Arrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh!
*sigh* that's better.
I hate music.

for me a key is something you open a lock with...and a semiquaver is a half eaten cheesy snack.

I don't understand the jargon. Plus how can it be the same note when the dot is in a different place....does that mean I need a different button. And how do I tell which row to use?

I feel like I'm sitting on one side of a chasum and on the other is music and everyone is enjoying themselves and I'm stuck on the wrong side with no way of getting across.

I try but everytime I read some thing with all the technical words my brain shuts off. its so annoying.

And I can't tell a bum note if it was wiggled in my direction.

I'm hopeless and stupid....and in need of a large bar of chocolate.

On C.net, we supply the support ....... you buy the chocolate.

Take a step back and see what progress you have made in the last two months, then look for ways to bridge that gap.

Regards,
Peter.

Music is an amazing and endlessly rewarding subject, first thing is not to see it as a hopeless challenge. Many, many fine players have little understanding of the theory, many fine players do not read a note of music. The great thing, unlike many fields of human endeavour, music is one area that you do not have to understand the theory before being able to enjoy it. The difficulty is that many musical theory descriptions get very deep very quick, and you can find yourself feeling swamped with obscure jargon.

I have a real difficulty at the moment understanding intervals and as soon as the descriptions get into quality, harmonic and melodic, etc etc I start to glaze over. Then I pick up the concertina and play some tunes, not caring a damn what the intervals are.

One of my favourite ways of learning is to play tunes on midi or ABC software and watch the notes highlighted as the tune plays.

simple scales, understanding keys, and some basic rythym and chord theoory will be enough to keep up with the fast pace of your progress.

Discussions on esoterics of tunings, modes, and so on are not necessary for you to understand to be a good player.

Hey, I studied musicology for quite some years. It would be terrible for my Ego if you could understand all this gibberish at once! I would have the feeling that I'd have thrown away years for no use!

The dots are relatively easy to understand (even if it needs practice to internalise it). The position of the dots on the line is only relative. It tells you only that the next dot is five steps higher or two steps lower than the current dot. To know the absolute note, you need the clef. There are three of them, but you will encounter only two.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Violinschluessel.png
Mostly you find the G-clef (aka Treble clef). It is an embellished circle round one line and it defines this line as being a G-note. From this base you can count on: the space above is an A, the first line above is an B etc. Mostly it sits on the second line from the bottom.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Bassschluessel.png
Than there is the F-clef (aka Bass clef). Between the two dots of it you will find the line with the F-note, but lower than the F with the Treble clef. Mostly it sits on the second line from above.

Notation is abstract. It tells you the pitch. You can use it for singing the notes, playing them with piano or with concertina. It has no specific information for playing them on the concertina. That's why it doesn't tell you wich row to use and that's why there is no 1:1 connection between the notation and the buttons to press.

On a 30-button concertina you should as a starting point use the middle-row, using the upper helper row and the lower row only if the right note doesn't exist on the middle row. (But that's only a rule of thumb you can and will deviate from.)



Good idea!

Sebastian

All we ever did in music at school was got told not to touch the keyboards and make up silly rhymes to remember FACE and EGBDF.




I wish there was a standard tabulature like for guitar.



I want to try and keep it on the RH side but then I use (for example) a certain note on one side and there's another one dot in a different place but still the same letter..what do I do then? stay on the rH side or take a leap and go to the LH side.



I think I'll buy one of those 1kg bars

Aint that the truth!

How many times have you come across someone in a session or at a festival who can recite to you chapter & verse on the history of such & such a form of music or an instrument, can wax lyrical about old musicians & what they passed on & talk for the Olympics on the theory of music, modes etc etc but when it comes to playing a tune .... they turn out to be very average!

