Most of us have arrangements that are best suited for our particular type of concertina be it Anglo, Duet or English that we have either adapted ourselves from other sources or obtained elsewhere. I'm sure there are members who can easily gererate a concertina friendly musical score and then there are others such as myself who being challenged in this regard can nevertheless having the apropriate sheet music to work with can learn to play musical pieces of various complexities.

Would it be possible to have a "library' of sheet music a member could make submissions to and use as a source to learn from?

Best regard,
Gerry

Hi, Gerard,

I can only give a quick answer at the moment, but what comes to mind is the Tune-O-Tron here, and then also the ICA, the International Concertina Association.

I haven't used the actual library that ICA has, though a membership would get you their concertina publications (snail mail).

Myself, I don't read a lot of music or play from written music, though I bother to write out my own, anyway, so I'll remember my compositions.

I'm sure some others here have more answers for you!

I am working on a website to share sheet music for English Concertina, things I have collected myself. I'm also trying to make some play-along files with piano accompagnement. Since I'm a beginner on EC, lots of easy stuff. But also some things I've picked up from the Internet and reworked for EC.

Well, here's my arrangement of "Under The Double Eagle" that I posted to YouTube:

Thanks, great. I just paid my membership due, but don't see how it registered me.
I also can't see any way to actually download the music from the site.
I can't even open mp3 of the tunes.
Can anybody educate me on how to use it?
Thanks.

On a subject:
EC music is just music, it's not any different from flute or violin, or piano music.
If you mean specifics, like range, fingering, again, there are extended range trebles, tenors, basses, tenor-trebles, extended up and down - all different.
So compiling a body of sheet music for it doesn't seem to be an easy task. If you mean it's hard for you to find suitable music - there is no real solution.
It could be useful to have a book with music in different genres, played and transcribed for EC on different levels, from simple single line for beginners, up to very complex arrangements for pros, with companion CD.
But unless EC will become as popular as piano, chances are it will not happen.
For easy beginner's stuff you can use any student book for violin and flute, some easy arrangements for accordion's right side. I haven't tried it yet, but may be Guitar music will suit EC better. I'm testing this premice and learn very simple Hungarian Gypsi guitar arrangement "Mar dyandya" (Dance, Girl)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEa3s8u7Tzs
But so far it sounds far from convincing.
Here's the link to more elaborate version, going way too high up, with deep bass accompanying it, but it can be simplyfied and transposed, esp. with something like Finale.
Here it is.
It looks scary.

It certainly does! A standard 48 key treble goes high enough but you'd need a tenor/treble to get the low notes and play the whole thing. It'll be beyond me for quite some time.

Did this work out? I thought of this post and then got busy and forgot... I haven't gone to the site yet to see recent changes. I didn't join via the website, back a few years... I think I used snail mail.

And, yikes... Mardyandya does look forboding. I think I am hopelessly forever a mostly play-by-ear type... I downloaded that music, but that may be as far as it goes, for me!

I haven't gotten to the site again.
Anyways, Mardyandya is spelled "Mar Janja" (my mistake).
If you omit the bass notes, it becomes rather easier. Then I think of adding the basses, and those that go out of my range, simply tanspose octave up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Another crazy way of approaching thsi music is transposing it, so the bottom notes move up into the range. Then you have to deal with the upper, but sounds to me that lower are more important.

Hello,

good question which I had as well. I can´t see at the moment any progress regarding how the registration took place or how you actually get information as well as music.

I went through the site and found this:
Members of the ICA have access to the library either through the web site or by contacting the librarian directly. At the present time the library will make available to members, on request, copies of music which is free of copyright. The originals, many of which are irreplaceable, are carefully retained in the music archive. A small charge will be made to cover the cost of copying the music and postage. Where music is in print, and readily available elsewhere, we should be able to direct you to a source.

Doesn´t this mean, you write to them and they send it to you?

Christian

Wow! Does it mean you have to know what you want and write to them?
It's not user friendly at best.
My experience shows me that out of every 5 pieces I find, I am interested to learn some 1 or 2, and out of 5 of those I keep one, and out of those kept, only a few naturally stick. So how do I use the library then?

