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That Wheatstone (Etc.) Sound


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Ben of this parish has a metal ended Wheatstone anglo listed here and on eBay:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wheatstone-C-G-30-Button-Anglo-concertina-/251573534900?

 

He describes it as making "a lovely Wheatstone sound." This set me to looking for what that sound might be. Turns out, it is harder than one might think to find a sound file or Youtube that is useful in that regard. I eventually wound up on the Button Box anglo listing, where I found a 1952 Wheatstone Anglo (Ben's is a 1953), and, right above it, a Clover, which has accordion reeds. Both have videos. Both sound pretty darned similar to my ears.

 

Button Box note that the Wheatstone have steel reeds in aluminum frames, as would the Clover. So that may explain the similarity in sound.

 

So, for those of you who have had a listen, is this a typical Wheatstone sound? I've certainly heard "honkier" concertinas, where this one is pretty-sounding. Has the Clover essentially duplicated this 50s-era Wheatstone sound? Are older Wheatstones (perhaps with brass frames) honkier?

 

For newbies with no practical chance to play a lot of boxes, it would be terribly useful to have a collection of sound files of various makes. I know, of course, that there's likely to be a lot of variation amongst makers and eras, so perhaps this is impractical.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Greg

Edited by GregHankins
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[[is this a typical Wheatstone sound?]]

 

you already seem to have figured out that different types of wheatstones (even confined to anglos) have different sounds. aeola sound different from non-aeolas. linotas sound different from non-linotas. brass different from aluminum. 60s different from 20s, different from teens, wood different from metal ends. having said that, wheatstone anglos do sound different from jeffries anglos, generally speaking jurgen suttner, wim wakker, colin dipper, would be fascinating to hear from on this point. i think noel hill's records could give you an idea of a classic "wheatstone" sound, though perhaps folks more in the know than i have the skinny on noel hill tracks done with a jeffries. but i believe noel hill is often a wheatstone player. mary macnamara is a wheatstone player. chris droney plays a wheatstone from the 50s or 60s.

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It would be surprising if any two concertinas were to share precisely similar characteristics of performance. All the best instruments are surely individually hand crafted and stand alone.

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It would be surprising if any two concertinas were to share precisely similar characteristics of performance. All the best instruments are surely individually hand crafted and stand alone.

This is, apart from the monetary value represented, why we're so protective over our very instrument(s), is it not?

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Lot of interesting stuff there...

 

Personally, I can't tell anything about the actual sound of a concertina from a sound file. :(

 

That's not surprising. It turns out that we don't have a very good long-term memory for sound profiles, except, I suspect, for human voices. Our brains are of course wired to recognise voices just as we are visually wired to recognise faces. We have no trouble differentiating the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, for instance, if we grew up with them. Or Dubliners and Clancy Brothers, Sinatra and Crosby, or any other iconic pair.

 

We do better recognising playing styles than actual sounds. If Noel Hill and Chris Droney were to play a C, we may not recognise the difference. If they play a tune, we probably would.

 

 

Electronic sound reproduction is probably still no match for live music in conjunction with the human ear drum.

 

I don't think there is evidence for that. Electronic reproduction these days is pretty bloody good. We could easily tell singers on disc apart back in the acoustic 78 rpm days, despite very great limitations on frequency response and dynamic range. By the time we got to vinyl, we were meeting most of the requirements for audible sound. Modern digital recording exceeds most of those requirements. If there's a problem, I don't think it's in the technology.

 

 

[[is this a typical Wheatstone sound?]]

 

you already seem to have figured out that different types of wheatstones (even confined to anglos) have different sounds. aeola sound different from non-aeolas. linotas sound different from non-linotas. brass different from aluminum. 60s different from 20s, different from teens, wood different from metal ends. having said that, wheatstone anglos do sound different from jeffries anglos, generally speaking jurgen suttner, wim wakker, colin dipper, would be fascinating to hear from on this point. i think noel hill's records could give you an idea of a classic "wheatstone" sound, though perhaps folks more in the know than i have the skinny on noel hill tracks done with a jeffries. but i believe noel hill is often a wheatstone player. mary macnamara is a wheatstone player. chris droney plays a wheatstone from the 50s or 60s.

 

AND....

 

It would be surprising if any two concertinas were to share precisely similar characteristics of performance. All the best instruments are surely individually hand crafted and stand alone.

 

I'd expect that families of instruments would have recognisable family relationships. That we could differentiate, for example, the sound of a Jeffries from the sound of a Wheatstone, providing the sounds were well presented and we weren't being distracted by some other variable, e.g. a flamboyant performance, a bizarre acoustic, dramatic level differences, etc. These family relationships would then probably be traceable to physical differences between the instruments. But, although we might differentiate them, we might not remember which is which.

 

One of the more useful comparisons in the audio field is to play the listener three sounds. The first is identified as Sound A, the second is Sound B. The remaining sound is Sound A or Sound B, and it's the listener's job to identify which. This gets around our poor long-term memory for sounds.