Reminds me of a music shop owner I knew in a wee country town in Scotland, who could talk the hind legs off a Dolphin about music & who's favourite trick, while you were in the shop, was to pick up an out of tune Fiddle & bring it up to bang on Concert Pitch ... by ear! Ta Raaaaa

Anyway, I was organising a session one weekend, at my house, so I invited him over to play a few tunes with us!! All I got was a blank look from him ... then he replied ~ "Oh I can't play any music on the Fiddle ~ I can only tune it!"

As I learn to play a new instrument, I always like to record the odd tune, then, when I listen back to my efforts later, I can hear that YES, I really am getting a little better. After all, that should be your main aim, don't worry about being better than anyone else, that's a pointless quest cause if you go down that road, there's always going to be that faster gun, who's going to come strolling into town to blow your ego away!
If I were you, I'd be content to just aim to keep getting a little better than yourself & you'll do alright.

Cheers
Dick

I just feel that if I can't read music and I can't learn by ear.....how can I learn a tune without someone writing down what buttons to use? (I feel guilty having to rely on other people to work it out for me)
That's why I'm stuck. and I can't improve as fast as I want.

I'm just wondering what kind of tunes you are trying to learn?

I'll be honest, when I start a new instrument, I start off by finding & getting comfortable with lots of kids tunes, Twinkle Twinkle, Jingle Bells & the like.
The point being that when I play those tunes, I can hear very easily when I hit a bum note.
If I were to start by trying to learn to play tunes I didn't know, I'd never know when I was hitting the right note.
Might be worth a try.

As for not improving as fast as you would like ... join the club, I think we're ALL in the that same boat ......... so grab an oar!

Cheers
Dick

whatever I'm given.


I got bored of twinkle little star very quickly
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BFB10DEAA535D3CE

Och, did you only learn to play it in one place?

For fun, I'd root around & see how many other places it can be played, on your machine.

Sounds like your doing great. Those video clips are a great idea of checking your progress.

Back in my day, we only had huge CLUNK CLICK Tape Recorders!

Cheers
Dick

Here is one of my favorite poems.......Seems some how appropriate.

fjb


..................................................................


I have the feeling that my boat has struck,
down there in the depths
against some great thing
And nothing happens.
Nothing... silence... waves... nothing.
Or, has everything happened, and are we standing quietly now in the new life?


JUAN RAMON JIMINEZ:

well I played it in my room..in the living room....and in the garden.


How would I know where to start and where to go?


I try to record one every time I reach a certain stage I'm happy with.

Playing by ear and playing from music are really two different skills.

To play by ear, you need to already know the tune and have that in your head. The easiest way to do this is to listen to someone else play it. If you're learning from notation, you can use software to play back the score so that you can hear how the tune goes - this should also help you to understand how notation works.

Find the starting note, by trial and error if necessary. Then work you way up or down the scale until you find the next note, and so on. This will be much easier if you start in the "home" keys of C or G so that you can play up and down the rows - but don't be afraid to play a note on one of the other rows if that's the better option. To begin with, this will be painfully slow, but with practice you'll find that you start recognise the intervals between the notes and know instinctively which button to go for.

Written down, this sounds terribly difficult, but with practice it becomes second nature. You'll find that a lot of tunes, folk tunes especially, contain similar phrases, and in time you'll build up a mental "library" of fingerings which will allow you to reproduce these phrases without needing to work them out every time.

Playing from notation means that you not only have to be able to read the dots but also know where to find each note on the instrument. Even then, on a concertina you may have a choice of more than one button for each note (unlike, say, a piano, which has only one key for each note), so you will still have to experiment to find the best fingering. The notation will only show you how the tune goes, it won't tell you how to play it on concertina.

They are both good skills to have, so try to develop both. Learning to play by ear will let you pick up tunes quickly in sessions, or play tunes you've heard without having to get hold of the music, or improvise. Playing from notation will let you learn the tunes more quickly, if only because you don't have to copy them into software to play back. I'm an ear player, but there are lots of times when I wish I could sight-read.

This online music lessson website explains the principles of music notation in simple language and you can listen to the examples. Don't get too bogged down trying to understand harmony, circle of fifths etc until you understand the basics.

