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Non-concertina music


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A trivia question for Friday...

 

A colleague recently asked me why , of all instruments, I chose the concertina and did it have any links to the sort of music I enjoyed listening to anyway. I can't really see the link when looking at my own taste (I am a Bob Dylan fanatic, but also like listening to Serge Gainsbourg, French female pop singers, Fairuz, Alex Campbell, Clancy Brothers, late 70s/early 80s hip hop, the Smiths, 'classical' renditions of Robbie Burns songs, the Sonics ... amongst many, many others)

but it got me wondering...

 

... what kind of music apart from that played on your concertina, do you folks listen to and enjoy? I wonder whether there are patterns or certain styles that feature heavily in the lives of concertina players?

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Non-concertina music? I don't think that's possible, is it? Not even a little bit of concertina?Tell you what, you have spam, spam, spam, concertina, spam and spam and I'll have your concertina.

 

As I get older my range of music interests, always wide, just get wider. Living with a BA music student is only accelerating that process as I get exposed to lots of stuff I would otherwise never hear. I think you'll find many of us have a folk background and acquired concertina that way. There is an important minority among us, however, who never touch folk with a barge pole if they can help it and came by other routes. I think you won't find many patterns beyond this. Concertina players are not great ones for going with the crowd - we wouldn't be playing concertina otherwise, probably!

 

Cheers,

 

Chris

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Concertina players are not great ones for going with the crowd - we wouldn't be playing concertina otherwise, probably!

 

Cheers,

 

Chris

 

That's interesting. My colleague also accused me of choosing it to be wilfully obscure! Certainly I didn't consciously do that (I love the sound of it, thought I would enjoy playing it, can physically deal with it, think they look beautiful etc.) but perhaps that is part of it, too.

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A trivia question for Friday...

 

A colleague recently asked me why , of all instruments, I chose the concertina and did it have any links to the sort of music I enjoyed listening to anyway. I can't really see the link when looking at my own taste (I am a Bob Dylan fanatic, but also like listening to Serge Gainsbourg, French female pop singers, Fairuz, Alex Campbell, Clancy Brothers, late 70s/early 80s hip hop, the Smiths, 'classical' renditions of Robbie Burns songs, the Sonics ... amongst many, many others)

but it got me wondering...

 

... what kind of music apart from that played on your concertina, do you folks listen to and enjoy? I wonder whether there are patterns or certain styles that feature heavily in the lives of concertina players?

well I like grunge and pop music (anything pre 2000) in the main but I have an eclectic taste.....with quite a large broad music collection.

 

through learning the concertina..I've discovered more 'folk' music.

Edited by LDT
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Choose a concertina? :o No more than choosing a wife! I came across both by chance, and I took the opportunities joyfully! :wub:

At the time I came across my EC, I was living in the Northwest Highlands, Celtic music filled the world around me and the concertina allowed me to join in. Since then, my concertina repertoire has expanded to include ragtime, klezmer, classical, any music that takes my fancy. The treble EC matches the range of the fiddle/violin, so sheet music is available everywhere. Currently I'm working out Mozart duets with a neighbor who plays oboe and clarinet...great in combination with the old Wheatstone! :lol:

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On the concertina, I play Morris dance music (a style of English music for traditional folk dance) and associated stuff like folky waltzes, jigs and the like. I would like to broaden this range in due course.

 

To listen to? Well apart from traditional English (or British) music and song, the bands or performers most heavily represented in my CD collection are Modern Jazz Quartet; Dave Brubeck (Quartet); The Meteors (the psychobilly band); Anti-Nowhere League (loud and dirty punk rock); Motörhead (next door's lawn-killing rock and roll); and P!nk (a very varied singer/songwriter). Genre-wise, mainly jazz, blues, punk, rock and roll, rockabilly, country and their various derivatives.

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Well, there are very few styles that I actively dislike, and with age i find that i can warm to those as well.

I've had a hard time with Mexican Pop, and Top Forty radio music is a wasteland these days, but outside of that i can find something to like about most of the styles that I've heard.

 

As for the concertina, I chose it because I'm in love with the free-reed sound, whatever instrument produces it.

Cheers,

Rob

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In my previous life, my musical interest was a bit more varied, some rock, some classic, some Renaissance madrigals. But after I got started on Irish traditional music on the fiddle 9 years ago, my musical horizon has narrowed quite a bit. I pretty much exclusively listen to ITM nowadays. But there are just so many great tunes that are just waiting to be learned - and for that, you need to listen, listen, listen.

 

Also, for people outside of Ireland it's definitely much more work to learn the "idiom" of ITM, and again, the best way to do it is by listening to a lot of Irish music.

 

If I now happen to hear some Baroque violin music, particularly for solo violins, I noticed that I get really frustrated with the musicians. How can they play each note with the same weight and such heavy bow strokes? Don't they realize how boring and lifeless that sounds? Can't they add a bit more lift and swing? :lol:

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A trivia question for Friday...

 

A colleague recently asked me why , of all instruments, I chose the concertina and did it have any links to the sort of music I enjoyed listening to anyway. I can't really see the link when looking at my own taste (I am a Bob Dylan fanatic, but also like listening to Serge Gainsbourg, French female pop singers, Fairuz, Alex Campbell, Clancy Brothers, late 70s/early 80s hip hop, the Smiths, 'classical' renditions of Robbie Burns songs, the Sonics ... amongst many, many others)

but it got me wondering...

