Łukasz Martynowicz

As I understand it, this bisonoric button is a result of classic handstrap reach limitations. I faintly recall it mentioned by Wim himself. The original H-2 had 64 buttons and ended on E. This Eb/F button is not only bisonoric, but also out of pattern, as those notes are played with the thumb. As such, this $9k instrument not only cannot be primed or closed without sounding a note, you also cannot increase the rate at which the bellows closes/opens to prepate it for the long phrase mid-tune - a feature of an air button (lever in my case) that I use quite often. As I said earlier on numerous occasions, I’m not exactly a fan of Wim’s design choices.

Agreed, but what you are describing is a choice of an instrument type, while I'm talking about the limitations imposed by the instrument model. I'm perfectly aware, that I can't ever pull off, e.g. a glissando on a Hayden, or that Arvo Part's Alina is not something that would sound properly on a free reed instrument. But duet concertina that lacks the ability to perform proper duet arrangements, and this is largely the case with any of the offerings from Concertina Connection, is not something I can find an excuse for.

Not really a viable solution if you are playing in a true duet style. Bellows reversals in odd places would interrupt the flow of many continuous accompaniments I play and the whole idea of unisonoric layout is to not have to care which direction you are playing in. With the amount of air in my 8 2/3 octagon, 8 fold box I pretty much don't care for the bellows direction, only for the bellows dynamics. With Elise, the most annoying thing about the design of this box, is that the same sized box, with the same type and grade of reeds can fit 40+ buttons easily, 45 if you push it to the limit. I did exactly that in my "single serving" 3d printed built around Elise's bellows. You just have to mount those reeds flat instead of wasting a lot of room by trying to fit reed blocks into the bellows opening.

While obviously true, this is however a very backwards approach to being a musician if your repertoire is dictated by the instrument instead your taste in music and inner desires. 46+ and especially 64+ button Haydens are great for a vast spectrum of genres of accordion repertoire and it is really frustrating to be so limited by the maker’s choice to not include some notes vital to reach that potential. If you look closely at Troubadour and Pacock layouts, you will see, that Wim decided to exclude the LH A4 - lack of this single note, present even on Elise, closes those boxes to all sorts of modern french accordion repertoire and pop/rock songs „as written” and very often altogether, because it is a central note of the layout, and it’s existence on the RH side is not enough to compensate. There is a very good musical reason why the Beamont, not the Peacock, was the most common choice amongst Hayden players.

As a former owner of an Elise, who grew so frustrated by it’s limited range that I’ve built my own 66 button Hayden I must say this - there are no good workarounds on this box if you want to play something outside of trad, diatonic music. Perhaps as many as two out of every three tunes I wanted to arrange run into unsolvable problems. This is because you miss two neighbouring accidentals on an instrument, that starts on c3 and ends on a5. You simply run out of space on the top or bottom of the range if you transpose too far. This is further emphasised by the intent of duets to accommodate for both melody and accompaniment - typical three chord or four chord songs will cover the entire LH range with no room to nudge and sacrifices and ommissions are usually glaringly obvious and intrusive to the flow of the tune. As to upgrades availability. Sadly, with the end of Beaumont there is only the Stagi. Troubadour is a joke for it’s price, Peacock is lacking in range, and Peacock XL doesn’t seem to happen anytime soon. Given Wim Wakker’s range choices I actually expect Peacock XL to let Hayden players down.

Yes, it is a Hayden, but it was a „single serving” box designed and assembled in under two weeks, with a similar life expectancy It still works (kind of) and the design was a success, but it is far from presentable. I did have a plan to design a proper one, but those plans are now on hold, due to life happening (I’m from Poland and war in Ukraine has a profound impact on economy here, so currently my everyday job leaves me with very little time left for anything else).

