicated methods, but ringing nice rounds from the first pull off with the handstrokes and backstrokes in the right place is a fundamental skill for good striking. Explain that ringing the tenor, the ringer will need to start bringing the bell to the balance far earlier than on one of the lighter, front bells.

Learning using a simulator
Covering by watching using Abel

Covering by listening using Abel