Dear All,

As you may have seen, I had offered my Tedrow Baritone for sale.
I played all the time mainly myC/G treble Concertina and very little the Tedrow Baritone I own.
There has not been much response or interst

Luckily nobody wanted to buy it and after haviong sold my C/G Treble, I am playing more the Baritonme and I am learning :

- My TEDROW made Baritone is good, and with exception of the lowseste two reed, even quick. It sounds lvely and even majestic.
I knoqw that Bo has build in the fionest Antonelli reeds he could get and those reeds are sounding depending on the oplayer sweet, similar to a Flute perhapsx or evfen a clarinet, and it cvan play very loud and never unpleasant.
So thank you Bob. Up to know I had not get aware the good and well made instrumetn you have given to me.

- Yesterday I had the chance to play together with another G/D tuned Concertina, playing Folk Music and Shanties. We did it on a public place, and I earned my first buck as street musician

- Later in the day I learend to play a Slow Air in the G Row in D and well I have nio better word than "beutiful", charming.

I shall go ahead to discover my TEdrow Baritone.

If you loiok for an payable Baritone Anglo, I want to recommed the TEdrow warmly.

This I say sioncerely and convinced,. Thanks Bob.

But the real intention of the Topic is :

When I bought mine, which might have been the first Baritone Bob has made, I thought that Bob would sell many of them, that it would be a commercial succes for him.
I have not spoken with him recently, but I guess it is not as I havwe thouhgt.

And the very reduced interst in my offer, does confirm this impression.

I ask : WHY ?

And more important for me I ask to Britone Anglo Players to tell me, how, for waht kind of Music they do use their Baritones ?.

And eventually I would like to listen some more Baritone Anglos.

Regards
Joachim

I play a Baritone G/D Tedrow (in the same range as the baritone C/Gs), primarily for Irish music.

Regards,
--Dave

For those interested, here is a photo essay I did a few years back on my Dipper baritone C/G, an instrument of great beauty and tonal quality. I have not been doing much song accompaniment lately, but I will be returning to this soon, which means I shall be spending more time wih this concertina again, because it was designed specifically for song accompaniment.


On the standard G/D the G row is in the same octave as the G row on a C/G baritone, is that what you mean, Dave? Or do you mean that it is an octave below the standard G/D? I've long fancied one of these beasts. I have only met one once, a Dipper that Colin called a bass anglo. It was, as you might expect, a superb concertina. I really like mellow, low-sounding anglos, another reason why I like G/Ds so much. For personal taste nowadays I find the standard C/G rather screechy- even the Bb/F (like the one I just sold to Joachim) represents a real advance on the C/G, to my ears. However I say again, it's personal taste. I would not dream of saying (as a certain Swede might) that because I find the C/G squeeky then it necessarily is squeeky.

Chris

The G row is (mostly) the same as a normal G/D.

The D row is an octave lower (down a fourth from the G, rather than up a fifth).

It gives it a lovely low voice, and gives me most of what I need for tunes in the most convenient three buttons (i.e. those closest to the thumbs) of each hand.

I've finalized the layout, having only moved one set of reeds around (in fairness, Bob moved the reeds around). It is designed for G, D, and related keys, and it is not too awkward to go to C or A, but any keys beyond that are likely to be trickey (but possible).

Something like 75% of the range in G, and 80% of the range in D are on the instrument in both directions, which gives a lot of very nice fingering options.

Regards,
--Dave

Oh, I see! Something like a melodeon, then. Sounds like you're heading in the opposite direction to me with the Anglodeon. Could be a lot of fun.

Chris

Good. As with so many things, people's perceptions differ.

One friend plays a baritone English, because he has difficulty hearing higher pitches, even what some folks would consider normal treble range. Another friend takes no interest in music with strong bass, because she simply can't hear low frequencies.

I guess Joachim's question makes this thread as good a place as any to admit that I'm the person who bought the C/G baritone Geuns-Wakker that Bob Tedrow had up on Ebay a few weeks ago. When I got it I had to adjust the set on a few reeds, but in general it is in good shape. Someone did get some use out of it, judging by the slight bellows wear.