 

I suspect if we were to set up a library of well recorded concertina sounds and applied them in the three-sound test, we would find most listeners would have little trouble in differentiating the sounds accurately. Once we can identify which different sounds can be identified by the listener, we can them analyse them to see what the discernible differences are, and then look at the instruments to explain why these differences exist.

 

Terry

Edited by Terry McGee
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One of my highlights from past Noel Hill camps was hearing Noel play the same tune on all the different concertinas in camp. On one occasion there were half a dozen Carroll concertinas present. Noel played them one after another along with his Linota. They were all obviously "cousins" (Wally Carroll was inspired by a 1910 Linota and set out to capture that sound) They all sounded slightly different. By consensus the closest match at that time to Noel's Linota was Carroll # 2 which was the oldest of Wally's instruments and which had been played the most.

 

Complicating this notion of "distinctive sound" is the phenomenon that concertinas seem to sound different to the player and listener. When Wally developed his smaller anglo we did a blind sound test. The listener would turn their back and another member of the Carroll crew would pick up a regular sized Carroll or the smaller version. The listener would attempt to identify which they were hearing. We couldn't do it! As a player I thought I could tell a difference and I had a preference but as a listener I could not pick out which was being played :wub:

 

I think of the Linota sound as a clear, even stream of notes. To me the Jeffries signature is more bubbly and wild. But I'm afraid my identification score on picking out Noel's instrument of choice on the Tony Linnane album or Irish concertina album, except for a few obvious tracks, would be no better than the results of that afternoon in the Carroll concertina factory. :wacko:

 

Greg

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Complicating this notion of "distinctive sound" is the phenomenon that concertinas seem to sound different to the player and listener.

 

This is certainly true for me, and I wondered immediately whether this is the phenomenon behind Stephen Chambers' initial response above -- i.e., it's hard to tell what a concertina really sounds like from a sound file mostly because concertinas sound a good bit different when you're the one playing them, than when you're the one sitting across the room.

 

I have experimented a bit myself to determine whether this is the case, both by asking my daughter, sitting across the room, what she is hearing, and by recording my playing.

 

A trivial example: I am very sensitive to the movement of a tune from the right hand to the left. Listening to a recording, I don't notice that at all -- nor did my daughter perceive the transition.

 

I do think a collection of sound files would be useful -- or perhaps an effort to identify the concertina being played in postings to the tune of the month and videos section of the forum.

 

Those of us who live in a concertina desert, and without reasonable prospect of visiting the Button Box, would definitely benefit, as we contemplate where to go next after our Bastaris and Rochelles.

 

Thanks for all the interesting responses.

 

Greg

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A further aspect of all this is the belief held by some that the tone of a concertina can appear to improve with age provided it is regularly played and not stuck on a shelf. The tone of my 35 years old Anglo certainly seems to have improved throughout its working life, ( or so it seems to me ). I guess the reeds benefit from regular exercise in the same way that we all do, but will this process eventually reach a cut off point I wonder. I know it will in my case !

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...it's hard to tell what a concertina really sounds like from a sound file mostly because concertinas sound a good bit different when you're the one playing them, than when you're the one sitting across the room.

Or halfway across the same room? The a problem is that due to room acoustics the same instrument can sound quite different from differing locations within a room. Add to that the fact that recordings likely took place not just at different locations in a single room, but in different rooms.

 

Speculation: Is it possible that in making comparisons from live listening, when different rooms and even different days are involved, our sound memory is able to make compensatory adjustments based on prior experience with rooms of various sizes, shapes, and textures (e.g., concrete vs. tapestry) and with locations therein? That's definitely not possible with audio recordings, since the visual data needed to make such judgements isn't included. Even with video recordings such information is so limited as to be misleading, at best.

 

But even if that's not the case, there's another problem with recordings. Not only do the room's acoustics and the concertina's orientation to the mike differ from recording to recording, so do different microphones have different frequency response. And if in between there are sound engineers twiddling various controls, all bets should be off.

 

There will also almost certainly be noticeable differences if you listen to two recordings -- or even the same one -- through different speakers.

 

I won't claim that recordings can't give you any idea of the differences in sound among various instruments, but I will say that you need to be realistic about how "accurate" they can be.

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My Anglo always sounds best ( to my ear ) when I play in the kitchen with its greater proportion of hard, reflective surfaces. I get a significantly different effect when surrounded by carpeting, curtains and soft furnishings, which do the acoustics no favours whatsoever as might of course be expected.

