Double Court Bob Minor

About Double Court Bob Minor

Double Court Bob Minor is a progresssive method introducing new place notation elements and demanding much concentration. Structurally the method is delightful being palindromic, rotational and double symmetrical.

However, in truth, Double Court Bob Minor is a minority sport, there being only 12 recorded handbell performances on BellBoard since year 2001.

Double Court Bob Minor is Single Court Bob Minor above the Treble, and Single Court upside down (a.k.a. Bridge's Pleasure Bob Minor) underneath the treble.

Method Structure.

Place Notation:
X 14 X 36 x 16, 16, Bob 14, Single 1456.

Grid:

Diagram: Double Court Bob Minor, plain lead, change-rows and grid.

Plain Course structure
Double Court Bob Minor is a fluid method with each bell hunting between lead and lie and between lie and lead twice in the plain course, once without interruption , and once making double court places.

Learning Double Court Bob Minor.

The Structure

The method is defined by the "court places", i.e. internal places made adjacent to the path of the treble, with consequential dodging in 1-2 and in 5-6.

The Rules

Double Court Bob Minor - the rules
Ring plain hunting except:
When treble passes through 2-3 or 3-2, 4ths place is made and the bells in 5-6 dodge.
When treble passes through 4-5 or 5-4, 3rds place is made and the bells in 1-2 dodge.

Double Blue Lines

Double Court Bob Minor, 1-2

Diagram: Double Court Bob Minor, 1-2.

Double Court Bob Minor, 3-4

Diagram: Double Court Bob Minor, 3-4.

Double Court Bob Minor, 5-6

Diagram: Double Court Bob Minor, 5-6.

Artefacts

The most significant Blue Line features is for a coursing pair (e.g. 5&6) where each court place is associated with an external place. This is either lead and 4ths, or 3rds and 6ths, and it doubles up. So when 6 leads and 5 finishes court places with 4ths, the pair cross in 2-3 and repeat the work with 5 leading and 6 making court places.

Place Notation and Grid

The grid is an easy visual to imprint whilst the more abstract place notation is a harder feat of memory.

Pictels

Double Court Bob Minor is possibly the simplest method where pictels become useful. The treble can be thought of as hunting through 4 bell "cages", each with an associated dodge.
Either hunting through 1-2-3-4 with a dodge in 5-6, or
Dodge in 1-2, and hunting through 3-4-5-6.

Remembering the notation for Double Court, is relatively easy.
Ensuring you know where you are up to in the string of numbers, change after change, without hesitation, deviation, or repetition is much harder.

Suggestion: Use a visual image of successive sections of the grid as a basis of remembering the grid structure, viz:

	Hunt and dodge 5-6 above
	Dodge in 1-2, hunt above
	Plain Hunting at half lead
	Dodge in 1-2, hunt above
	Hunt and dodge 5-6 above
	Plain Hunting at lead end

The above pictels are drawn to be easily memorised. They do overlap! The treble does not leap backwards and forwards it is one smooth continuous path.
These chunks of grid are easier to memorise than either the place notation or the whole grid.

Pictels are one of the memory techniques suggested for learning Cambridge Surprise Minor, and lead into the Bill Jackson technique for learning Surprise Major methods. Hence the progressive nature of Double Court Bob Minor

Ringing Double Court Bob Minor.

Track the treble

Awareness of the position of the treble is a key skill for most bellringing methods, and a significant help in ringing Double Court Bob Minor. Some hints and tips for developing the skill are given in the techniques section.

Ringing Double Court Bob Minor is all about following the treble, but intelligently.
a) Let the position of the treble define the places and hence the dodges.
b) Conversely, use the places structure of the method as an aid to seeing where the treble should be.

And don't panic if you can't see the treble all the time straight away, whilst ringing your own pair perfectly, making the calls and correcting the trips and thinking about the footnotes for the BellBoard entry. It will come, all in good time.

Positional Awareness

The heart of Double Court Bob Minor is the court places, concentrate on ringing those places crisply and cleanly.

Place Notation Elements

The method only contains 4 elements (X, 16, 14, 36), of which only 36 is likely to be new.

Place Bells, Pivot Leads, and Staging posts

With the palindromic and rotational symmetrical nature of this method, the blue lines show interesting juxtapositions of work. Every dodge is associated with one of the court places.

Awareness of other bells

In spite of the court places, Double Court Bob is a fluid, flowing method.

However, in the 10 rows between each hand and back lead of the treble there is only room for: lead-and-dodge, dodge-lead-dodge, and dodge-lead. The lead of dodge-lead-dodge is the half lead.

A similar, but inverted picture applies to the work above the treble.

Coursing Order in Double Court Bob Minor

The structure of Double Court Bob Minor preserves the natural coursing order for bells leading, and lying, and the working bells working together.

Ringing the Method

An experienced ringer will be aware of all of the above techniques, and will mix and match them to suit his or her preferred ringing style.

A very experienced ringer will also follow the coursing order and watch the bells working together.

Court places can be found in many methods, especially the plain methods Single and Double Oxford Bob. The places appear frequently in the standard right place surprise methods. e.g. Cambridge places are two lots of double court places linked with dodges

The way that the places influence the hunting patterns also occurs in the surprise methods. e.g. The places split apart a coursing pair such as 4-6, and then bring them back together again.

Double Court, with its elegant structure, challenging lead ends, interesting calls, and wide significance is under used. We see this as a cardinal, and should be rung to performance Level level.

Bobs and Singles in Double Court Bob

The calls take effect when the treble is leading.

Bobs in Double Court bob have the same structure as in Plain Bob, however, the method feels very different from Plain Bob.
The unaffected bells cross over in 2-3.
The bell making the bob makes 4ths, instead of hunting up to 5ths, and then returns to the lead.
The pair of bells in 5-6 are made to dodge, however, as in Single Court, this becomes the central dodge of a 3-pull.

A single in Double Court Bob is made in 4ths and 5ths place.
The bell that hunts 4ths to 5ths in a plain lead, makes 4ths at a single and returns to the lead.
The bell that hunts 5ths to 4ths in a plain lead, makes 5ths at a single.
This bell has just dodged 5-6 down for the method, and after making 5ths for the single, dodges 5-6 up for the method.

Touches of Double Court Bob

It is normal to use the tenor as the observation bell .

The calling positions for the tenor are:
Before, Home, 4ths, In, Wrong.