Hello to all,

I play Irish tunes on a C/G anglo down here in the heart of Arkansas; there are very few players down here. I just had a contact from a gentleman asking for assistence to lean to play a Hayden duet - I've never seen one before, I know nothing about them, what they play, keys etc, but I'm always willing to help. So, what can we do with this instrument? Can anyone reccomend a resource for learning to play the duet?


Best wishes, Alan.

The standard 46-key Hayden plays easily (identically) in C,D,E,F,G and A, and slightly to very difficultly in all the other keys. Like your anglo it has a bass and treble side though the key play the same note with both bellows direction. The treble side also starts on middle C (lower than on most anglos) which allows most tunes to be played entirely on the treble side which leaves the bass side pretty free for accompaniment (bass/chords, harmony, counterpoint...). Here's the fingering chart.
While one can play many styles of music on a Hayden most Hayden players tend to be pretty lush with their accompaniment - mainly because they *can* (not necessarily because it's "right" or sounds good). Pretty much anything you can play on your anglo can be played (with different fingering of course) on a Hayden though getting a particular "feeling" (such as the traditional Irish style) may be more difficult to emulate on a Hayden. But if the guys just starting out he'll not be worrying about nuances. Probably the easiest road to take him down is some simple tunes like folk songs and waltzes... and work your way up to dance tempo tunes.

Not much in the way of "resources" for learning to play Hayden unless one's able to get to the Squeeze-In or NE Concertina Workshop. There's few tunes on Hayden on Henk's Tunes Page and a couple on Youtube here and here though a Hayden can do things well beyond dance tunes. Check out some of these duet pieces (played on a different type of duet).

-- Rich --

Another possibility is coming to the the concertina gathering at the Palestine Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival held in Palestine, TX in late March/early April each year. Steve Mills and I both play Hayden and usually attend this, along with Gary Coover (also from Arkansas on Jefferies Duet) and Kurt Braun (Crane Duet). Easy piano arrangements can be a good starting point for playing the Hayden as well as David Cornell's duet arrangements on <concertina.com>.

"You could tell him that most duet players learn entirely by themselves and to just get on with it." he said unsympathetically.

I was thinking the same thing. That's why I haven't posted in this thread until now.

As I read it, this guy has bought a Hayden and is not unnaturally looking for whatever form of help might be available. He contacts the only person who knows who plays a concertina. This person, not a duet player, contacts the best resource available, www.concertina.net, to see what might be done. Certainly no harm there, but the truth is indeed that a duet player today must almost necessarily be self-taught. Call it rule (0) of the advice that follows.

Nonetheless, Alan, he should present himself here. To get the best advice, we need to know what kinds of tunes he wants to play and what level of musical background he has, even what kind of Hayden he has. As Rich and Jim noted, Hayden-specific workshops are available in MA in April, and the Southwest Concertina Workshop only a few hundred miles from you in late March has always had 2 Hayden players in attendance to date.

So, given that self-instruction is the thing, here are some first steps for your friend.

(1) Learn where the notes are. Congratulations, choosing the Hayden probably gets you more quickly to this point than any other concertina, possibly excluding English. Some resources for Haydens can be found at http://www.concertina.com/hayden-duet/index.htm.

(2) Decide how you are going to finger the scales. Different Hayden players use different schemes. This has been debated at least 3 times on this forum: here’s one instance http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php...yden++fingering.

An opinion I hold not necessarily shared by all is that the #1 drawback of the Hayden system is that it disfavors usage of the index finger and favors more usage of the little finger than most, if not all, other systems. You should not be too discouraged, but settle on a fingering system as soon as possible and stick with it. After you’ve played scales enough to get comfortable with them, but not locked in, I suggest that you try this etude by Carcassi (written for guitar). If you play only tunes, you will only slowly encounter the difficulties that come from your choice of fingerings. A piece like this forces you to confront the consequences of your choices immediately and also trains you to switch your positional frame of reference on the fly. This frequent readjusting of position is more like real tunes (but even more so, which is great for practice) than scales per se. This etude also forces you to explore the whole keyboard, rather than allowing you to learn the G#’s etc. at some “later” date and will also get you started playing some notes on the LH side.