I took it to Amherst a couple of Fridays ago and Doug C. and I had fun looking inside it and comparing its playing to the BBox prototype C/G baritone in the shop. One or two things about the way the Geuns is built are unusual, but they work. Perhaps at some point I can get a photo essay posted here (or a whole page on baritone concertinas). I'd like to show it to Emery Hutchins if I ever bump into him on a Friday night in New Hampshire....He has a Dipper baritone. I'm sure there is a big difference in play and sound, but he also waited ten years for that instrument!

A first impression is that baritone requires completely new song and tune arrangements. They just don't work if you transfer them from C/G and play them an octave lower. I can already tell by experimenting that there are alot of better approaches and possibilities, and look forward to working on them. Having said that, I think baritones are a niche instrument. You won't use them in fast dance music, and I can't hear mine in a noisy session. You need to have other applications for it. You also have to pay for another instrument, so you may feel the need to use it a fair amount to justify keeping it. So the market is there (witness how the Button Box can typically sell a Lachenal baritone anglo in a few hours), but is smaller than for (treble) C/G or for G/D.

Ken
baritone in voice, in more sense than one

Mine can certainly sound faster than my skill allows me to play, and I haven't really noticed too much problem playing with other instruments.

--Dave

I don't know if this is transferable or not, but my partner Anne plays both treble and baritone Englishes, and she does transfer song arrangements note-for-note between the two. Also she has taken to playing her Morse baritone in sessions in preference to a treble precisely because she can hear it. That is, in a room with a few other concertina players, at least one of them (me) usually not sitting far away, she found it difficult to distinguish her instrument from other people's, so if someone else made a mistake it could throw her as well. Since she took up the baritone she can hear her own playing and is getting a lot more out of sessions than she used to. She keeps the Wheatstone brass-reeded baritone for the song arrangements.

Whether this would apply to someone playing C/G treble and baritone I don't know, but I suspect it would. Certainly it would be worth giving it a try, especially for English music (and Irish music played at a melodic pace - you won't get a baritone to play fast diddly diddly, but that is no bad thing IMHO).

Chris

My experiment in a session was in the admittedly very noisy environment of the Press Room in New Hampshire (hard walls, lots of instruments, etc). I readily grant that it could be very different elsewhere.

I can play the Geuns fairly fast (it is quite responsive). Bear in mind that I am only an intermediate player anyway...There aren't that many tunes I can play fast, period!

Ken

Not physically impossible, though in a larger, heavier instrument it would take a bit more work. I can do it on my bass English, in a range that is an octave lower than you would normally play on a baritone anglo or baritone English (2 octaves below the fiddles & flutes, 3 below the whistles). On Anne's baritone Albion it didn't even take extra effort. (While the baritone anglo actually reaches lower than the baritone English -- as the standard C/G anglo reaches to the C below the low G of a treble English -- that extra range is missing some important notes -- notably D & F#, -- so both the English and the anglo play in the same range.)

I think one thing that slows down playing on most of the deeper instruments is the the button travel is longer, and that's because the levers are longer. If someone could develop a non-mechanical (or at least non-lever) linkage to lift the pads, the button travel could be made shorter, and speed could be improved. I think one reason for the quick response on the Albion baritones is the fact that The Button Box has managed to use exactly the same action, not scaled larger, but at the same size as the treble.

Playing melody 2 octaves down occasionally is fun and a nice change of pace, but I don't do it a lot, because I think it sounds "heavy". That might have something to do with my ear's ability to detect the onset of the notes. That low D takes almost 14 milliseconds to complete its first cycle. But I think that next octave higher -- the baritone range -- sounds just fine for regular playing. In fact, that's the octave where guitars, bouzoukis, and tenor banjos on melody normally sound.

Bass instruments (English System) are often single action so they do not have the valve issues that the Anglos do.

Anglo and English Barries often have valve springs (wires) fitted to the lower notes on the non-chamber reedpan face. This can make the overall speed of the lower notes of the instrument pick up considerably.

As to transfering song arrangements, my daughter sings well against a barrie, I (being a bass voice) do not. I think that you either need a very strong/distinctive voice to sing against an instrument in your own pitch, or you need to use the octave separation to avoid a muddy tone.

Dave

Yes, I've seen and played those. Mine (bass & contrabass) are double action, though.