Satnav for Ringers

A Dream Come True?

A wonderful side-effect of satellite navigation (satnav) in cars is that it provides living proof of one of the most remarkable characteristics of the human male – whilst (obviously) they will not do anything they are told to by a woman, if a machine tells them to do something they obey it without question. I imagine we have all heard those horror stories about satnav systems sending (male) drivers through a five-bar gate on to a narrow track running across the side of a mountain, with a 300 foot drop on one side. Can you imagine the man’s reaction if a female passenger, holding a map, had suggested this route? But because they are told by a machine to use it, they hop out of the car like little lambs and open the gate.

However, I digress. This article is supposed to investigate the possibilities for an easy life if satnav is introduced for ringers. We all know the problems of navigating ourselves through pieces – some of them seem to be deliberately designed to cause as many problems as possible for the player. You know the pieces I’m talking about – they contain lots of repeats (and sometimes repeats within repeats) all with first and second endings. They don’t have every bar numbered, so when you get lost and ask the timehonoured question, “Where are we?” you get no reply because even those who are still in the right place can’t do the maths to tell you – or if they do they lose their own place. If you’re unlucky enough to have a team leader with a really warped sense of humour (mentioning no one in particular, of course) the pages are not necessarily in their conventional order – but as they are not numbered, you find this out in the fullness of time. And as for starting at the beginning – well we don't do that any more do we? It's so last century, darling!

So a bossy woman in a machine, telling you how to get through a piece, could be real bonus. Picture the scene – new piece, plug in satnav and off we go . . .

“Begin after three beats.” Well that doesn’t tell you much, does it? Where’s the friendly “Now it’s in four-four but someone is in on the fourth beat so I’ll count to three”? However, the machine must be obeyed so off we go. Play for a bit, then, “In two bars’ time, go back to Bar 9”. Which of course isn’t numbered, so you guess. But you’ve got a really clever satnav system and it knows where you are in the piece because it’s just been to Venus to work it out, so it very soon says, “You repeated to Bar 10. Mark time for one bar while the rest catch up”. But it hasn’t told you how many beats are in a bar so you count three then come back in. “You are one beat ahead. Mark time for one beat.” You manage this and play on.

Until – “In two bars’ time, turn over.” So you do. “You have turned over two pages and are now  bars ahead. Mark time for  bars”. Of course if it were human it would tell you to panic, turn back, and ask where we are – but it isn’t, is it? So you stand there, counting 224 beats. Quietly, so no one except you and the machine knows what an idiot you are. Eventually they catch up, and off you go again.

“In two bars’ time, go back to Bar .” This involves turning back and finding your place on a page you haven’t seen before, so you need to take your time, but at least you’ll be accurate. “You are now two bars behind. Omit the next two bars.” You decide that by the time you have omitted two bars everyone else will have played another, so you omit three. In working this out you have missed the next instruction which was, “In two bars, go to Bar  and play the second ending”. You are now pretty comprehensively lost on Bar 50. “You need to find a safe place and execute a U-turn as soon as possible.” Well, it is a modified car system and old habits die hard, don’t they? . . .

Perhaps we’ll stick to the old technology after all!

AKR

Reprinted from the Autumn/Winter 2006 issue of the North West Region’s newsletter