There are tablature systems for concertina, but there's no agreed standard, and IMHO they're not very intuitive - by the time I've worked out a fingering from tab I could probably have found it by trial and error.

Hang in there LDT and be patient with yourself. Many of us were (or still are) in your situation. While there is no standard tablature for the anglo, I did find one that was helpful to me at first. It is the tablature presented and used by Bernard Levy in his tutor, "Demystifying the Anglo concertina". He even has drawings of the finger positions your hand should be in when you play particular notes or chords. So at first, I took all tunes I was trying to learn and put his tablature codes above each note. It really helped me progress a lot . . . . at first.

But after about a year I became familar enough with standard notation itself and its relation to my choices of buttons that I no longer have to rely on tablature. I only use it in rare cases where I want to remember a particular choice of buttons to use to play an especially tricky measure or two. If you don't play by ear and music notation is relatively new to you (my situation exactly, when I started), then I found this was not a bad way to get started being all on my own with no one to guide me at the time. I think there are 4-5 anglo concertina players in all of Western New York (that's out of a population of well over 1 million).

Since then I have gone onto learning and mostly playing in a cross-row style (learned from Noel Hill), but I don't regret starting with Levy's tutor and still use what I learned to broaden and make my cross-row playing more flexible.

I've seen other very logical, well thought out tablatures for anglos but Levy's is supported by detailed hand drawings, nice tunes to practice it with, and explanations as to why you play the note with that choice of fingers. If you already have Levy, stick with him, and don't worry about your pace of progress at first. It WILL pick up exponentially once you get past a certain point. If you don't have Levy, his tutor can still be purchased in several on-line stores. Best o'luck. Cary

No, cause you would be limited to concertina music and couldn't speak with fiddlers, harpers, piano players, ...



Sorry, I'm not shure I did understand the question. Why should you stay on the right hand side? There is no barrier between the two sides of the concertina. They form a continuum. But there is, however, a barrier between the middle row and the lower row (they form two different major scales), so that I stay on the middle row, whenever I can do so.

(But maybe that's just because I do prefer 20-button-concertinas.)

I think the best advise for learning a new instrument (= become aquainted with it) is to play tunes one already knows by heart, as Ptarmigan already said. Don't you have popular songs in England? In Germany we do have lots of them (Zogen einst fünf wilde Schwäne, Märkische Heide, Ännchen von Tharau, die schöne Bernauerin, In Mutters Stübele, Loreley, Wenn alle Brünnlein flließen, ...) Just try to play some of those. Or what pop/rock music do you listen to? Theses tunes are playable too. Or what about the songs you sing during mass?

I'm sure you know many more melodies than just Twinkle, twinkle.

Hi Sebastian,

Whilst I am in general agreement with what you have posted, I believe that with any Anglo of 30 or more keys, players should try to get away from the rigid concept of rows. The instrument should be considered as a keyboard, albeit with some notes in unexpected places.

As to melody on right hand, left hand, or split between the two, it really depends on the style of music to be played. LDT appears to have expressed a preference for "melody right hand, chords etc. left hand".

Regards,
Peter.

Yes, that makes sence.

Nevertheless, a beginner playing the twinkling star has usually two or even three "button press possibilities" for every note and has to make a choice which button to use. In this situation I think it is really helpfull to know about the concept of rows: The middle row is the main row, the lower row is an addition you use when the melody moves onto the new key. (And of course you can misuse it to play more smoothly, if you want to reduce bellow changes.) The upper row is in fact no row but only a collection of helper buttons.

To avoid the need for transposition on the fly, I think it wise to play without notation in the beginning and only tunes you know by heart.



If you play like I said above, you will necessarily play in the key of the main row. Because normal melodies don't drop beyond the fourth note beneath the keynote, you will need only the first button on the left hand side for melody playing, that is, "melody right hand, chords left hand" will automatically fall into place.