(3) Our system’s “Inventor”, Brian Hayden himself, consistently recommends not deferring learning accompaniment until later, but tackling some sort of left hand accompaniment to the right hand from the beginning. I couldn’t agree more. Don’t neglect the left hand. Add the chord root or 5th while playing the RH melody. Practice tunes transposed to the LH as well as the right.

(4) Practice some chromatic playing from the beginning. This could be chromatic tunes or exercises that might incorporate a 3 or 4 note chromatic run, or adding chromatic neighboring notes, like putting a Bb grace note before a C.

(5) One great thing about the Hayden is that many chord forms have the same shape in the keys E, A, D, G, C and F. In fact, the closed forms of the I, IV, and V chord, have the same shape across these key signatures, while the IIm and VIm chords are the same shape as each other. In other words, for every chord you would use for a folk tune, two chord shapes will get you by. (There are reasons why you might not want to play these closely spaced forms regularly as simultaneously-voiced chords, but that's another story.) For different voicings, some will be transposable to other keys using the same form, some will not.

A lot of detail up front, probably too much. Alan, encourage him to contact us for better tailored information.

The first thing I would ask him, is does he know about chords, their names and how they are built -- i.e., what is a D7 or a G minor? Anyone who knows chords can teach himself the Hayden LH side. As for the RH melody side, it pretty much teaches itself -- tho you do need to make up your mind about fingering, although I tend to use both the idnex-heavy and the pinky-heavy versions as needed.

Part of the perceived problem is that the little finger (pinky) is used mostly for hard-to-reach notes, so it tends to hit a lot of wrong notes, and gets a bad reputation. SOrt of like the 9-iron in golf -- used for tough shots so "difficult to hit."


But to answer the original quesiton; How do I play the Hayden Duet?
ANser: WIth great pleasure! I love it --Mike K.

Getting out to meet other duet players is definitely good advice.
Perfect if they play Hayden but good anyway.

Last week at the Swaledale Squeeze, I invited myself to sit in with Tim
Laycock's duet group: five people playing three different systems! They
were very kind. None of them play Hayden (truth be known, nor do I) but
they offered some good ideas and were very encouraging.

Get out there and meet some players. Do not wait until you are "good
enough". I did that with English concertina and missed years of support
and fellowship that way.

Of course, if you can get to England, Hayden players are more numerous
although still thin on the ground. Visit Kilve and you can probably get
advice from the man himself.

Roger

Never mind not sharing it, I don't understand it at all, unless you only play in one key all the time which happens to be carefully chosen to need your little fingers a lot. Surely you use all your fingers all the time? Anyway you need to learn to use all four fingers competently, regardless of system, or your playing will suffer.

The number one drawback of the Hayden system is surely the almost complete lack of anything other than small instruments to progress to.

I'm working to remedy that - I'm making a kit to convert a standard 88-key keyboard (controller - needs a laptop to work) to a Wicki-Hayden jammer (a simple Thummer).
ETA? June 31st.
The cost? $500 (300 for keyboard, 200 for my kit)
The catch? I need enough demand to justify going to production. Please tell people about it.

Ken Rushton, MusicScienceGuy

Will it work with a small portable tone-module/synthesizer (like Yamaha MU-15), or does it require PC support? And ISTR from your Web page, that it has only 4 rows of keys, whereas 5 or 6 is more funcitonal (even a Stagi 46 has a partial 5th row on the RH side). Off course a wide (two-handed) 4-row keyboard is better than nothing, and worth playing.

Anyway, I'm working on an acoustic instrument with a Hayden keyboard, but it will not be as small and portable as a concertina, and will play very softly unless amplified.

I agree with Dirge that there is a limited selection of Hayden concertinas, at the entry and intermediate (hybrid) level. The entry Stagi costs almost $1000 new. I'm glad I bought mine gently used when I did!

At the other extreme, Wim Wakker is now making 46 and a larger 60-plus key model, but at high prices. We can pray that Bob Tedrow gets back into making Haydens, and that RIch Morse's design comes to fruition.

And the world could use an entry-level ROchelle/Jackie type entry-level 46-key Hayden, but it's not likely to happen soon (tho it might create more long-range demand for the high-end Wakkers).
--Mike K.

