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  1. Thanks, Graham, I have been inside the box this morning and there are two separate G reeds for the doubled-G button, not one reed sounding in both directions. It's not a great tone on this pitch because it sits with the other left-hand, bottom row reeds smack in the middle of the left hand reed pan and none of these get a decent air-flow. But I have 'voiced' them this morning so they all sound without rumbles and wheezes and I can use them as necessary evils when the fingering demands. DOUG Hi Doug You should be able to see the lever/pad for the Gs through the fretwork. I've no guidance on achieving a better arrangment, when I had "Kilroy" I found all the extras got in the way and reduced the button count to 32 ish. There was no high c natural when I first had it which is the same as yours. I'm now happy playing a 30 button Wakker G/D. I assume you could move some of the reeds around with needing to retune. I have in the past flattened reeds, with liquid metal, by a semi tone with no change in tone or response, and it is reversable with no damage to reed. Graham
  2. Okay; sorry about my inability to post the diagram. I am gonna bite-the-bullet and revert to a letter table for the buttons, which is as follows Left In/Out 1st row B/C, E/F, G#/Bb, E/D, D#/F 2nd row G/D, D/F#, G/A, B/C, D/E, F/F(low) 3rd row F#/E, A/C#, D/E, F#/G, A/B, C#(low)/Eb 4th row Eb/C#, F/G#, A/B, G/G Drone G/G Right In/Out 1st row Bb/Ab, G#/Bb, D#/D, G#/F, E/A 2nd row C#/E, G/F#, B/A, D/C, G/E, B/F#,C(low)/D(low) 3rd row A/G, D/C#, F#/E, A/G, D/B, F/Eb 4th row Bb/G#, C#/Bb, D/C#, D#/D, E/Eb All comments gratefully recieved. Thanks to Chris for his cautionary note about tuning. I have done quite a bit of manual tuning but the point is well taken. My first priority is to get some of the obscure reeds sounding; you can imagine how complex it is inside this box and there are a couple that are leaking like a Government researcher (Colin DIpper has shown me which ones). I have not been back inside the box to check Graham's point about the double-direction G button (left side, bottom row, far right) but will do tonight. thanks, DOUG WATT
  3. Agh! Sorry! Having a real problem managing the posting/uploading process with this forum (I don't use it much). Please ignore me until I have got my act together
  4. Hi Doug I didn't see much of you last night. The 2 G buttons share the same reeds, ie 2 pads on to 1 reed chamber, at least they did on ''Kilroy''. Didn't you buy your Conner from Chris? I can't see the attachment either Cheers Graham
  5. Hi. I acquired a 44-plus-drone G/D Jeffries from Chris Algar this summer and it does not have the layout that I would have expected. The reeds probably started life as different pitches because there is a lot of solder on them but each is stamped correctly with the current pitch-class and those stamps look quite old. I have attached a diagram. Overall, it looks to me as if the unexpected notes tend towards 'flat' keys. Most of the amendments are to the right hand so I am wondering if this has been adapted for a one-note-at-a-time player (Irish?). I can see some logic to some amendments (witness the bottom row, righthand, where the same notes are either on push or pull on adjacent buttons). Or maybe I do have a common layout. Any ideas? I guess where I am going with this is to wonder if I could/should retune to suit myself or whether I should just get on with it and learn to play it as it is. I do play quite complex stuff in an English chordal style so finding comfortable fingerings is quite important. And can anyone tell me why there is a G/G button, bottom right on the left hand side when the same thing lies next to it as a thumb drone? It seems wasteful to me. Like lots of Jeffries, I cannot tell you much about the provenance of the box but someone may know it and all comments would be gratefully received. DOUG WATT
  6. I am very sorry to be so late in responding but I have been off this site for some time. I mean the 'First Steps in Music Theory Grades 1 to 5' edited by Eric Taylor. Here is the Amazon page. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search...1541586-1445500
  7. I trained as a pianist so I was keen to see what could be done on the anglo by way of simple but serious keyboard pieces. I started with the Bach 2-part inventions. I tried the G major, 2-part gig first on a 40 button C-G Crabb. To be honest, several sections were just too hard. Eventually, I could have learnt all the twists and turns of bellows and button selection simply by rote but I was not enjoying that. So, I turned to the Bach cello suites and these work really well due to the similar range of the instruments (range, not tessitura!) You can find printed copies on the internet with a simple search. I find them useful because they make you look for the less obvious bellows direction and buttons in order to keep lines and phrases smooth.
  8. I strongly recommend the Associated Board (red) theory book that teaches in progressive stages that coincide with their own graded music exams. Any music shop will know it and be able to get it. In particular, at the higher grades, it introduces cadences; the harmonies that underpin standard endings to phrases. I regret to say that I have seen much nonsense written about how harmonies can be mutilated in the name of 'free expression' when just about every style of music has a legitimate vocabulary that needs to be assimilated before it can be rejected or embellished. People often get fixated on scales, which are abstract, theoretical and machanical, but understanding how real music actually works is much more useful and this book soon gets on to that.
