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Tenor Vs Treble (48 Button English)


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I'm looking to buy my first english concertina today and I'm going to buy a Stagi English A48-S. The question is if I should choose tenor or treble(baritone is available as well but I don't want one too low).

Is the treble too high and annoying or is it smooth and good for leads? Or should I buy a tenor instead?

EDIT: I found some videos, and I think treble is a safe bet, you rarely go to the highest C anyways.

Edited by Corsairs Concertina
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it's not that Treble is too high--it has the same note range as a violin, and goes down to the "g" below Middle C. The question is, are you gonna use all those high notes? And how outraged are you gonna be to find that you hand falls on the EC UNcomforably over the notes near and below middle C, which you need to play a lot if you are going to play folk music, and MOST comfortably, over a super-high octave you are never going to use unless you are playing it for the kind of classical stuff a violinist would go up into 2nd position for? I find it absolutely preposterous that Treble is the most common EC and the one people re stuck with generally for things like playing folk music. Really ridiculous.

 

Still more silly is the fact that the Tenor 48 is stereotyped as a song-accompaniment, background-music EC, and people are told that because its thumbstrap parallels "F" rather than "C," it is for playing "down" in F using Treble fingering. Like people are too stupid to play in all keys just because the thumbstrap is in a different place.

 

So my view is this---for dance-based instrumental world folk, Tenor is an overlooked gem. Its real strength is not for playing background, or playing "down" but for playing dance music and folk music, and jazz and god knows what else, in regular keys, at regular pitches, and having some low notes for bass accents.

 

---If you like folk genres like Irish, you have the low "F," and the low "F#," so you unlike on a Treble EC, you have the low fifth when playing in flat keys, like B-flat or B. And you have your low octave note if playing in B or E.

 

---When you feel like it, you can play it as a "Baritone," for the 75% to 80% of irish tunes that don't go below middle C, because Tenor goes down to the C below middle C, so you can play an octave low like a bari when you want.

 

---Your fingers fall comfortably over notes you are actually going to USE, rather than that silly super-high octave nobody but classical types play.

 

---Instead of that stupid super-high octave, you get delicious, chocolatey low notes to play in bari octave, to use as beautiful double stops/drones, or to arrange bass effects once you get good enough.

 

If Tenors weren't so rare and hard to come by, all this would have been figured out long before yours truly came toodling up the lane, and people would be playing EC Tenors rather than Anglos. They're that great for folk instrumental genres.

 

 

I play a Morse Tenor, I play it in any key, and am constantly playing it in so-called "Treble" keys. I don't orient by so-called "Treble fingering," I just learned the whole keyboard for playing in all keys from my thumbstrap. and the only notable thing to me about the thumstrap placement is the delightful fact that on a Tenor, the strap is "south" by one button, of where it would be on a Treble, thus making it less of a strain or twist to play those mddle notes near middle C and just below middle C. The bit of a strain on a Tenor is the really low notes, below "fiddle G," which I love having but don't actually play super-often.

 

If you look up the recording "Black Boxes," by Sarah Graves, you can get an idea of the cool things that can be done with a Tenor---she is playing 2 on that cd, an Aeola and an Edeo.

 

The downside of Tenor is that if you stick with EC and want to move on past a Stagi, Tenors don't grow on trees. Trebles are much more plentiful. You can just, ignore the super-high octave like a fiddler does on the violin. But . . . I love the Tenor.

 

So there is two cents times twenty or thirty......Good luck, and have fun.

Edited by ceemonster
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Thanks for writing that ceemonster, I've only been playing since Jan. of this year but the first thing I noticed was that the most used notes could be shifted a bit higher on the key pad and I wouldn't mind dropping a few of the notes off the top that only my neighbors dog can hear. Now all I need is a winning lotto number to upgrade...sigh.

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