I have just been experimenting with the anglo,and found[when playing an octave g to g] Iwas playing in g starting on the c row,and apart from my start G and finishing G,was pulling every note.it seems natural after playing an english.
so I was using a mixture of the c row and the g rowthe g row for playing c ,e,highf#,high g.
has anyone got any tips on other row crossing combinations when playing in G.

You can play your starting G and ending Gs as pulls as well. both those notes are pulls on the outside chromatic row (middle finger on both sides). Sounds good.
All the best.
- John Mock

You can do the g scale entirely with your two index fingers in a push-draw-draw-push-push-draw-draw-push pattern starting with the G/A button in the C row left hand.

Dick, there are lots of ways to avoid almost all draw notes in the G scale. For instance, you can play the press C on the first button of the C row, RH. Or you can use the press D on the G row instead of the draw on the C row. Using both of these options, you can do the entire G scale with just your two index fingers and four buttons -- talk about compact!! And even without pulling out my concertina to check, I'm sure there are other possibilities I haven't mentioned.

While it does seem that draw notes are a bit easier to control, too many draw notes can leave you with a fully drawn bellows and seemingly nowhere to go. A good case in point is the Concertina Reel. Now that tunes forces you to work to find press notes.

Good luck with your cross row experiments. This leads to many possibilities in playing.

Ross Schlabach

It may seem natural to an English player, but what's the point of it on an Anglo? The fact is that when you play tunes along the rows (using cross-fingering only to get specific harmonies or to avoid awkward, quick changes of both button and direction) most tunes will balance out nicely from a press/draw point of view.
If you regard something like you describe as an exercise for discovering alternate fingerings, that's fine. But I wouldn't want to play that way. The feeling for the chord structures would go all awry. (But then, as an English player, you probably don't think in chords, do you?)

Cheers,
John

Hmm,
You don't know much about the English concertina do you. English concertinas are superb accompaniment instruments because the chording is so simple. I would have though that Irish-style anglo would be the system that doesn't support chording (English style of course is perfect for chording) :-)

I try to phrase the bellows to match the tune.....trying to get one bar that is accompanied by one chord all to move in one direction.
Move with the natural phrases of the music.

Cross rows, yes.........but no point in trying to get all the notes in one direction if the natural feel for the obvious chord is in the other direction.
Hope that makes sense?
Phil

Thanks to those who gave specific information.
obviously one doesnt stick to one system rigidly,I have found the push A button on the accidental row quite useful,and also the push d on the g row.
when playing IrishTunes there do appear[imo] to be advantages[ornamentation wise]on the ornaments being in the same direction,for example the Edel Fox D roll,seems easier to perform,if most of the notes are in the same direction,rather than they all being in different directions.
I think the notes involved in this twiddle/ roll are AD high DBDD,I found it easiest to perform this using the C row, A Pull, D Pull,high D pull,Bpull,Dpull,Dpull,
there also seems to be two Gs and two A s,going the same way which is useful for ornamentation
but maybe those with experience of playing Irish music on the Anglo,will correct me or offer better advice,which of course I would appreciate.
My reason for experimenting with the Anglo,is not dissatisfaction with the English,but is partly curiosity,and partly that I have a spare instrument which is not being played,which I think will benefit form being played[ even if is only quarter an hour every day],and partly that I think the challenge of learning a different system of concertina is really good for the brain.Dick Miles

Paul,
I was just going by the recordings of English concertina that I've heard to date. The music sounds very linear. I seldom hear more than two notes simultaneously. Not that this is a bad thing - I like polyphonic music. In fact, my middle term goal is to obtain a duet, so that I can be a bit more polyphonic myself.
However, the Anglo as I know it (which is neither English, German nor Irish, but Italian - though I don't think that's what you meant ) is a veritable chording machine. When you've found the melody, the harmonies come automatically. And if you're searching for the melody notes, the chord sequence will help you by eliminating most of the wrong choices. As long as you play predominantly along the rows, that is! It's not my fault that some of my fellow-countrymen blandly disregard the harmonic capabilities of the anglo and play it in a way that would be much easier on the fiddle.
I much prefer to play chord accompaniments to the fiddle on my Anglo, which works very well on a 30k in the traditional "fiddle" keys.