  9. I bought an old Lachenal G/D anglo with brass reeds from Chris Algar about 18 months ago and the major improvmeent that I made was to gently 'rough up' the chamois leather air-seals to improve compression. Whilst I know that this is not the same as directly improving the read response, any reduction in air loss will improve the overall response and the improvement was really quite considerable.
  10. Try to make scales musical rather than mechanical. Some slow, some quick, some legato, some staccato, etc. But the main point I would like to make is that the scale on the middle row, right hand, will be used a lot and it is valuable to focus on the last few ascending notes where the fingering 'turns' back on itself to finish on the fourth button rather than the fifth. Then to extend that scale upwards on the lower row as the move between rows when extending beyond the tonic of the middle row can also be tricky. This is particulalrly useful to get into subconsious memory when trying to follow new tunes instantly, such as in a session.
  11. In response to David Barnert's view I do believe that I took pains to cover all the issues which he mentions in my original post and a thorough, cool reading of it should disclose that. I took particular pains to 'pre-handle' the predictable issues of harmony and taxonomy such as 'scale -v-mode' and what 'dominant' means. Which does not mean that readers have to agree with me, of course. David and I clearly disagree on these issues, which is fine, but I find that the theories reproduced by me actually accord with my ear and experience and I am content to commend them rather than to defend them.
  12. I have just found this thread and I think that it provides an example of the benefit of a formal musical training which was widely debated in the thread that I began on this topic in Teaching and Learning. This tune resolves to the pitch 'A'. In other words, 'A' is the implicit note on which the melody is expected to end. I know that it is not the actual note on which this one iteration ends but, if you use the technique of trying to hold the 'tonic' note in your head throughout this piece, I believe that 'A' is the only viable pitch-class that can claim to be the tonic (or, better 'key-note', as 'tonic' is a classical term for classical scales). I feel that the ending on 'D' is unsatisfactory at a psychological level and I wonder if some structure of repeats would offer a different ending note? In a modern scale of 'A' the dominant, (i.e., next note in importance), would be an 'E'. But, in this case, the dominant is a 'D'. In the few scales left in traditional western music, the dominant is always the fifth of the scale. But this is not the case in pre-classical music. Where the fourth note of the 'scale' acts as the second most important focus of the melody, the fourth note acts as dominant. There is a whole set of such scales (actually, 'modes'), called 'plagal' modes. This emphasis on the fourth note as the second most important structural note still gives rise to plagal cadences at the end of phrases in modern hymn music. (The 'plagal' cadence that survived into the classic period is the one to which the word 'Amen', can be sung at the end of a hymn, i.e., the progression IV-I in harmonic terms). In the case of this particular tune, the appropriate medieval mode is hypodorian*, represented by all the white notes on a piano 'from 'A' to 'A'. 'So, where does the C# come in?' I hear you ask. Well, that is the leading note that defines 'D' as the dominant in this particular mode, in the same way that 'D#s' would lead to 'E' as the usual dominant in more recent, western music. In other words, it is permitted for accidentals to lead us into keys of temporary importance, before their correction leads us back to the 'home' note. (Please spot that I am not talking about harmony here; these theories work for melodies first and harmonies then arise in support of the existing, melodic logic). None of this theory makes the tune any more or less beautiful but it will intrigue many to know that the dominant of a scale ('mode', actually) could be other than the fifth. It asks us to revisit a modern, but nevertheless deeply subconscious set of expectations when we hear such a melody. But these modern expectations were not 'givens' to the medieval ear and they would not be 'givens' to our modern ears but for the overwhelming prevalence of the three remaining scales (major, melodic minor and harmonic minor). I believe that the older, richer range of 'scales' provides a refreshing corpus of sounds to be rediscovered and assimilated. *For reference, please see 'A History of Western Music' (Grout and Palisca, London, 1988) p. 76.
  13. Exactly what I have done in 'Leap Over the Garter' in the Recorded Links page, but then, Brian has actually taught me in a seminar so maybe we are on the same wavelength (although, spookily, we did not discuss this technique)
  14. I have never heard the drone used on any anglo performance so I decided to post a tune in the Recorded Links Page just for that purpose. 'Leap Over the Garter' is three repeated verses: one with drone, one with drone plus one harmonic note, one with drone plus full chords. I am not happy with the performance, which is a bit jumpy, but this is partly due to the necessity of holding the drone throughout under my left thumb, upsetting my normal 'balance.' It has taught me that to hold the left thumb along the side of the box is a little bit lazy so I now try to keep it above the buttons, ready to use, even when the piece has no casll for it.
  15. I began anglo just under three years ago which would put me between 46 and 47 at that time. Here on the western side of England most anglo players are older than me and I have only seen one or two teenagers and virtually no people in their twenties. Observation suggests that the teenagers are already in concertina families. Because the anglo is closely related to English dance music and morris (although that was not it's original role) I guess it is mostly attractive to people in that social, dance-related scene. I envy the more 'living' tradition in Ireland. My kids are all good, young musicians and they think it is the uncoolest instruiment in the world. They cannot understand why I have become hooked on it when I already play a number of instrtuments that have much more street cred.
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