plain bob by daylight noise

The rope

A real cord comes out of the panel with a wool grip on it, a sally, and it's how the energy gets in. The tower is a pendulum: how high the bells are swinging is everything about them. Low, the row rattles out quick and small. High, it stretches and slows and fills. At the balance a bell hangs mouth up, and for a moment nothing moves.

A ringer can only hold a bell back or cut it in near the balance, so under it nobody can change anything, and the same six notes go round. Over it the method runs. Stop pulling and the bells fall off the balance, the row stays where it had got to, and it goes round quicker and quieter until it's gone. Every time you let it die it leaves the tune somewhere new.

Pull: the next row starts on the instant. The faster and further, the more height, and a hard pull makes the tenor boom. Pull as a row runs out and it all goes in; pull across it and most of it's lost, and the rest of the row clips out in a rush.

Let it fly: pull is the handstroke, letting go is the backstroke. One gesture, two rows.

Hold it: the row rings out and the tower stands, silent, until you let go.

The wheel: a light swings in it as the bells swing, a low arc at first, then round to the top, where it hangs. That's when to pull.

The six windows: one a bell, clockwise round the rope from the treble at the top right. Each lights on its blow and falls away, so their heights are the row, the tallest struck last.

The band

BAND: how high the rest of the band keeps the tower without you. Fully left it's all you. At noon it's just over the balance and rings by itself, and your arm is weight on top. Fully right it hangs on the balance, slow as a wall. Its jack adds to it: a gate lifts the tower, a slow envelope rings it up and down.

FIRE: how well the band holds together. Fully left, dead even, no gap: a plain sequencer. At noon a real band, with a place's gap before every handstroke and a little slop. Then the row closes up into a strum, and fully right every bell comes down at once. A gate in its jack is a clash on that stroke.

CLOCK: each pulse a place. With nothing patched, the swing keeps its own time.

The ring

Every row each bell rings once, and from one row to the next it can only swap with the bell beside it, because a bell can't be moved further. So the order walks, and the tower calls its own way through: every row once, none twice, and home. Six notes, a chord if you like, and a quarter of an hour before it's back where it started.

METHOD: eight stops. Fully left, rounds: it walks home by legal swaps, six rows at most, and stays. Then plain hunt, twelve rows; Plain Bob; Grandsire and Stedman, five bells working and the tenor tolling behind them; Kent; Cambridge; and last the walk: at random, never a row it's rung, until it's trapped and the tower fires.

BOB: a call. Patch it and the calling's yours: one gate in a lead makes a bob at its end, two a single. Under the balance a call goes through by itself, one change and the row stands again, so a low tower is a six-note loop you step by gate. On rounds, one pair swaps.

The bells

Six bells, each with the partials of a cast one: a hum an octave under the note, a prime, the minor third that makes a bell sound like a bell, a quint, a nominal an octave over, and the shimmer above, some of them split into a slow beat. The hum and the third last longest.

WEIGHT: how heavy the ring is. Fully left, light and quick and up an octave. Fully right, four tonnes, two octaves down, and slow.

BRONZE: the metal. Fully left a sweet major-third bell, short and clean. At noon a true minor-third bell. Past that it sours, the partials drifting and beating, and at the end it's cracked, with a rattle in every blow.

TOWER: where you're standing. Fully left in the belfry, close and wide. At noon the churchyard. Fully right a valley away, a third of a second behind the light, the far side answering, coming and going on the wind.

CAST (1 V an octave): the tenor's note, and the ring built on it, a minor scale's first six notes. With HANG patched it's the note each gate casts.

HANG: CAST's note goes into the next bell along, treble to tenor and round. Six gates, six notes of your own; one a bar, and the tune changes a bell at a time while the method goes on.

What comes out

LEFT and RIGHT: the bells.

BELL (1 V an octave): the note of the bell that's striking, for anything else in the rack.

STRIKE: a gate on every blow.

TREBLE: a gate on the treble's blow, a beat that walks through the row.

HOME: a gate when the row comes home.

ROPE: the cord's length, up to 8 V, a spring bounce and all.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a real rope, an 8-way switch, 5 knobs

Inputs

CLOCK: gate, rising past 1 V
BOB: gate, rising past 1 V
CAST: 1 V an octave
HANG: gate, rising past 1 V
BAND, FIRE: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V
BELL: 1 V an octave
STRIKE, TREBLE: gates, 5 V, 10 ms
HOME: gate, 5 V, 20 ms
ROPE: CV, 0 to 8 V