While I wouldn’t call myself a concertina maker, I have built a couple of them. My large, 66 button Hayden took me about 700 hours, but that count includes all of failed experimental ideas, reworks and doing some of the things three times (I hate valves with a passion) and a highly overdesigned, hand carved endplates, which took about 150hrs of tedious sculpting. If I knew what I’m doing from the beggining, with simple, traditional endplates, I could probably make it down to 350-400hrs using my universal workshop, not optimised for concertina building. This is with purchased reeds. Anglo could probably be done in 150-200hrs (not everything scales down proportionally with button count), so yes, a month for a single, fairly standardised box sounds about right. Assembling and tuning 3D printed 46 button box, not counting the time necessary to design it or print it, but including time to make the bellows, still took about 40 hrs.

First - unnecessary/too stiff valves. Proper valves matter A LOT. Basically, you increase the pressure threshold to start the reed the stiffer/heavier the valve is. Second - wrong padhole position. Small reeds often work better when the padhole is over the tip of the tongue. Third - too deep chambers. Too much air coupled to the reed slows the response and weakens the tone of high reeds.

My case is lined with raster foam with a snug fit around the box but with room for my hands, so that when puting the instrument in or taking out I have to squeze it fully to not rub against the foam (there is just a couple of mm clearance). This way when stored, there is an equlibrium between the foam and expanding bellows, so the instrument doesn’t move inside the case, but it is not unnaturally squezed all the time.

For Haydens I’d say it is around 50 if you use normal handrest/handstrap handling. With my „antlers” handling? 66 buttons is completely transparent reach-wise. „Dry practicing” some larger layouts, I’d say I could play on nearly full 100+ buttons of original Wicki Bandoneon, with some limitation near thumbs only. BUT - even my 66 buttons, 8 2/3” box, is way closer in handling to a bandoneon, than to 30b Anglo or a typical treble English. Weight is one thing, but bellows cross section area changes the whole box mechanics a lot. Personally, I find sturdier, more „tanker like” box easier to play than my featherlight travel box, but I know most concertina players prefer it the other way around.

A tip about voices in Musescore - you only have to keep strict pause notation for the first voice. You can delete any unwanted auto-generated pauses in other voices freely. So when arranging for a single instrument it is often better to assign voices of the tune to musescore voice slots in measure by measures fashion rather than globally sticking to how the piece is written.

I voted „tabulature” as it didn’t allow me to use „none” selection. But I have to elaborate, as there is no option for what I use: a chromatic notation system called Parncutt tetragram. It is a single stave of a different line layout, extendable up and down continously, with „piano roll” like absolute pitch positions (natural, sharp and flat pitch have their own positions, not sharp/flat signs). Additionally, I use colour coded LH and RH and additional colour variations for sharps/flats to easily read key from without traditional key notation. This system is pretty much ideal for Hayden, as it follows the same logic of black/white keys division via specific line pattern. So while it is a proper musical notation, it also isn’t any staff related answer provided.

I live in Poland. Here, street musicians almost solely play on guitars, with an occasional diembe here and there and accordions played very badly by very insistent gipsy beggars. So, from the personal experience as a passer by, there are very few occasions to actually appreciate any skill. But at the same time such reality lifts any competent musician way above the background. Even after two decades I still remember a brass quintet performing frequently and solely for pleasure on a bus stop near Warsaw music school. I would deliberately miss a bus or two listening and watching their pure enjoyment. But - I’m an exception among my friends and family, who may sometimes toss a coin, but never stop.

Edward’s concertinas are printed in PLA, which will degrade in high humidity conditions. However, you might as him to print you one in PETg or other similar filament. The problem will be with the action, as Ed relies on carbon fiber infused PLA durability for all moving parts, which is still susceptible to humidity as all PLA filaments. So it would have to be a custom job. Ed also has experience with melodica/harmonica reeds, which are made from corrosion resistant steel, but this pushes customisation even further, as they are single reeds, not double.

You may want to check Edward Jay’s Tritone system readily available to purchase in his range of 3D printed instruments.

