alex_holden

Whilst I've been trying to learn this tune well enough to offer up a recording by the end of the month, I got a bit side-tracked by studying the various different versions you can hear recordings of on the Internet. Here is my attempt at a transcription of the melody Lester Bailey plays in his YouTube video mentioned at the start of the thread. The biggest differences are in the second line. X: 2 T:Sheriff's Ride - Lichfield M:4/4 L:1/8 A:Lichfield S:Lester Bailey's English Tunes Selection No. 32 (YouTube video) P:(A2B2)3 Q:130 K:Emin P:A BA|G2E2 E2FG|AGF2 E4|e2e2 e2fe|d2B2 B4| d2d2 e4|dc B2 A4 |GABc dcBA|B2 E2 E4 || P:B e2e2 e2fe|d2B2 B3d |e2e2 e2fe|d2B2 B3d| d2d2 e4|dc B2 A4 |GABc dcBA|B2 E2 E4 ||

Excellent, thank you very much for making this available, Josh.

Juliet and I had a lovely time at the opening gig of the Blyde Lasses' mini-tour last night. Cracking set of Shetland tunes and songs, and a lively and talented acoustic performance. Nice EC too. It's well worth travelling to see them this weekend if you can. Thank you Claire and Frances! P.S. if you can't make it to one of the gigs, they have a CD.

Ooh, The Lion @ Caerhowel is not too far from me. Is it a pay-on-the-door gig or do we need to book tickets in advance?

I believe P:(AB)4A2B means play both the A and B parts 4 times, then A twice, then B once. i.e. it's a shorter way of writing ABABABABAAB. That would be something like P:AABB(ABB)4 (substitute 4 for however many repetitions of ABB the dance requires). http://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1#pparts

People seem surprised that I drive classic cars (45+ years old) as my everyday transport. I'm not sure why - that's what they were designed for. They do need more tinkering/maintenance than a modern though.

Thank you very much Ruediger!

I think it would help, though it may not completely solve the problem because I found that the affected levers also had notches worn into their corners at the pivot point.

Good luck! :-)

Try searching YouTube for "reed waxing" for more info on how to use the wax.

It's so you can easily remove the reed blocks for maintenance. You can buy blocks of ready-made reed wax, e.g. http://www.hohnershop.com/accordion-reed-wax/

I also only see concertina-related adverts, and ads that are related to things that I have searched for/visited recently. I do have a flash blocker installed so I don't see animated flash ads any more (the video ads on eBay were the last straw). As a side point, clicking on the ads will usually earn the site a little extra pocket-money (and incidentally cost the business that placed the ad a rather larger sum of money).

Thanks! I recently got a set of camera bellows specifically for taking close-up photos of this sort of intricate work. Chris, I also considered making the lever taller before deciding to make the pivot thicker instead. My idea had been to silver-solder a fin to the bottom of the existing lever, directly below the pivot point. Perhaps I will try out that solution instead the next time I come across this problem!

Here's a blog post about how I solved this problem: http://alex-holden.livejournal.com/275201.html

I've seen it played on stage with the melodica on a table. I think she played with both hands, though I couldn't swear to it.

Thanks apprenticeOF. Do you mean that with hide glue you experienced failures that were immediately obvious when you tested the joint after the glue had dried, or did the weaknesses only show up after you had been playing the instrument for a while? I'm not keen on using a non-reversible glue for this particular job because I want to be able to undo it and try again if (probably when) I'm not satisfied with my first attempt. I now have some rabbit skin glue, book binders' paste (this stuff), goat hide, skiving knife, linen, card and a scrap (but repairable) set of bellows to practice/experiment on. I'll be doing some trials in a few days.

Thank you very much Geoffrey. It's difficult to tell from the photo, but it looks to me like the left two holders are slightly bigger than the right two; perhaps this particular tuning bellows had two pairs of holders to accommodate a wider range of reed sizes? Would it be helpful if I put a copy of the file on my own server and linked to it from here, so it's not taking up space in your account?

This document seems to be missing, does anyone still have a copy handy?

I balked at the price of top quality diamond files and instead bought some moderately expensive ones from a high-feedback seller on eBay. I immediately regretted it; they are little better than the dirt cheap ones you find on market stalls, and the seller was quite rude to me when I complained about the quality and asked for my money back. The very fine (cut 6) Vallorbe escapement file on the other hand has proved worth its weight in gold. Only used it on brass reeds so far though; I don't yet know how long it will stay sharp cutting spring steel.

Fantastic video, thanks! Was that the Crabb factory?

I see, thanks a lot for the explanation! I would probably call that 'plucking' the reed. I also have a Vallorbe half-round escapement file that I got from a jewellers' supplier. Expensive but it is a lovely thing to use.

Hi Johann, can you please elaborate upon "The reed has to be clicked very strong to settle the pitch." ?

Looks like a nice instrument. According to this page he closed his books to new orders back in June 2007? http://www.kensingtonconcertinas.com/Pages/pricing.html

Thanks Terry, I had been wondering what the best way was to tune that setting. Perhaps you could compensate for the speed of sound error (not sure what the technical term is) by recording the second track using the microphone and a speaker instead of a patch cable, and placing the mic the same distance from the speaker as it will be from the instrument when recording for real?

Thanks! It sounds like rabbit skin glue is the best bet. :-)