RatFace

Sun Assembly - arranged for concertina, violin and cello. Violin is Dorico+Note Performer, so a but yucky. I might go on the hunt for a real one and re-record! Notation/files are here.

It would be great to hear that! Actually the day after I made/recorded it I went out to play some chamber music (cello), but didn't have the nerve to inflict this upon them The arrangement is pretty rough - I only spent a couple of hours on it (Dorico is pretty good!), and not particularly interesting for the string parts! I had in mind to work it up a bit more.

Reel St Jean, by Theodore Duguay, arranged for concertina and string quartet. I didn't have a string quartet to hand (though might tweak the arrangement and bribe some friends into making a live version!). I used Dorico for the notation, and then playback through Dorico with Note Performer and Musio Cinesamples - by no means perfect, but pretty good given that there's no markup other than what's on the score. I put the scores and the backing tracks here in case anybody wants to have a go!

Posted in error - editing!

English concertina and guitar share two things (amongst others, and differ in plenty of ways too!): 1. A lot of mid-19th century guitar music fits on the English concertina pretty well (Fernando Sor etc). Maybe that's because Regondi dominates the idea of what mid-19th century English concertina music is... but at the same time his style of English concertina music does push it to its limits, whilst still suiting it. 2. There isn't a clear division of the hands/fingers into low/high on either instrument. For example, if you played a scale in octaves, then the fingers would jump around - your first finger might be playing the high octave at one moment, and the low octave the next. The only way to get your head around this is to separate out the concept of the notes from the fingers (hard to explain this). On both instruments it's quite an odd feeling at first, but also rather satisfying when you start to master it!

This looks fun! Unfortunately for me, my concertina is away getting serviced at the moment, but I shall look forward to giving these a try when it's back. Regarding the versions/fingering: I'd be inclined to make the edition reflect the version you would want to play, or hear played. A couple of notes per piece indicating significant changes might be nice, but not essential. Having said that, I know it can be tricky - quite often in these pieces there are little phrases which appear multiple times, but are slightly different. Really hard to know if those differences are due to error, or a genuine attempt to change "tone", or merely an attempt to introduce variations. Some fingerings can be helpful. In practice, most likely the editions of this music will be primarily "sight read", and the occasional fingering can help. In addition, it can indicate some phrasing - e.g. in the Theme Varie piece I arranged recently, the last section can be played in two ways: with full length "top notes", or shortened. I decided to go for the latter (mainly because I couldn't play it up to speed with full length notes, but don't tell anyone!), which determined the fingering. I decided then to include the fingering that supported this, because it would dissuade most people from attempting to attempt the "hard version". If someone wanted/was able to play it a different way, they'd find their own fingering and make their own marks anyway.

I bought a Blue Yeti a while back - wanting the convenience of a USB microphone plus the stereo etc options. I sent it back a few days later for a refund (which I got) - the audio quality was really bad, considering the price etc, giving nothing like a flat frequency response. I replaced it with a Rode NT-USB Mini Microphone which is excellent - a decent condenser mic with a USB interface, and nothing more. I think the problem with the Blue Yeti is that (a) it's over-hyped and (b) 95% of its users are doing spoken voice. I guess that it has internal processing which makes spoken voices sound great, but is inappropriate for instrumental recording where you want the response to be as even as possible. I advise keeping away from it...

Get hold of some easy/intermediate guitar music (e.g. some/one of the volumes from "The Classic Guitar Collection"). Over time you will figure out how to recognise which arrangements work well and which won't, how to adapt it at sight (especially handling the missing F and E notes on a standard treble), including reducing the tendency for the lower notes to drown out the top. Quite a lot of the simpler renaissance (originally lute), baroque and classical (e.g. Sor). can be made to work. There's some harmonic violin music that works too - e.g. the Bach sonatas/partitas, Telemann 12 fantasias, Campagnoli divertimenti etc

Sounds great - as has been said above - very good balance of sounds

Here's In Dreams (following your request on Facebook). I didn't know it, or anything about it (probably don't watch enough films, and certainly don't remember them!), so the speed I picked ended up a little faster than the original. Also... I played it as written (except for the addition of a low A which seems essential in bar 31), even though some of the arrangement is a little odd (and, now I listen, different to the soundtrack!). InDreams.mp3

The link is to Cormac Begley playing concertina. It's not good etiquette to just post links with no description since (a) sensible people won't follow them because they are typically clickbait, and sometimes ending up in horrible stuff and (b) it's not a good idea to get people used to clicking on links with no indication of where they're going.

I recently accompanied the telling of the story of a variation on Sanji and the Baker. The setting and characters made it impossible not to base the music on Ketelbey's In a Persian Market, which describes the scene of a Persian Market (no surprise there!) through the day - with the caravan of camels arriving in the morning, the hustle and bustle of the beggars in the market, the beautiful princess passing through, the jugglers and snake charmer, and the Caliph making his entrance. And then the evening comes and everyone leaves and stillness returns. You can find orchestral versions on YouTube etc. I remember playing it years ago with the Butleigh Court Concertina Band. After doing that it seemed to make sense to arrange the actual original, complete, piece for tenor-treble English, so here it is: https://musescore.com/user/33705254/scores/5887541 I also made a rough recording of it (just to prove it's playable!) - though need to practice and recover my microphones before making a decent one! https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pc0aX2GhxvLxcVT6BAX2jQT8EfD6zX5q

That won't be a significant problem. When you stream audio (and video) your computer will be downloading and buffering ahead of what you're actually watching/playing - so if you're playing an audio clip (e.g. via youtube), at any time your computer will have already downloaded the next X seconds (not sure how many, but it will be a significant number), enough to passing on any variability to your ears. Of course if you have a _terrible_ internet connection then it may stutter, but that's not really common these days, assuming you have an at least reasonable internet connection. Dropouts down to less than 1ms will be audio (e.g. as clicks), and timing glitches <1ms every few seconds would be irrelevant. If you don't hear dropouts or clicks, but can't play along to the online drum beat, there's either something wrong with the original recording, or your own inner metronome! If using youtube to play drum tracks, this Chrome extension might be useful (other loopers are available!)

Of course - so long as they like concertina!

Facebook kindly informed my that it was a friend's birthday, and before I knew it, this (mp3 attached, or here) had happened. I'm still not quite sure how. Here are the dots, in case you want a go. I had to fudge the lack of a top d. HappyBirthday.mp3