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Toon

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About Toon

  • Birthday 10/19/1979

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    Leuven, Belgium

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  1. We found out that the interestingly priced English concertinas sold by "microscopecity" on Ebay don't have the standard note layout. The high F and F# are interchanged, as wel as the low B and Bb. I gathered my courage to screw open my newly sold instrument, and found a way to change it to standard note layout. I will describe how I did it here, but I can give no guarantee if you do the same on yours! :-) But, it is actually quite easy. The tools needed are screwdrivers (cross and flat) and a hobby knife. 1. Screw open the right hand end of the concertina. Remember which screws come from which holes to screw it in later exact in the same way. 2. Carefully remove the top. Examine the butoon mechanisms and identify which holes produce the low B and Bb notes. 3. Take out the hexagonal part with the buttons. The reed pans appear on the backside of it. Identify the B and Bb reeds. These have to be switched. 4. The reeds are mounted on the wooden underground with some kindof wax. Cut through this layer of wax along the edges of the metal reed holders of the B and Bb notes with the hobby knife. 5. Shift the flat screwdriver or knife under the metal reed holders to flip them off. 6. Place the metal reed holders in their right position and push them firmly into place. 7. Using the flat screwdriver, hobby knife and/or your finger, make the seams airproof again. With the deformable wax this is possible, believe me. 8. Close that part of the concertina in exactly the same way it was before. 9. Repeat the steps 1-8 for the left hand side, concerning the high F and F# notes. Good luck! Toon
  2. Hi there, I just bought a new 30-key English concertina on Ebay. It was a cheap one, but I'm so far happy with it. I am really surprised that, even after only a few weeks of practice, I can control it already quite good. But I found out there is a difference in the layout this instrument has, compared to the layouts in my instruction books and on the websites cited in the previous thread. These sources state that the two middle rows contain the notes of C major, no flats or sharps, and that the sharps and flats are located each of the outer rows. Seems logic. But, if I play tunes going higher or lower than the central ocatve, they start sounding funny. After some looking I found out that for my instrument outside the central octave some of the accidentals, like high fis and low bes, are on the middle rows, while the natural high f and low b are in the outer rows! Has anyone seen this before / is it dangerous? Toon
  3. I just ordered it directly form Dick Miles. It's 20 euro per book. His answer to my question how to pay was: "I'm sorry I can't take Visa cards, I can take a cheque in euros,or cash in euros if you don't think it is a risk sending cash, or if you have a paypal account you can pay my partner cathycook@eircom.net, regards Dick Miles" I just got the acknowledgement that the paypal payment has arrived, the book is on its way to me!!! I'll let you guys know what I think of it! Toon
  4. Indeed! And the nice thing about it is that you can play what you want, the people that doesn't like it just walk by, others stay. Toon
  5. I have the amazing luck that my girlfriend also plays music. She is actually a classic violin player, so the combination with me as a percussionist didn't seem straightforward. But we found the solution in Irish, Scottish, English, Klezmer ... folk music. I developed my gitar chord playing skills further, and she learned the tunes. The fun thing is that we often take our instruments to city and just play for a while on the street. You have immense fun, you can play errors because you don't know your spectators, you earn even money! Honestly, it defenitely is great fun. I recommend it to you all. By now I am learning to play the concertina for folk accompaniment (Just ordered Bill Miles' new book), to be able to switch with the guitar. Let's see how that sounds! Greetings, Toon
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