 

... what kind of music apart from that played on your concertina, do you folks listen to and enjoy? I wonder whether there are patterns or certain styles that feature heavily in the lives of concertina players?

 

 

Once I told a colleague poet of mine that I play the concertina and the organetto. He was not surprised because he never could have imagined me playing a guitar. My musical interests started with the blues and cajun music zydeco and tex mex and all kind of folk music from all over the world. Not only folk music as it is played but also the social context of it and the changes in the music after a change int hat particular context. Compare p e pre war and post war cajun music or fado or rembetica and there is still a lot more to discover.

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I listen to many music styles. When I was young I couldn´t escape an overdosis of Bach, Schuman and Handel that came out of the piano. Not bad, this brainwash by Bach´s chord theory, I like the music, but later I tried to escape fom the goldberg variations, at that time I wanted something else than my parents of course and listened a lot to pop, blues and jazz, underground, experimental music styles, and I remember their eyes :angry: when they saw I´d put a drawing-pin on each hammer of the concert piano, to make it sound like a saloon piano for a boogy woogy, but okay, back to the subject. I still like to listen to classical music, for example debussy, chopin, satie, albeniz and bartok and modern classical music. I also like to hear European early music and traditional music from anywhere in and outside europe, not only for playing it.

 

Apart from what I play, there is no specific kind of music I like, in fact, I listen to all music that touches me. The feeling the music brings is more important to me than the technical skill. A good piece of music has something special, something distinctive from the rest, so I like to listen to music I do not know yet, "something new may be interesting". It does not matter what style it is, as long as it´s no schlagers or too much baroque.... :rolleyes:

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there was a couple years where i went cold turkey on everything else and listened only to irish music. that is mostly what i listen to anyways, if i listen to music. other than that, lately i've been liking some more modern, popular sort of stuff, with a bit of a hip hop influence. if it werent for the beatles, i would not be listening to anything but irish music. i heard a few of their songs, and i was like, "who are these people? they get music!" i followed that rabbit hole through the sixties--nina simone, bob dylan, the animals, and all those other goodies. the seventies scared me too much, and i'm not ready for the 80's, so i skipped to the nineties and listened to all the music of my childhood. when i discovered kanye west, my departure from the "boat my grandparents came over on" was complete.

 

before i went off the bandwagon and went cold turkey on non-irish music, as far as i remember i was listening to opera, hindustani music (i.e. indian), and some j-pop. there's a lot of cool things that i have seen going on in chinese pop nowadays, but i am kind of burned out on things in chinese due to years and years of frustrating circumstances with my chinese program at my university.

 

just the other day a friend of mine from bangladesh (!) was teaching me how to play iron maiden songs. it was hard to get that kind of stuff to work on the concertina, :P.

 

i was trying out some interesting new sounds on the concertina the other day (by myself, this time), and i am really hoping to find some appropriate ways to put concertina in non-folk music.

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I came to the concertina via sea shanties. Which I still adore and listen to (and sing!) all the time. I loved the sound, was intrigued by an instrument that could do both chordal accompaniment and melody and was completely different from the violin, not to mention small and not in need of being tuned every time it was played. Actually seeing one of these magnificent beasts towards the end of 2007 pushed me over the edge and I simply HAD to have one of my own.

 

Though I have a fairly obvious bias towards traditional and more "folkie" music, I'll listen (at least once) to just about anything. Though I must admit, the only rap song I have on my iPod is "Bohdran Player's Rap"....I don't think that counts!

I love Simon & Garfunkel, I have some Bob Dylan, recently I've been listening to some Latin Quarter music that a friend sent me. I also have things from the Rolling Stones, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Roy Harper, Echo and the Bunnymen, Bright Eyes.......things my friends have told me to listen to (gently, and not so much) that I liked and decided to keep.

Steeleye Span, the Bothy Band, Tannahill Weavers, Battlefield Band, some Silly Wizard, Celtic Fiddle Festival, Ship's Company, Cherish the Ladies, Gaelic Storm, Mystic Seaport and Smithsonian Folkways recordings, I'll love those forever.

Things I grew up with and have now made my own include classical music, and lots of it, a deep appreciation for Bach played on a big, loud organ, Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Miller, Spike Jones, some bluegrass/old-time.......stuff like that.

 

However, I suffer from an acute case of "I only have one or two songs from this artist but I simply adore them" syndrome.

Just for fun, looking through my current iTunes list, I have 17 genres, 126 albums and 164 artists.....2035 songs. Now, some of those are typos or doubled, but it gives one a general idea of the severity of my above condition. :blink:

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However, I suffer from an acute case of "I only have one or two songs from this artist but I simply adore them" syndrome.

Just for fun, looking through my current iTunes list, I have 17 genres, 126 albums and 164 artists.....2035 songs. Now, some of those are typos or doubled, but it gives one a general idea of the severity of my above condition. :blink:

 

i'm kind of like that too. however, i think you can have like 3 songs/tune from an artist, and really spend a lifetime understanding them to get at the essence at what someone is doing.

 

i spent a good semester or two listening to beatles exclusively (well, in addition to irish music). however, there are loads and loads of their songs i have never even heard of. i still casually find new ones all the time on accident. that is cuz i love a good song and just love sitting in them and soaking in them. that way, the beatles will remain new to me for years years, and i could spend a decade or more just slowly soaking them up, and learning what lessons they have to teach me. sometimes i envy the "buy every album and can quote all of them" syndrome, but i think my way definitely has its merits.

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