I'm sorry Ken; I bought a concertina because I wanted a concertina, not some sort of synthesiser. If I'd wanted an electronic instrument I'd have bought a keyboard, and, as I can already play the piano, wouldn't have had the remotest interest in one of yours. You are not remedying the problem at all. It's like saying "I'm solving the problem of a shortage of marriageable women by increasing the supply of pigs".

What a straight line! I'll be cool and not make a "smart" remark.


I'm trying to increase the supply of "marriageable women", it's just that our definition of marriageable is a tad different.

Ken.

-Yup, It currently requires a PC. If I can get help, we'll rapidly shrink the pc part to the smallest unit that works, i.e. that new $300, 6 ounce unix unit.


Agreed, I'd give much to have a 6- row unit. 4 rows is what I can currently do by folding the 88 key unit over - 6 rows will come if I can demo a market exists.

Ken.

And here I thought Dirge was suggesting that it was your definition of "women" that was too broad.

Is that date before the 12th of Never??

1) I confirm that I have been invited to take the beginners duet classes again at this Octobers Kilve Concertina weekend; details and booking see the West Country Concertina Players website. I shall be taking the all beginner duet (i.e. Crane, Hayden, Jeffries, & Maccan) sessions. I have to take these as I am the only avaible person who knows where the notes are on all 4 types of duet. I have to tailor these sessions to the small Maccann as these instruments lack several important notes on the right hand side and even an important one on the left! You will find most of the music I use for absolute beginners on the other concertina website. Note that the somewhat peculiar left hand side is intended to read as for a tenor singer, i.e. an octave below the right hand side not a standard bass staff. I also take chord classes for every type of concertina, and special sessions for Hayden Duets at any level you want.
I usually get to Kilve by 4 p.m. on the Friday and stay overnight on the Sunday so for people travelling long distances (like USA or County Durham) I am quite happy to take extra sessions on Friday before dinner, Sunday after tea and before the best music of the weekend at the pub across the road from 9 p.m. and even maybe an extra lesson after breakfast on Monday before we are turfed out at about 11 a.m..
2) Rich Morse has given the notes on the 46 Button Hayden, write these out on treble and bass music staves - see how neatly they fit. (you can't do this with an Anglo or Maccann !) Then get the book "Easy Peasy Tunes" - Button Box probably sell it (or Hobgoblin, Music Room, or Marcus in U.K.). This book gives 100 well known popular American, English, Irish, and Scottish tunes (and even a couple with Australian connections). It confines itself to only 14 buttons on the Right hand side of your instrument i.e. bottom row - d', e', f#'; next row g', a', b', c#"; third row c", d", e", f#"; and g", a", & b" on the next row up: - draw a hexagon round these on the Morse diagram. These comprise what I refer to as the "Golden Hexagon" - and the 100 tunes in "Easy Peasy Tunes" are just the tip of the iceburg of tunes of the 4 nations that can be played on just these 14 notes. The suggested bass chords in this book are confined to just 8 different chords - C, G, D, & A (major), Am & Em (minor) and D7 & A7 (dominant seventh).
The 4 Majors have the same simple triangular pattern ( 3 fingers ring, middle & index, in a row starting with the name note, and then move the middle finger diagonally up to the left on the next row and play these 3 together) For the 2 Minors again start with 3 in a row and move the middle finger diagonally down to the right - this gives the basic pattern for the minor chords the name of the chord is Xm where X is the note that the middle finger has landed on. For the Dominant 7ths (simple) take 4 buttons in a row and leve out the second one (it's easiest if you use the ring finger for the leftmost - leave a gap and play the next two with the middle and index finger. the name of this chord is the one that you are playing with the middle finger - seventh (strictly speaking "partial dominant seventh" but I don't want to get too pedantic). Leave the little finger on the left hand side for later when it will come in very usefull for playing bass notes on larger instruments.
Well that imformation and those two books should take you through the first year or so of learning; and once you have mastered these 2 keys (D & G) you will find that you can already play in the keys of F,C, A, & E without any extra learning except for reading off the music notation.
Inventor.