This is really a gross oversimplification. The bottom row is in a separate key and is a scale unto itself. It isn't just "an addition," as you say. It makes the concertina much more interesting and flexible.

I use the lower row all the time, in every tune I play. And please tell me how it is a misuse if you use the bottom row to play more smoothly?

And the top row is more than just "helper buttons." They give you the accidentals, like the black keys on the piano. You need them for playing in keys other than C, G, and their related minors. Are the black keys on the piano also only "helper buttons?"

Peter is absolutely correct when he says: The instrument should be considered as a keyboard, albeit with some notes in unexpected places.

I don't want to be mean to you, but how long have you been playing and how accomplished are you that you are so free with bad advice? Usually people should be playing at least five years before they give bad advice. Until then you only be receiving bad advice, and not handing it out.

I too, so what?



Because it wasn't designed for that.

You see, people are playing blues on a diatonic harmonica. Do you think Herr Richter had blues players in mind when he conceived his tone layout? You can play blues harmonica only by playing contrary to the intentions of the inventor. That's why I used the word "misuse". If that's not the perfectly correct choice of word, well, than you should restrict the use of this forum to english natives.



I do believe that after five years of playing one should have a different concept than in the beginning. After five years of playing one should of course be able to consider the buttons as one keyboard. After five years of playing one should already have a stable repertoire and one shouldn't despair on the question how to connect a 'dot' to a specific button. After five years of playing one should have no problems in sight reading or to play in Bb major a tune notated in A major or to improvise a bridge in Ab minor. And after five years of playing you could maybe have forgotten the problems you had during the first five months of playing.

In the beginning, before you really got acquainted with your instrument, you see: "Oh, I've two possibilites to play that dot on the first line. Which one is the right? Oh, and for the next dot I have even three possibilities! Gosh, it's complicated, isn't it? Well, I think I'll switch to the piano."

I'm convinced that in this situation it is higly recommandable, leeds to a deeper understanding of the instrument and to much more rapid playing progress to know the concept of rows.

After some time, after having acquired a firm standing, you will of course explore the added possibilities, e. g. cross row playing etc. If you play in minor keys you will necessarily get more in touch with the accidental notes in the first row. When you start playing notated tunes, tunes notated in different key, you will of course need the accidentals. But all that is second to the first step, that is: getting a feeling of some confidence on the instrument.

The concept of rows follows the historic evolution of the instrument. It is the same for the whole group of free reed instruments: accordion, concertina, harmonica. First: one row. Than: second row, a fifth above. (Why a second row a fifth above instead of simply the missing accidentals? - Because of the modulation of normal continental folk tunes in the middle of the tune. That's what it is made for!) Last: The upper row, the accidentals and turned push-pull option for the fifth of the main row. That follows exactly the same line of evolution as the club accordion (even predated it). Even the turned G/A is due to the concept of rows.

The question was: How to connect a certain dot to a certain key?

I answered: In the beginning, use the buttons of the main row.

You said: That's bad advice.

Forgive me, but I didn't see your answer to the question.

That's bad advice because what you describe as the main row, in fact, is not. Actually, when you listen to the teachers I had in East Durham in july, if there was a main row, you could argue it's the bottom one in many situations.

I started playing using the middle row as the main row. It was a bit of a mistake. Please don't make others follow this same mistake. You need to use both, and especially the D/E on the bottom row, and especially the push B on the bottom row, so both rows are as important and they work as a group.

This is very irritating. The advice we give here can have big impact on beginners. To throw advices without having a clue isnt considerate, in my opinion.

Hi
I bet this debate is really helping LDT resolve her problems
maybe LDT could find a 'live' teacher to give her a few 'beginners' lessons - may be money well spent.
chris

It is indeed. Well, than consider my postings as obsolete.

I have now lost track of the thread. lol!
*sigh* oh well.

