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The phones might be "smart" but their users are frequently anything but.

And sometimes the other way around. I am a life member of Mensa and just had to make a $10 phone call to accomplish something simple that my iPhone could not handle because I am in a foreign country with an internet system whose security the gadget does not trust.

 

I just edited the above to expand all the contractions because apparently when I type an apostrophe on my phone it does not appear in the c.net interface. Grrrr.

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What are these things called "smart phones"? I see them mentioned in discussions quite often.

 

They're phones that their makers/programmers try to make you think are smarter than you are. ;)

I understand that if one uses them too much, that becomes the case. :ph34r:

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I don't like much social media involvement. But I have a flickr photo site, and I joined 2 "groups" there: Concertina, Melodeon, and Accordion -- and The Art Of The Concertina.

 

Of course, they are for photo sharing, though I see there is a link for discussions, too.

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I discover new ideas here quite frequently, beyond what I was searching for. Fracturing of the exchange into too many forums makes it less likely that someone like me would ever encounter many of these. Someone who is already following a number of niche forums would get notification of new posts, but how to discover the forums in the first place?

 

Not to mention those of us that prefer to not to be on Facebook, or get a regular feed of items pushed at us.

 

If there is a legitimate need to break out a niche group on a different platform because that there is regular exchange among those interested that niche which is getting lost, that makes sense. But splintering away still means a loss for everyone else here, particularly if the topics discussed might still have been of general interest to many.

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Regarding the Tradewinds Ted post above, I agree on the importance of what we might call the pan-concertina approach of this site. I play EC, but I find myself reading about anglos and duets with interest, if not always comprehension. Someone in a recent discussion said that they're different instruments that just happen to look quite similar; there's truth to that, but they're pretty much the same inside the box, and an issue for one is often an issue for all.

 

Dammit, it's all so interesting!

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I've been using this forum for a few years and, like Tradewinds Ted, find it a useful source of inspiration. But that's also true of Instagram, which I've been using for only two or three months. In fact, the OP of this topic is here partly because of a discussion we had on IG, and I only started posted videos in IG (with links from here) because of a remark he made there. So for me there's value in both.

 

I've been on Facebook the same length of time as I have Instagram. I find the experiences quite different. To me, FB is random and messy; IG is organised and simple. I get only posts (photos or videos) from those I've chosen to follow. Anyone interested can see my few posts by searching for "craneduet" on IG. You don't need to sign up, but you can only leave comments if you do.

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I think part of the appeal for me, as well, is the opportunity for others who are not concertinists to see and hear our music as well as have opinions on it and be able to get feedback from other artists or instrumentalists, etc. I guess I feel like this is a hidden little diamond in the rough that is closed off all to itself. I definitely understand why people would not agree with me and I’m not trying to say we change things and abandon old ways or anything, just reach into fresh areas.

hola

i think ive just started following you on instagram :-) I too do a lot of playing in a vehicle :-)

 

Im probably going to get hung for this but..... I get the impression that in the UK at least many concertina players are, perhaps, of a generation that is not so familiar with the various social medias available.

 

 

Well, I think that there is more to it than simple familiarity with social media. I work in a University, am of a certain age, but fully aware of available social media – we use it to attract, retain, and contact students. However, although I enjoy contact with others, I simply don’t want the all-pervading density of contact offered by such systems. In the same way, I love music but don’t, unlike most of our students, want it piped into my ears from waking to sleeping and beyond. I do not experience silence as an existential void to be feared and filled. Indeed, I fear the effect of stimulation density addiction on people’s ability engage in mature reflection on what they hear, be it words or music.

Aaah, how nice to be old enough to refer to the sound byte generation in a smug and patronising way!

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RE not having to sign up for IG to search and read posts, I am not having that result. Going to IG, I can not search it, it's only a "Sign Up," or, "Log in With Facebook" choice.

 

And Googling "Instagram" plus "craneduet," gets a result count of nothing.

 

It did turn up "Pictaram," and your @craneduet Instagram pix were there.

Edited by ceemonster
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RE not having to sign up for IG to search and read posts, I am not having that result. Going to IG, I can not search it, it's only a "Sign Up," or, "Log in With Facebook" choice.