Surely, this isn't quite right. This would define a A7 chord as F _ A B. I think what you are aiming for would be G A _ C# (or the same pattern in any other key), which would be formed by leaving out the third button of the four in a row, or two then a gap and one more, naming the 7th chord for the note of the 2nd button.

Yes you are quite right about the dominant 7ths; sorry for my little slip. It comes of having only limited time on the internet before the Library Computer changes into a Pumpkin! I write straight from the top of my head without being able to look up any references, and that week the person sitting next to me was half looking at me typing on an "air-keyboard" with my left hand and another was standing behind me ready to take over as soon as the mad old gentleman's time was up. I was writing right up to the last minute, and then had to put the reply on to Concertina.net with only minutes to spare. I have no idea how to correct an entry once it is on C.net, as this website comes with no explanation as to how it can be used. I have no idea how to quote previous entrys with one of those boxes either; perhaps someone might tell me?
I do have a computer at home which I use to write music, instructions for playing concertinas, and designs for concertinas and other musical instruments. But I have always kept it as a virgin computer as it now contains much imformation that is valuble to me (and possibly to other people someday). One friend of mine who is connected to the internet tells me that he spends 20 minutes checking for viruses etc. every time he turns on his computer, and still gets attacked. I'd rather spend that extra 20 minutes writing music or playing the concertina.
Inventor.

Brian-


No problem. Thank you for 20+ years of joy with my Hayden concertina (actually, yours, as the one I play most of the time is the 46 key Wheatstone you sent to the States with Rich and Doug in 1994).


At the bottom of every post as it appears on this site are two buttons, [+ QUOTE] and [" REPLY]. We'll get to those later. In addition, at the bottom of posts that you yourself have created, there is a third button, to the left of the others, [+ EDIT].

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Note that there are buttons at the top of the post composition window which are helpful in creating effects, including quotes. If you linger over them with the mouse, a little note will appear giving a hint as to their function. The "quotes" one will put a pair of open and close quote tags at the end of whatever you've typed, and if you've highlighted any text from elsewhere on the page (a previous post), that text will appear between the tags.

Finally, there is the [+ QUOTE] button, mentioned earlier. If you want to create a post that responds to more than one previous post and quotes each of them, click this button at the bottom of each of them except the last one, where you will click the [" REPLY] button. The window that appears will contain properly formatted and tagged quotes of all the posts, and you can edit them for brevity and add your responses between them.

It is a good idea, when employing any fancy formatting like this, to preview your post before submitting it, just to make sure you haven't mangled any tags and confused the system. Next to the [Add Reply] button is a [Preview Post] button. Go for it. If you're happy with what you see, then hit [Add Reply]. In composing this post, I have done this five or six times, including after I decided to make all the button labels in bold face. One more, now, and I think I'm done...

I hope this helps.

(Two previews later with minor but essential edits) Finally!

if you are going to play Irish music I would recomend developing your ear.
learn to use your crossover notes either for playing in unison[left and right together],or for unison twiddles,if you are going to use your left hand for chords,try and keep the left hand light,and try and use mainly first and fifth notes on major chords.
for ornamentation on the following notes g use ga,a use a b,for C use c d, bc looks a bit awkward,it might be easier to start b a,so if you had adotted crotchet in jig time you might play gagg one quave two semi quavers one quaver,and for b it might be easier to play babb,or to use a combination of your left and right bs,bbbb making use of the duets unique fingerboard,the eight notes same on left and right.
start off using single grace notes for ornamentation,it is a question of often using the easiest note to cut,probably those that fall under your two strongest fingers index and middle.[although this could be where your crossover notes give you more options]

Thank you, Dick, for reminding us where this thread started, but I don't think the question was "how does one play Irish trad on a Hayden," but rather "what does an Irish trad Anglo player tell a beginning Hayden player about how to get started on his instrument?"

yes, it would be helpful if we knew what music the duet player wanted to play.if he /she does want to play Irish music,I hope that my information would be helpful.
I think [and its only my opinion],that a different approach from the normal duet approach,is the way forward for irish trad music on the duet.

I agree. And by the same token, I would not have chosen to play a duet concertina if my primary goal was to play Irish trad.

Dave - Thanks for all the imformation abour concertina.net use. I have printed it out and will study it, and see if it works for me next week.
Inventor.