I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure you wouldnt get an advice that would make you practice for hours and hours following the wrong track. I am not well placed to give advice either, having followed some 'wrong' fingering for years and being far from knowing enough about the concertina.

First thing I'd like to say, is that I don't understand why you absolutely need the dots? I learn only by ear, and I'm not sure what your background is, but dots are not a requirement. But ok, dots or no dots, you wonder what buttons to use.

We all agree that best thing to do is to get a real teacher, or attend camps like the Noel Hill camp or similar. You will get *a lot* from it and the teachers will put you on the right track.

Meanwhile, all I can suggest is that you start with some basic rules, being that your index finger will play notes on the first column, second finger on the second column, etc. You will leave the column only when it's necessary, but try to avoid it so that your fingers travel the least.

Second advince is to *never play two different buttons in a row* with the same finger. This is actually going to help you decide what buttons to use. Sometimes, to avoid playing a second button in a row with the same finger, you'll need to use an alternate button.

Third advice would be to use push D/pull E on the bottom row left side G row first button as your first choice, and make use of both pull A (middle row first button or G row third button) to help you avoid playing two buttons in a row with the same finger.

That's what I got from my lessons anyway, and I'm telling you in a very raw way, being that there's no absolute rule.

If anyone wants to correct me on this please do so, there are lot of people out there who got lessons from Noel Hill and others who might have better, more accurate advice.

LadyD, there's no better advice than that which Azalin just gave you in the post preceding this one.

Everything he says, if heeded, will help you to become not just a better player, but a very good player.
It isn't intuitive to play as he suggests, and it won't be immediately obvious that it's moving you forward.
But it is the gospel- not because it's in the bible, but because it will help you enormously in the long run.

Interesting. I had wondered. Thank you.

On topic. LDT; I know from previous discussions that, for a lot of us, our playing develops in great lurches; you grind away wondering what you have to show for all the effort you are putting in, then one day you think "Oh! I can play that!" or "Oh! I see!". It's like climbing a flight of giant stairs. If you have faith that you will go upwards to keep you working, then you will improve. Later, once you've seen it happen steadily you will just settle down and plod onwards without worrying too much. The occasional passing feeling of being 'stalled' never goes completely though. Sometimes I turn to my wife and say "I'm frustrated with this bloody thing, I must be due a lurch forward". But these days I know it will come if i slog onward.

Old personal recordings sometimes allow you to detect a lurch that you haven't even noticed, I discovered recently, and that's encouraging too.

The main thing is not to give up between 'lurches' like so many failed would-be instrumentalists. Keep the practice going relentlessly.

It seems to me Azalin's advice is pretty specific to playing in a modern cross-row Irish style. For a more chordal or "English" style, Sebastian's approach makes sense. It's probably also a better way to approach learning to play by ear for someone who doesn't do so already. Personally, I don't think learning to play along the rows is a detriment to learning to play cross-row later, although it might be considered a "waste of time" if you're already set on playing in a specific "Irish" style.

Very good point. I should have specified the suggestions are for more modern cross-row irish style. I really don't know anything about other styles.

It's just an opinion, not fact.
It doesn't explain why german diatonic multi-row boxes are so multi-row.
On 5-7 row Austrian accordions you can play chromatically, any music you want. Just like Continental Chromatic.
Of course, if the idea was to play in any key, accordions would be designed differently to begin with.
But it wasn't. It was simple instrument for simple folks, for who wall of sound and ease of playing was far more attractive than musical value.
They simply added another key, then another key, than another, then came out with chromatic versions, but many were already trained to play multi-row.
Many useful gimmicks of two row, tuned in 5th are just as chancy as those tuned in 7th, or 4th.
Three row tuned in 5th has no need to be push/pull, it's just redundant, but tradition maintains it.
144 notes bandoneon has no need to have different notes on push/pull either.
3 row British Chromatic has no need for push/pull. 35+ Anglo has no need for push/pull. Nice tricks it provides can be balanced off by similarly nice tricks of uni-sonoric system.
Speaking more, a piano has no need to be tuned in Cmaj with accidentals. 5 row button chromatic has no need for 2 rows. 120 basses may be reduced to 48.
I modified 20 button Lachenal to have C diatonic row and G converted to the rows of accidentals - works just as fine.