Instead of going to the front page of the site, go to a specific user's profile page, e.g.

https://www.instagram.com/craneduet/

https://www.instagram.com/the_closet_concertinist/

https://www.instagram.com/alexholdenmaker/

 

You get a dark banner at the bottom asking you to log in, but you can click on the 'X' to make it go away and carry on browsing the site anonymously. You can even use the search box to find other users.

 

And Googling "Instagram" plus "craneduet," gets a result count of nothing.

Most social media sites aren't searchable on Google.

 

It did turn up "Pictaram," and your @craneduet Instagram pix were there.

I'm not sure what Pictaram is. I suspect it's scraping the content from Instagram and adding their own adverts to it instead.

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Hi Ceemonster. I'm sorry you've been having trouble. I'm not that IT literate myself so I was simply going by my own experience; which is that I used Instagram without problem for a couple of months before I decided to sign up. But I did start by following Alex Holden's own link (as at the bottom of the above post, and as he describes).

 

My thanks to Alex for his clearer explanation of how to work it.

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Personally, I prefer Youtube postings of music from this group.

 

Here are my reasons:

 

1) I already use Youtube (is there anybody here who doesn't use it, at last count Youtube had 1.5B users) so I don't have to sign up and possibly install yet another app on my phone.

 

I do not want to join Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, MySpace and on and on and on. I have already sold my soul to Google and I don't want to sell it again to a myriad of other tech companies with dodgy ethics.

 

2) I can play it in my Youtube app on my phone or tablet and it just works from a link without a hitch.

 

3) (Most important for me) If I really like a piece and want to listen to it again to try to understand it then I can easily capture it from my PC using one of the many Youtube downloader apps that are available. Once captured I can save it for future listening in case it disappears from the web and I can listen to it using one of the slowdowner applications.

 

Soundcloud has been used by folks here but I find it problematic at times, sometimes it takes several attempts to get something to play and sometimes it streams badly. There is no easy way to capture a Soundcloud stream for future listening - it can be done but it involves capturing the live stream.

 

I have visited Little John's Instagram feed but I found Instagram navigation awkward (it seems to want to drag me into LJ's social circle and I don't want to do that) and I did not like the way that videos automatically loop repeat themselves. Not too sure about the audio quality either, I suspect it has been down sampled but I have not really listened that closely.

 

My two cents,

 

Don.

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Reading this thread made me feel “officially “ old! While I am on Facebook and Twitter, I seldom post on the former and have never posted and seldom read posts on the latter. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out what was meant by IT in a previous post above. Yes, I do go to YouTube and appreciate those who post there although I’ll admit I have no idea (nor any inclination) how to do so. But, that’s just me........

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However, although I enjoy contact with others, I simply don’t want the all-pervading density of contact offered by such systems. In the same way, I love music but don’t, unlike most of our students, want it piped into my ears from waking to sleeping and beyond. I do not experience silence as an existential void to be feared and filled. Indeed, I fear the effect of stimulation density addiction on people’s ability engage in mature reflection on what they hear, be it words or music.

Aaah, how nice to be old enough to refer to the sound byte generation in a smug and patronising way!

 

That's exactly how I feel about it. Couldn't put it better myself!

 

Except that I'm not smug and patronising - more pitying. We old folk, when we were young, had no portable media. When we were walking or driving, we had to sing, hum or whistle to ourselves, so we got used to actively making music. No student party was complete without at least a guitar-player to lead the singing (that was how I became proficient on the concertna).

 

We did have media, of course. Chiefly the radio. Way back, the BBC had two radio programmes, the Home Service and the Light Programme. These were a public service, and had to cater for all musical tastes. So depending on when you switched on, you would get classic, pop, jazz, folk, comic songs, drawing-room ballads, nursery rhymes ... Today, there are several channels for each genre of music, and children of parents who leave their favourite channel on all day get a very one-sided musical education. I got to hear the whole palette, and could later go out and buy records of what I liked - and my collection of records, small as it was, was eclectic.

 

Yes, I'm very glad that I grew up in that environment of medial diversity, not in one of the modern monocultures!

 

The one thing I do like about today is YouTube. If you know what kind of music you like, you can get it there, and more of it than on the radio back then.

 

Cheers,

John

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