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Peter Bellamy's Style


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I have recently been listening to the concertina playing of Peter Bellamy, which is mostly self-accompaniment for his own singing. Has anyone studied his style enough to give some clues to exactly what he is doing. I know that he was playing an Anglo.

 

I really love Bellamy's anglo playing but I find it hard to imitate. And I'll preface my comments by saying that I'm making these observations from my listening - I never saw or heard him play in the flesh.

 

If you look at the photos of him in the "Wake The Vaulted Echoes" collection you'll notice that there are some custom levers on at least one of the pictured concertinas; these were to hold drone keys down (by the looks of it he had more than one drone key too). I can't think off-hand of a song accompaniment in which he doesn't use a drone, though no doubt there are some.

 

The combination of the drones and the fact that he holds down fistfuls of notes in both hands (usually with the melody note at the top of the right hand, but not always) make it a tremendously full sound. Something he doesn't seem to do much of is cross-row fingering - it's mostly along the rows and makes a lot of the changes in bellows direction.

 

He has a peculiar style of ornamentation too - sometimes it's quite florid, often alternating very rapidly between a couple of notes up the top end several times in quick succession.

 

But I think the most striking thing about his playing applies equally to his singing - he used rhythm extremely flexibly, following the natural rhythms of the words he was singing rather than conforming to a rigid pulse.

 

Hope these thoughts are of some use - they're far from complete, and I'm sure others will have much more to contribute...

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I hope this doesn't sound too pious! I wrote a bit about this in the review section of PICA 1 which is now available on line somewhere, but I can't remeber where and I'm at work as I write this (lunch break, of course!) A few paras were also used by Neil Wayne as part of the extensive booklet in the Transport Reissue box set. If you can't track this down get to me through the personal links contact on this site and I'll dig out the original copy and send it to you.

Peter's style was genuinely unique and is worth looking at - as was anything he did!

Best wishes

Roger Digby

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I believe that mostly what he did was to hold down fistfuls of buttons and pump the concertina in and out a lot (a bit like a quieter version of Ken Loveless, which should give you a clue as to how loud the good Reverend was).

 

There was a good thread on Peter Bellamy here.

 

Chris

 

Edited to add PS: It looks like a whole bunch of us has posted at the same time, basically saying much the same. If you can get hold of Roger's article, it is excellent. Try the query page at the the ICA website and ask them. If the article is online by now, it will be on that site somewhere.

Edited by Chris Timson
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