Well, I don´t know for sure. Since I have filled out the application form I haven´t heard anything from them.
And there seems to be no sort of download-area for music kept in the library - or something like a member access.

Isn´t one of the guys posting here a member of the ICA? Chis?

Christian

Micha,

You're right in that you can render a simple melody on the EC just as well as on any other instrument. But when it comes to elaborate arrangements like your "Dance, Girl" on the guitar, the music does become different. It's not just a matter of having all the notes in the range of your instrument. There are essentially two types of note production:

With woodwind, bowed strings, and free reeds, we get a continuous sound that we can hold (more or less) as long as we like, and we can crescendo and decrescendo each note while it is sounding.

The plucked and hammered strings are different: once the note is sounded, it is out of our control. We can damp it out, but we can't influence its volume. How long the note can sound (the sustain) is a feature of the physical instrument. Pianos have a long sustain (and an elaborate damping system to deal with it), guitars have moderate sustain, and banjos have little sustain.

The wind and bowed instruments have no sustain. When you stop bowing or blowing, the note dies instantly.

These characteristics become very important when you're arranging for a specific instrument. Even classical guitar and classic banjo arrangements are different - banjo arrangements are more "notey" to cover up for the lack of sustain. A banjo arrangement transferred to the guitar would sound "mushy", because the sustain would tend to run the notes together. A guitar arrangement transferred to banjo, on the other hand, would sound very "plunky" and disconnected.

In that Russian piece on Youtube, the guitarist makes a lot of use of the sustain of the open bass strings while doing intricate fingering on the treble strings. This just cannot be transferred to free reeds. Either you'd have to just play the bass notes for one beat - leaving the high notes unsupported - or hold down the bass button for the written duration, which is not the same as a gradually decaying, plucked note. In either case, the effect is totally different, and in most cases will not be as good.

I could imagine adopting the melody and chord structure of a guitar piece for EC, but not the score of an arrangement. (We "by-ear" players are at an advantage here - we hear the melody and the chord changes, and we implement them in a way that the respective instrument offers. Improvisation is always a dialog between player and instrument - and I believe that good instrumental arrangement should be similar.)

I would expect violin and oboe pieces to come across well on EC (which has the range of the violin, hasn't it?). The absence of sustain, the ability to hold notes, and the flexible dynamics are the same. But the disadvantage is that all oboe music and all simple violin music is single-note melodic, and requires an accompaniment. To do justice to the EC, the violin arrangement would have to feature heavy double-stopping.

Transcription is not a simple matter, and not all pieces are transcribable.
My Russian bayan-playing acquaintance plays a lot of transcribed keyboard works. But most of them are organ pieces (which are ideal for the bayan) and baroque harpsichord works. The harpsichord has little sustain, so in the music written for it the notes come out sequentially. Romantic piano works do not go well on the bayan (says my friend), because he has no sustain pedal. He can simulate an organ pedal note, but not the effect of slow decay that a piano sustain pedal gives you.

Accordion right hand scores sound like a good source for EC arrangements.

Cheers,
John

And another one. Intstruments that can bend the pitch. That's why violin music is so expressive, and the same played on the best of the best EC is blah.



Yes.There should be work-arounds, and I'm slowly testing waters. High notes passages can be moved octave down to sound more substantial.


I think that was the idea, but a bad one. No matter what anybody can "hear", concertina's upper range is no match to violin's.


Yes. So far I had more luck with that.

I just gave it a try and I could open the mp3s, and I remember now that I did so before, several months ago. In fact, I'll probably make use of some of those mp3s since they really add a breath of life to the printed page.

This computer uses itunes to play stuff. I 'saved to disk' then opened the mp3s with itunes.

I remember that, before, there was a way to play a lot of audio from the ICA site -- for members only -- using a password and some software like....'Mozart' or something. I'm not sure if those pages are still available.

I would love to poke around websites and read and download so much more than I do, but my eyes start hurting and my head & neck start getting stiff, he more I sit at the computer, it seems. I guess that's one thing that's nice about getting the printed publications in the mail. I like sitting in my chair any durn way I please, with no monitor light in my face! Have cut down on the amount of effort I put into my own websites, too.