Hearing Your Own Bell

    The first difficulty to overcome is to learn that a bell doesn't ring until some time after it is pulled. In fact it rings near the end of its swing, just as the ringer's hand are rising past his face. Practice at ringing a single bell and making this connection can, of course, be done on an ordinary open bell but the advantage of a simulator is that this can be done silently.

   The learner should ring the bell and make the connection between when the rope is pulled and when the bell strikes, anything up to 2 seconds later. This should be solidly understood before progressing.

    The next step is to add another bell, generated by the simulator, and to get the learner to be able to distinguish the sound of his bell from that of the additional bell. The additional bell may be higher or lower in pitch than the learner's and the learner should eventually be able to hear which bell is which.

   Next, add a third bell so that the learner's bell might be any of the three. Then add a fourth bell...

   At each stage get the learner to change speed and listen to the affect on the sound. The learner must be able to recognise whether his bell is in the right place, ringing too soon or ringing too late.

   Much of this can be done on open bells but with the simulator you will be able to get the learner to listen to bells without seeing ropes and therefore to get used to knowing which of the bells is his by the sound.

Back to the Using A Ringing Simulator index.