*sigh*

I want to be able to play both English and Irish style....(what would you call a mixture of Anglo style perhaps? )
I don't like being put in a box...even if its a 'squeeze'box...and I'm greedy. I wouldn't be able to choose one 'style' and stick to it.

Well, LDT
you obviously believe in calling a spade a spade!! And you probably are hopeless and stupid in that you don't seem to have much patience!! You need to walk before you can run, so just practice walking for the moment. As suggested above, you can learn by ear .. after all you learnt how to talk and I'll bet you can hum or sing along various well known melodies that have stuck in your head. If you find yourself humming TV advert jingles etc., then you can learn by ear. So just play those bits of melody on the instrument - of course, you'll know if you hit a bum note - don't be so ridiculous. It'll sound 'wrong', so just try a few buttons to get the 'right' sound. That's learning to walk.

After that, you need to learn a repetoire of tunes whether in English or Irish style. Listen to them, get them stuck in your head like the TV jingle and go from there.

Report back next year ..........

You've got lots of good advice here, so I'll add a couple of general thoughts that come from playing several instruments poorly before coming to the concertina. I come to this as someone who has no special musical talent. Some people learn music really fast. Not me. That doesn't mean you can't play and play well.

One teacher helped me understand that early playing involves being "painfully slow" and endless (mindless?) repetition. Twinkle might be boring, but when you can play it fast ten times in a row with no mistakes and without thinking about what your fingers are doing, you'll be able to play lots of other more interesting tunes.

It's great to play by ear if you can, but, for me, it's very slow. I keep working on it but if I only play by ear, I'd learn a tune every two months. Since the nuns taught me to read music 50 yrs ago, I read music. That said, reading music for Irish tunes will only show you notes. The only way to learn how it should sound is to hear others play it, either in person on in recordings. Computers and slow down devices are very helpful. The written verison of Irish music is only an out of focus image of how it should be. For me, it took a year or so to distunguish a jig from a reel, on a recording at full speed. Find a way that works for you to get the notes and then listen and listen and listen to get the music. Once the music get into your head, the wrong notes will be obvious.

Playing music is all about failure. I play most every day. I can play some things pretty well and I play them, but the new tunes are always hard. I screw them up. Every person on this site plays something wrong every day. And every day, or week or month, we eventually get it and move on to the next failure. It's the way to learn and improve. I know people who avoid music and other pursuits because they can't deal with the constant failure as the price of routine success.

A wise person told me about musical freedom. To me that means we should each strive for the level of playing that gives us the freedom to play our music at will in a manner that gives us satisfaction. For some that means playing alone. Others want to play with other players. Some want to play for other people. Some want to be professionals.

Good luck. I am often baffled at how good it feels to play 8 bars of something perfectly after struggling with it for .....

Although the middle ( C) and inner (G) rows are complete scales in themselves, they complement each other. The G scale contains exactly the same notes as the C scale, with the exception of the F#. So all the notes, apart from F, which you find on the middle row are also available on the inner row. Furthermore, some useful notes can be found doubled-up on the accidental row.

This is why you have "too much choice". Once you understand the underlying logic (and there is a logic to the anglo, albeit a slightly twisted one ) it becomes easier to decide which of the choices is best. The choice will depend on the phrases you are playing before and after the note in question.

With respect to Sebastian, I think it is a mistake to stick too rigidly to one row or another. Certainly, they will give you a starting point, depending on the key you're playing in. But many runs of notes are actually easier if the fingering crosses the rows - it is not just for experts. Try playing scales, or parts of scales, and find as many different ways as possible to play the same sequence of notes.