Cheers,
John

HeyJohn, Wrong again I'm afraid. The original instrument was, I believe German. It's known as the 'anglo' because that is a shortening of the term 'anglo-german' which was an English development on the german instrument (using the design features of the English concertina). What I meant, of course, was the English style of anglo playing......................... this is getting very complicated.....................

And here's Dick playing chords on English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0zAr1t6nTE

Paul,
thanks for the link. I like the singing!

Yes, complicated ... but I think we know what we're talking about. A non-concertinist wouldn't

Right, what I play is an Anglo-chromatic (made in Italy, but that's neither here nor there), which is a further development of the Anglo-German, which as you rightly point out combines German diatonic button arrangement with English construction.

Have you ever wondered why Wheatstone used the linear, chromatic button arrangement and Uhlig and the other Germans went push-pull diatonic? And above all, why these very different systems were both widely accepted by the playing public?

My answer would be that, back then, there were two classes of music. Even my parents, born in 1902 and 1907 respectively, and both musical, grew up in these two worlds: my father in the country, my mother in the city. My father had hardly any contact with classical or art music - he learned fiddle and melodion. My mother had piano and violin lessons, only heard my father's kind of music from street singers, and regarded it as uncouth, to say the least. Typically, my mother read music, my father didn't.

As I see it, Wheatstone went for the classical market, Uhlig for the popular market. Wheatstone's English customers had all had piano lessons, and could quickly learn to sight read his concertina system. People like Regondi gave them suitable compositions to play.

Uhlig's low-end market was, however, in Germany, where the guitar, zither, Waldzither and other chording instruments were an established part of the rural music scene. Musicians were accustomed to playing 3-chord accompaniments on these instruments by ear - something we didn't have in Ireland until after WWII. Instrumentation and musical style are like chicken and egg: maybe the Germans developed a folk music that was very "um-pa-pa"-waltzy because they used chorded guitar accompaniments, or maybe they favoured the guitar because it gives the "um-p-pa" that waltz tunes need. At any rate, the diatonic Konzertina layout is ideal for this kind of music. With the two hands working independently, melody and chord accompaniment together are just as easy as chords alone or melody alone.

So why did the German concertina become so popular in England that Jeffries and others felt compelled to fit their instruments with this button arrangement? Well, the popular music (as opposed to traditional music) of Europe and America in the 19th century - the post-Strauss era - was pervaded by the waltz rhythm. Even in Ireland, where the waltz never became a traditional dance form (perhaps because we lacked "um-pa-pa" capability on our fiddles and flutes) there are myriad 19th century songs with 3/4-time tunes, and in England this was no different (e.g. Villikens and his Dinah, with all its derivates). Here, I think, it was a case of adopting the music and the instrument as a package from a common source.

What happened in the West of Ireland, I can only conjecture. The present notion of doubling the fiddle and flute uses only one of the capabilities of the diatonic layout - and not even its most salient featurer. I futher conjecture that the concertina slipped into this role because there were players who were familiar enough with the Anglo layout from playing popular music to be able to leave the ready-made chords aside and just play the fiddle tunes - even in keys other than C or G. And once they got away from the need for chords, other keys were not so difficult to play, because playing cross-row didn't deprive you of anything any more.

That's my pragmatic way of looking at it. My experience is that you can't separate musical forms from instrument layouts. In traditional music, there are typical fiddle tunes and typical pipe tunes. In classical music there are piano sonatas and violin sonatas, each with their different figures. Sometimes, one instrument can "borrow" the music from another quite easily - or is it the music that "borrows" the new instrument? And sometimes it takes a new technique to make an instrument fit a "non-native" music style. Or even a new instrument layout - like the duet concertinas which, I believe, were developed to overcome the weaknesses of both the English and Anglo.

Yes, very complicated, but isn't that what makes it all so interesting?

Cheers,
John

I think you're probably correct re the reasons for the two different concertina types. I think the anglo became popular in England over the English largely because it was much more affordable (at least the early German ones were).