Many ringers who ring by following ropes don’t consciously change speed, they merely make a number of enforced steps, the aggregate effect of which is an approximate speed change, but one that is always a bit behind the curve, and fails as soon as they fail to see the next rope to follow. That might be what happens at the back. — John Harrison
When I started ringing the band struggled to get past back rounds in Plain Hunt. The reason was that the ringers with the worst bell control would only ring the front bells, and they could only ring at two speeds, slow and slower. The rest of the band were completely dependent on bell numbers, so once the front bells got to the back they just festered there with the rest of the band desperately trying to hold up over them. The concepts of in, rounds & out speeds, let alone "at the front" or "at the back" were all a mystery. It can be difficult for experienced ringers to fully appreciate the almost complete lack of situational awareness that afflicts some ringers, they can only ring by bell number and then only if all the bells they are over are in the right place.
Saying the name of a place doesn’t help them to know where it is and how far from it their bell is, nor the action they need to get it their. The counting goes on in one part of their brain, separate from the rest which carries on doing the same unsuccessful actions as before. — John Harrison
This is very true. I can think of the case of one ringer who would insist they were counting places and were therefore in the right place when there was a fire-up. What they were actually doing was counting pulls, pulls that were divorced from the speed the rest of the band were ringing at.
I think a large part of these problems are due to the way ringing is taught, with insufficient emphasis on rhythm and listening. That creates dependence on other people being in the right place visually, whereas what's really needed are the skills to be in the right place in time, independent of others.
A simulator exercise I use is to get people to ring with the moving ringers and highlight ringer turned on, and when they have rung a couple of steady leads, I turn the screen off and tell them to keep going. I don't tell them in advance because they invariably say they won't be able to do it, whereas they almost invariably can. The goal is to show them that they *do* have rhythm and listening skills, but they are being swamped by the emphasis on vision that dominates ringing teaching. A large part of being able to ring by rhythm is having the confidence to actually try it.
We have had many discussions about ringing by vision versus listening/rhythm in our tower. Some of us can see the order of the bells all the time, I can't do that but I can ring Surprise Major on the simulator just by ear. I can't comprehend how they can see all the bells, they can't comprehend how I can ring without seeing them at all. I suspect the top-flight ringers can do both, the rest of us have to do the best we can by emphasising our natural strengths and working on our weaknesses. One of our learners is very sound-dominated and always been able to pick out their bell and could cover well from the start by "Just being the last bong". Another learner will "accurately" clash away forever, because they are ringing just by vision and can't hear their bell. We've adapted out teaching specifically to them, some teaching I've seen seems to be adapted to the proclivities of the teacher rather than she student.
But the common thing they all need to get sorted first is bell control, without that they don't have the skills to get the bell in the right place, even when they know it's not.