Even if you were to play from music, you would still have to choose which of the options for a particular note is the best one. That can only be done by trial and error. With practice, you will find it easier to make the right choice first time. But even now, after playing the damn thing for more than 30 years, I still have to work out arrangements for more complex tunes by trial and error, and it may take some time before I settle on a fingering for a tune which works.



Edited to replace "C#" with "F#" - doh! My excuse is, I've been playing my G/D a lot lately

With all due respect, may I remind you that I wrote:



In every of the following postings I insisted on two things: 1. This is only a starting point, 2. every player will deviate from this rule of thumb later on.

I have to accept that some die-hard ITMians think this is bad advice. (I'm less inclined to accept that it attests of "not having a clue," but it's useless to argue with a little goldfish who believes that his fishbowl is the vast ocean.)

But I underlined in every single posting that this serves only as a starting point for a beginning payer when he don't know which button to use and that he will go beyond this rule after having acquired some feeling of the instrument.

Azalin-

That one fish is notably larger than the others. Thank you for answering the question once and for all.

You were wondering if I was fat?

Oh, not at all--I'm sure the other fish are no svelter than yourself...merely...of lesser stature.

Ah, you are refering to the fact that, based on my posts, my head seems to be bigger than my aquarium? Working hard at getting somewhere, versus thinking you are somewhere when you're not, are two different things...

Well said.

Sebastian, the point I was trying to make (and if I misunderstood your posts I apologise) was to try to get away from the idea that to play in C you use the middle row and to play in G you use the inner row. It is perhaps inevitable that to begin with a novice player will do this, but the sooner they understand the alternatives open to them and start to explore the possibilities the instrument offers, the better in my opinion. The notion that some players have that playing across the rows is an "advanced technique" needs to be discouraged.

I think you are right there. I've been at this for about 5 months now. I'm not an ITM player (or any kind of player, really!), and initially I did play almost exclusively in the rows. Some of the tunes I was trying to learn had passages that were very difficult to play smoothly, but I assumed that the only remedy was more practice, and just kept plugging away. Then I sort of stumbled on a "cross row" alternative to a particularly jerky spot, but to undo the effect of dozens of hours of practice was much harder than learning the tune in the first place. So now, when I'm learning a new tune, I look at the whole keyboard and try out various fingerings before I start to practice in earnest.

I should perhaps make the point that I am writing from the perspective of a harmonic, RH melody LH chords player. As I understand it (which isn't very far), ITM uses cross-rowing from the outset, because it is mainly in fiddle keys which don't fit neatly onto the rows of a C/G instrument.

That's an interesting perspective, Howard, and I'm sure it's right. I made the identical comment, last night, to my pupil, about the keys in which Morris tunes were collected, since I understand that most were collected from fiddle players.

Regards,
Peter.

Is there any tunes that are written exclusively for concertina?

Yes, I've been there, and still there, but I have to undo 3-4 years of practice instead of a few months, count yourself lucky! I don't even feel I'm in a "cross-row" kind of technique when I play buttons from different rows, I'm simply opening to the possibilities of the layout and the result is that it simply makes the tunes easier to play, for me anyway. Where a single finger, or 2-3 fingers would need to do some wiazrdy work on the right side, now one or two fingers on both sides do the work, and it makes it so much easier. Less choppy, more fluid, stable, etc.

But I don't know anything outside the ITM world so wouldnt know what is the right/best thing to do for other genre of musics. Since LDT wants to be able to play everything, though, I don't know. As for myself, if I wanted to play English music AND ITM, I'd learn english tunes on an english, and irish on an anglo, but that's just me and I don't want to get into the eternal debate of "yes it's possible to play english on an anglo and yes it's possible to play irish on an english".

I guess that you are asking from an "Anglo" perspective. Back in the 19th century, some of the early highly skilled/virtuoso players wrote music specifically for the English. Also, it has been mentioned that Bach wrote music for the concertina. He must have been a highly gifted composer, since he lived before the concertina was invented!

