What are Rounds and Called Changes

One way we ring English Church bells is known as Called ( or Call ) Changes. The bells are rung in a repeated rhythmic sequence, with the order of the bells changing on the directions of a conductor, who calls out the change to be made. Hence the name of Called Changes. This makes it more interesting for both the ringer and listening public.

In the examples we assume the tower has 6 bells, which is the case for more than 45% of churches. The sound files are MIDI files, which instruct the synthesiser on the computer's sound card to generate the sound of tubular bells. This enables the files to be very small (less than 500 bytes) so they quickly download.

The bell ringer does not need to understand music, but we have shown the notes on a stave, to illustrate what is happening for those who read music. Click the image or the link underneath to hear the sound.

It is usual for Ringing to start and end in rounds. When the bells are ringing in rounds, the highest note rings first, followed in sequence by the others, with the lowest note bell ringing last. Bell ropes are arranged in a (rough) circle, as each ringer pulls their rope in turn, rounds give the impression of a wave moving around the circle.
Listen to Sound	The bells are ringing in rounds 1-2-3-4-5-6
The conductor swaps over bells two and three. The spoken command may be two to three, three to treble This is interpreted as bell two follows bell three while bell three follows bell one.
Listen to Sound	The next hand stroke the ringer of bell number two slightly slows up their bell and three speeds up, changing their position in the sequence, so it is now 1-3-2-4-5-6
The conductor swaps over bells four and five. The spoken command may be four to five, five to two.
Listen to Sound	The next hand stroke the ringer of bell number four slightly slows up their bell and five speeds up, changing their position in the sequence, so it is now 1-3-2-5-4-6
The conductor swaps over bells two and five. The spoken command may be two to five, five to three.
Listen to Sound	The next hand stroke the ringer of bell number two slightly slows up their bell and five speeds up, changing their position in the sequence, so it is now 1-3-5-2-4-6 this pleasant sounding sequence is known as Queens
The conductor can either reverse this sequence of changes or continue to move the bells through other pleasant sounding changes. Eventually the conductor will get the bells back into plain rounds 1-2-3-4-5-6. At which point he will issue the Stand command to get all the bells to stop ringing.

If we put all that together we get bell music that sounds like this short clip which takes the bells from rounds through to queens and then back to rounds. In this example, the conductor dwells on each change for six whole pulls before calling the next change.

A Short Clip of Call Changes lasting 3 minutes [File Size = 3.9 Kbytes] Again tubular bells are synthesised rather than using real tower bells.