!Strike

A friendly tool to help you develop that most important but invisible ringing skill

- accurate listening

 Good striking is a joy to hear - how can you achieve it?

You need more than good bell control. You need to develop a good ear so you can detect and correct tiny errors before anyone listening outside notices them. Now thanks to modern technology you can develop your listening skill at any time, whatever your level of expertise and without the distraction of bell handling, needing to catching the rope or coping with other ringers' mistakes.

!Strike lets you see how good your listening is, and it helps you practise to listen more accurately. !Strike can give you exercises that are not too easy and not too hard, whatever level you are at. It repeats the same sound patterns for as long as you want to let you focus on them and work out what is happening. It uses clear natural bell sounds and it gives instant feedback so you can see where the bells are actually striking. It is very easy to use.

How does it work?

 !Strike generates the sound of real church bells ringing with a perfect rhythm but with one or more bells not striking when it should. You can control how many errors there are and their maximum size. You can use !Strike in two ways:

• You can have a single error to find – If you can't hear it at first you can make it bigger so you never have to 'give up'. You can always get there in the end so you always learn something. It's a game where you always 'win'.

• You can be 'the tower captain' with a simulated band of ringers with one or more bell not striking correctly – You click the buttons to tell each bell to ring earlier or later at handstroke or backstroke until you are satisfied with the result. Then you look to see how well you did. !Strike shows you where each bell started and where they are now so you can see how much you improved them.

 !Strike can ring from 4 to 16 bells, you can make the bells sound heavy or light and you can vary the speed of the ringing.

Using !Strike is fun.

The challenge rises as you increase the difficulty, and it can become addictive. To add extra spice !Strike scores your progress. The more the more improvement you make and the quicker you do it the higher your score. !Strike has a league table, so you can compete against your own previous performance, or against your friends' performance if several of you are using it. Who said bell ringing was less exciting than video games?

All controls and displays are clearly laid out and easy to understand. You don't need to know anything about computers – just point and click. !Strike provides interactive Help on all controls if you need it, and it comes with user notes to help you get the most out of it. You can use !Strike by yourself, in a group or as a tutor. See some screen shots .

Practicalities

 !Strike runs on RISC OS , which runs natively on Raspbery Pi and many other computers. You can also run !Strike on a Mac, Linux or Windows computer using an emulator. The RISC OS Open emulator – for Mac  – or – for Windows  is free to download, or on a USB stick for £10 .

If you prefer, I can supply a bundle of !Strike together with the emulator for you to install together.

!Strike costs £10 (+£10 for a USB stick if you want me to supply one). If you would like a copy please contact me.. Either send a cheque to: John Harrison, 2 Murdoch Road, Wokingham, Berks RG40 2DA, or e-mail me  and I will arrange for you to pay by bank transfer.

If you have any queries just e-mail me .

See the article I wrote in 1999 !Strike the killer app?    You can also read the manual