In terms of Anglo, I guess that we are talking about (mainly) about tunes written "in a traditional style" by contemporary musicians. I guess that many of us will plead "guilty" to having written one or two, and I can think of at least four C.net members who have written tunes; I'm sure there will be many others, too.

However; most tunes are written just as that. Tunes; not specific to any instrument.

Confused?

LDT, let me suggest another possible approach for you, especially given that your sig file says "Born in the wrong century." In 1846, Carlo Minasi published an excellent tutor for the German concertina (which had nearly the same setup as the two "home" rows of today's Anglo) that is available in its entirety at http://www.concertina.com/merris/minasi-ge...-tutor-1846.pdf. It includes tablature that tells you which button he recommends for every note and whether to press or draw the bellows, so you'd have an alternative to reading the musical staff. You might want to give it a try.

That having been said, I also agree with others' suggestions that you find another local player or players to spend some time with if you can.

Daniel

David,
If I may throw your own phrase back at you, I think you're over-simplifying here!

"A keyboard with some notes in unexpected places" would be a good description of a Maccann duet. Englishes and Crane duets are like keyboards, with the naturals together, and the sharps and flats where you'd expect them, like the piano. They are all bisonoric and fully chromatic, and one dot on the stave means one particular button (excepting the LH/RH overlap on the duets).

The Anglo-German is different. It is bisonoric, so the "one dot, one button" principle does not apply. It is also a diatonic instrument; that is, it is not built on the principle of a keyboard-style C-major scale with handy accidentals, but rather on two 7-note diatonic scales overlapping by a fifth (C/G, G/D, etc.).

These two systems reflect two philosophies for two clienteles: The fully chromatic English, with its button arrangement reflecting the lines and spaces of the stave, aimed at the bourgeois amateur who had had piano lessons; and the diatonic layout reflecting the I-IV-V7 harmonies and modulation along the Circle of Fifths typical of German popular music, aimed at the emerging proletarian amateur musician who could not afford tuition.

Bearing this in mind, it is clear that "the Row" is a basic concept in the diatonic layout, which is the German gene of the "Anglo-German" concertina. The Richter push-pull scale limits the harmonic choices for a given melody note to a couple of chords, which can be selected easily by anyone with a reasonably musical ear. And the stagger of one fifth between the rows means that this factor is carried over when a tune modulates.
I would agree that the inner row of an Anglo is not an add-on, but rather a complement to the "main" row. It can also be used for playing in a different key - useful in a song accompaniment situation, because if a singer can't reach a song in one key, he or she can usually reach it in a key a fifth higher or a fourth lower.
And, because the scales of C and G have only one note different (F/F#), the combination of the two scales provides alternate fingerings that make more sophisticated harmonies possible.

When the Anglo-Chromatic with its third row appeared, this was not merely an "accidentals" row - it offered interesting, additional alternate fingerings that were not available with 2 just rows. It thus supports the playing of richly harmonised music "along the rows" in the home keys. (When I play a harmonised piece in C major or G major, I also use all 3 rows of my Anglo.)
Had the intent been to make the German system chromatic, surely a second row in C# would have been more pertinent. But this would have cancelled out the "automatic" modulation, and confined the "automatic" harmonies to just one key.

If, however, a diatonic instrument like the Anglo concertina by a quirk of history comes to be used in a "foreign" musical culture like that of the West of Ireland, where the music is traditionally purely melodic, and the I-IV-V7 cadence is not of central importance, and the modulation up a 5th seldom happens - then the rows lose their significance. For someone playing in this style, the Anglo may appear as a C-major keyboard with the sharps and flats in unexpected places. It may even be beneficial to him to think of it as such.

But the diatonic free-reeders are not defined by ITM and Tango exclusively!

Cheers,
John

PS: Ah, yes! My credentials: I've been playing Anglo concertina and Bandoneon (neither ITM nor Tango!) for some 40 years now, and I'm just starting to explore the Duet ...