The same volume controlling effect can be achieved by installing o-rings in pad holes. I have regulated my two lowest basses this way after first drilling maximum diameter holes. Even 0.5mm ring made measurable difference. And since those can be friction mounted, it’s perfectly reversible while not changing button travel.

This has everything to do with how the brain is organised broadly into distinct loops, two of which are important here: cortico-cortical (the analytical, sequential, highest level one) and cortico-thalamic (the parallel computing one, and the one that does emotional, sensory and memory integration). In one of the provious threads on a similar topic, I wrote my experience from a medicated epileptic perspective. Each of the drugs I have been on in the last 30 years alter the balance of those loops and in turn, alters how I perceive and perform the music. Due to this, I have been on both ends of this spectrum all of you are describing in your posts. On one medication, I mostly have the analytical loop involved in processing music, like Don - on this drug, I can easily hear harmonic structure of a tune and I have pretty much perfect musical memory, but I cannot, for the love of me, continue seamlessly after a mistake or restart playing from the middle of a phrase. I also have any kind of emotional attachment to the music dimmed to minimum, sometimes to the level of complete absence, so my performance is quite mechanical. On a different drug it’s the exact opposite - I’m deeply emotionally involved in both listening and playing, deeply expressive and spontaneous, I can skip over mistakes easily, but get succesively more angry after each one to the point when I must stop playing altogether after a few, and I don’t hear the structure. On yet a different one, I can, to some extent, switch between those loops, or at least prepare the right conditions for the one I need at the moment to rise to the top. Tricks involve not only focus related methods, but also things like stretching my back, or avoid playing for few hours after a meal etc. As to mental ones, the most efective one is focussing… on the muscles on back of my neck and overall on the sensory input from the body. This stops the analytical loop in my brain from „keeping an eye” on exact finger movements and let’s me hear the music as if someone else was performing it. This has a drawback however - if I play a piece with long parts, I sometimes get stuck on what part is next if I drift too far into the feel of a tune.

Analogue differential pressure sensor and normal bellows. My box was built around a repurposed cheap, german made anglo. This gives the full information about bellows expression and direction, which was then utilised for bisonoric functionality (I fiddled with a concept of bisonoric Hayden based layout for a bit) and volume modulation or MIDI velocity in case of piano mode. It was a nice experiment, but as Don wrote above, ultimately you need real action and hal switches to make a decent instrument, so unless you need MIDI input for music production it isn’t exactly worth it. Baffled acoustic ’tina played softly is way better as a quiet practice instrument than a ‚cut corners’ e-tina.

I seriously doubt, that midi concertinas can be profitable enough to return the investment. One way to circumvent this is to release the end product in the form of downloadable plans for DIY/printable kits on etsy or other marketplace website. For a reasonable fee of course. As to MIDI tinas, I’ve made one myself using Arduino+Processing, with both uni- and bi- sonoric capabilities. But since I made it with mechanical switches it didn’t last too long and I never bothered to rebuild it for hal sensors, as e-free reed instruments lack this vibrating tactile feedback of acoustic ones and playing on it just wasn’t fun. But it was a great gateway drug into Haydens for me, as I built it mostly with a goal of testing the layout for cheap.

One aspect, that hasn’t been mentioned here, is the difference in reed construction itself. Accordion reeds are suitable for modern manufacturing techniques. Because all shoe edges, including tongue slots are perpendicular to the shoe face, they can be made with electroabrasion, laser cutting or simple CNC. Traditional concertina reeds, with nearly all edges tapeted. require a lot more work per note. And there’s the rivet vs screws mount on top of that. Harmonikas.cz offer their DIX reeds in three shapes and the difference in price between a rectangular, double, accordion style reed vs a dovetailed with screws is two fold. Now, for other aspects of construction differences, irregular lever lengths and lever routing challenges, labour intensive button and bellows design and acoustic difficulties of flat mounted reeds vs reed blocks result in concertinas being much harder to not only build (per reed) but also to design. And while it is true, that if you compare the same quality level instruments they might end up close in price, when it comes to duets vs accordions, you get a LOT more „bang for a buck” with accordions - more range, registers, free bass converter, etc. You can get a fully competent CBA for the price of a very limited Wakker H-1, and pretty professional CBA for the price of H-2, the largest Hayden available. Now, a „hybrid” 64 button Hayden could cost about half of H-2, but it would still be overpriced for it’s musical capabilities when compared to equally priced accordion. What you gain with concertinas is portability and little else really.