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I think, if you were setting up to produce a database of instrument sounds, you would set a few rules to get around some of the issues raised above. They might include:

  • no post production other than overall gain change. Specifically no tonal changes, reverb etc. (Indeed, we'd ideally need to get all samples adjusted to the same average level, as indicated on a VU meter, not a Peak Program Meter. All things being the same, listeners always favour the louder signal. Equalising levels would be the job of whoever assembled the database.)
  • all recordings to be made with microphones essentially flat over the range of the concertina (which would need to be defined in Hz terms). I.E. no stage vocal mics or other specialised devices.
  • all recordings to be made at a specified distance, probably normal to the player and reasonably close (e.g. at 1 metre directly in front)
  • all recordings to be made digitally to at least CD spec or a minimum standard mp3 (some experiments needed to confirm we can't tell the difference)
  • all recordings to be made in a specified environment, eg outside, well away from large surfaces (if we want anechoic) or in a typical domestic environment (if we want a typical domestic environment)
  • recordings to include a slow interrupted scale from lowest to highest notes, and perhaps a set piece. The scale is to allow us later to pull out particular notes for technical analysis. The set piece creates an immediate problem - we will instinctively listen for the players style, and be influenced by it. Ideally you have the same player, but that's unlikely to be practical. I don't have a firm suggestion for how to get around that one. Perhaps we would agree on a well-known tune and have someone play it in an agreed fashion. Then other testers attempt to emulate that as best they can? I'm not excited about that approach.
  • include a piece or pieces that the player feels illustrates particular capabilities or weaknesses in the instrument? We might wish to brainstorm (hmmm, resources?) or at least agonise over some prompts for what they might be. EG, fast starting, noteworthy warmth or uniformity of tone, great agility, etc, etc.

I'm sure there's a lot more to consider. In any study, the consideration of potential issues is a very valuable process for focusing the mind.

 

Terry

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Sound does get technical pretty quickly, doesn't it?

 

But perhaps some useful -- though by no means perfect -- information can be gleaned from what's already out there in the world.

 

For example, I've read that the action on a Lachenal can be a bit noisy and have seen listings that note steps taken to quiet the clackiness.

 

But viewing this (Collin Botts on a Lachenal of unspecified vintage, admittedly in a big hall)

 

http://youtu.be/HpCBdONhtjk

 

Helped me understand just how clacky things can get.

 

And this (Gary Coover on a 30 Button Harrington C/G Anglo)

 

http://youtu.be/O9fwEY7PBhI

 

is certainly "honkier" than this (Jody Kruskal on a Bastari 30-button C/G anglo)

 

http://youtu.be/nHA323zUixc

 

That's all useful information for a novice. Botts' action is too clack for my taste, so I'd be looking for a Lachenal that has been dampened a bit. The Bastari is sweet, maybe too sweet, if you want a bit of honk in you concertina.

 

So, there may be some information to be gleaned from this sort of informal survey, if we don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

 

Great thinking on this; thanks for all the replies.

 

Greg

 

 

Edits: I tried to embed the YouTube videos in the post, but had no luck figuring out how to do that. If anyone knows the trick -- assuming the board allows it -- drop me a note about how to accomplish it, and I'll add them.

Edited by GregHankins
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The Bastari is sweet, maybe too sweet, if you want a bit of honk in you concertina.

 

IMO contrasting the often described "sweetness" of a Bastari / Stagi concertina with a Jeffries (or whatever) "honk" might be a bit misleading as long as the "honk" side isn't determined somewhat closer.

 

What I find essential with concertina reeds from my own experience is the possible (and therefore even prompting) use of dynamics. You can rhythmically structure your measures to some great extent without changing bellows direction, and regarding the melody you will have a slight change of tonal colour with every dynamic peak.

 

At least that's what the reeds of my vintage concertina do, and which I didn't find at all on a Stagi, which felt very much like a small accordion in my hands. The features as mentioned here are part of my favouring the concertina over the numerous accordions I played (and still own).

 

Of course I can't include any good "hybrid" instrument here since I didn't experience any of them as a player...

 

Slightly OT, I know... :ph34r: However, these features undoubtedly can't be achieved at all by (reasonable) post production...

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...we'd ideally need to get all samples adjusted to the same average level...

No.

Differences in dynamic range are also a characteristic of concertinas. Equalizing the loudness between samples from a pinhole Æola and a metal-ended Jeffries honker would misrepresent an important difference between them.

 

All things being the same, listeners always favour the louder signal.

Again, no.

 

I, for one, don't "always favour the louder signal"... not when listening, and certainly not when accompanying a song. And when comparing instruments I would want to be able to hear what its dynamics are over a normal range of bellows pressure, not artificially made louder (or softer).

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...I've read that the action on a Lachenal can be a bit noisy and have seen listings that note steps taken to quiet the clackiness.

 

But viewing this (Collin Botts on a Lachenal of unspecified vintage, admittedly in a big hall)

 

http://youtu.be/HpCBdONhtjk

 

Helped me understand just how clacky things can get.

But that "clackiness" isn't a characteristic of all Lachenals, nor necessarily even of particular models. And while some individuals actually like it, it's usually considered something that -- like leakage -- has developed over time and that should and can be corrected through competent restoration. I don't think it's something that should be put in a database as typical of a particular type of instrument (unless it turns out that there's a particular model where it was deliberately built in).

 

But this suggests another potentially useful database to develop: a database of sounds that indicate correctable problems, such as double-sounding notes, slow-starting notes, "choking" sounds, etc.

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I guess the reeds benefit from regular exercise...

 

In my concertinas (and I suspect, most others), some of the reeds get played much more frequently than some of the others. But you rarely hear of a vintage concertina having an uneven sound, which would likely be a problem if each reed's sound was dependent on how much "exercise" it got.

 

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