I don’t think I have ever played using „periodical movement”. „Phrase movement” is natural and becomes transparent really quick. As David wrote, focussing on bellows position (and sometimes also a direction) is important mostly before long legato phrases, where there simply is no good moment to reverse bellows direction mid-phrase. One other case, where bellows direction is important, is that despite fingering patterns on push and pull are identical, muscle work on the pull is different than on the push and some note sequences can be easier to finger in one direction. This is especially true with hand straps and awkward pinky finger sequences. „Periodical movement” can result in unnecessary increase in difficulty of such phrases. There is also little point in trying to establish rigid spots for bellows reversals in a tune, as the air supply will last you for longer when you practice the tune quietly and then you’ll find yourself „gasping” when you play the same tune on full volume. Unless of course, you’ll always phrase bellows movement as if played at full volume, but then you close yourself to a single interpretation. Personally, my bellows movement pattern depends strongly on my momentary mood and „flow”, so I tend to make up for discrepancies as I go - if I stress a note/phrase a bit more than usual, then I will reverse bellows one more time somewhere else - there are usually more good spots to reverse the bellows than necessary, and there is always an air button to speed up the bellows extension/contraction before reversal, to make more room for the next phrase. That said, I’m currently so spoiled with abundance of air in my „big box” that I hardly think about bellows position anymore and only change bellows for accent/expression purposes.

I guess you are ordering from harmonikas.cz? If so, you can ask them to send you samples, so you can hear the difference for yourself. The difference in tone is a result of each of the materials ephasizing/cutting different harmonics. Brass ones sound honky, „round” and a bit deeper than aluminum. Zinc have this distinct harsher, bandoneon „tin” sound and aluminum ones have the same sound as any other accordion reed out there - full and equalised, but somewhat boring. There is also one other difference, not sound related - brass and zinc plated reeds are significantly heavier than aluminum ones.

Exactly this, but for me it is a deal breaker. Especially as an upgrade to Elise, both Troubadour and Peacock lacking LH A4 is baffling to say the least, as you utilise this button on Elise in most of what you can play on this little box. So when you „upgrade” you must rearrange everything.

Just to add my two cents - I can whistle any tune by ear, but I can hardly whistle from notation. I can play from notation, but I can hardly play by ear. And one other thing - "playing from notation" has two completely separate modes in my case. If I learn to play by following notation in real time/focussing on it, I can't play that tune without notation. But If I only decipher phrases and then the entire learning process is notation-free, I can play it from memory, but I can't follow notation. Now, a fact that some may find interesting. I'm an epileptic, and as such I'm anticonvulsants, but on different in different periods of my life. Since I picked up concertina, I've been on 5 different ones. On each one, my musical sense and ability to play music is vastly different in character and extent. The two border cases are pretty much opposites - on one medication I have absolute musical memory and I hear structure, but playing the tune is mechanical and I can not resume from mid phrase after mistake, I must start from the beginning. I can also play in long sessions, as mistakes do not accumulate. On the other one though, I don't hear structure, but my playing is deeply expressive and emotional, I can continue after a mistake, but each mistake makes me more and more angry and at some point I can't play a single, coherent phrase anymore and I must stop the session.

First of all, the blanket term "concertina" encompasses very different instruments, with very different capabilities. While you could attempt waltzes from Amelie or Libertango on an English or an Anglo, the arrangements will be limited. But on a large enough duet, those will sound similar to renditions on small accordions. So if you are more into music outside of folk tradition, you may want to focus on duets.