Steve Wilson
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Posts posted by Steve Wilson
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You have more than enough notes on your Jackie to do lots. You only need two or three notes to build a chord (or partial chord) and from your little recording, albeit melody only, you seem to be progressing well for only a short time player. Remember you must walk before you can run. Regarding the notes competing with each other, perhaps finding alternate ways to build your chords might help but I haven't played a Jackie so I can't be sure. If financial constraints compel you to persevere with the Jackie then just make the most of it. You will be able to achieve quite a lot and if you do carry on you'll know when an upgrade is due. Then somehow it will happen, maybe you'll get lucky.
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Hello Tim Tim,
It's nice to know you seem to be fairly serious about learning to play the (E) concertina, what with attempting a complex piece. No you won't have to learn everything twice but you will keep learning if you keep putting in the effort. I'm assuming you are fairly new to concer since you only have a Jackie, not meaning to demean the Jackie, a great starting instrument, but a with a better quality instrument (as Geoff suggests) you'll learn to fly. Consider saving those pennies.
I'm guessing you are concentrating on instrumental pieces so I'm not sure I can help a lot since I mostly use the concertina for song accompaniment, (with lots of chords), which I think our instrument is just wonderful for. But my method can be used for instrumental music, I do it when I insert instrumental parts in my songs. Basically I learn the melody line first and then I learn the chord progression and use different inversions of the chords to decide upon the most satisfactory fingering to my ear. Others may not agree with my chord choices at all! Once I've got these two different aspects of a song learned I just sit down and try to meld them into a "melody with chords". Most often the melody notes are part of the chord with occasional "passing" notes which are actually just part of another slightly different chord. As for fingering, well yes it varies. You do have to learn different ways of playing, but that's a good thing. No one way is necessarily the right way.
It's really good to have a repertoire of the basic chords (in various inversions) in the basic keys. This is relevant for instrumental music but perhaps more relevant if you're into song accompaniment, then you can sing hundreds (thousands) of songs with just a few chords. Don't tell me you can't sing, (almost) everyone can sing a bit, especially if they're a player of an instrument.
Anyway whatever sort of music you're interested in, the concertina is a great little instrument for it. Not perfect all the time but pretty good. Keep at it. The better you get the more you'll enjoy it.
Cheers,
Steve.
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This is a wonderful video that demonstrates so well your innovative approach to playing your concertina. Well done Stefan. Wouldn't it be great if a few young ones were inspired to take the concertina on their own creative journey.
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Welcome to C-net, a place where you'll find friendly people with helpful advice. At least I've found it like that for the last few years so hoping to see you around here again. Thanks also for the link, at first look it seems like a useful site with quite a range of music. I'll be going back to download a few pieces.
Cheers Steve.
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If you want to sing with concer accompaniment then I recommend the english system over the anglo. One can sing with the anglo but the push/pull might make it harder for a beginner and as a beginner you may be limited to just two keys for a while. And in fact a cheap one would only be in two keys at most. Of course I speak as an english system player/singer, could I be biased? With the english a few simple chords could get you going, which is the case with the anglo too I might add.
Perhaps you should try very hard to rent or borrow an english system concertina for a while, just my opinion.
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Steve:
You could get your customers to use your email address for a PayPal transfer - I don't think you have to have a business account and update your website for commercial transactions. Sadly, PayPal seems to be the best option for a small number of small transactions.
Don.
Here is another suggestion: If someone sends you a scanned copy of a charity receipt to their local Leukemia Foundation, you could email them a link to somewhere where they can download a digital copy of your CD. Dropbox or Google Drive would be easy for that, and free. Do not forget to scan the album artwork as well, and rip at a good quality bitrate or .ogg format.
Don, thank you so much. Malcolm has already sorted me out regarding Paypal, I didn't realize I could do it with just the email address. I'll get that sorted out and look into the digital download option too. Thanks.
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As much as we all seem to
hatedislike Paypal, and you obviously have good reasons for not offering it as a payment method, I think that it is generally accepted as the most convenient way to transfer small amounts of money in today's world, Unfortunately, most convenient equals most expensive in most cases, but I personally can live with that. My dollars would be flying in your direction right now as we speak!Thanks for raising the Paypal issue Malcolm. To have Paypal I'd have to upgrade my website to a business plan and pay an extra $30/month. Without upgrading I could use another payment provider called Stripe that processes credit cards but I could only find negative reviews for that company. I've opted for EFT into a dedicated bank account but no I haven't inquired about what sort of bank transfer fee internationals would have to pay. Seems like there's no interest from overseas anyway.
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Well, well, fancy that. There's been the announcement of my new CD, "The Flying Concertina" sitting down at the bottom of the page in the News and Announcements forum for a couple of weeks now with a link to the promo video of the title track. And there has been quite a lot of look ins on the thread and a fair few viewings of the video to date. However I'm a little surprised as there has been not a single comment on this song, a tribute to the use of concertina in the circus, about "the lovely young Sabrina with her Flying Concertina". Here is a song I composed especially to appeal to concertina players but there seems to be not much interest. No musings about what that little box may have done next and not a single purchase inquiry from the C.net community.
I'm not sure whether to feel shunned or neglected. Or rather perhaps it's just poor promotion on my part. Well for all to appraise, the song in it's entirety is here And since I've ascertained that postage rates from Oz to anywhere international are quite high I've decided to offer those who identify as C.net members the discounted price of A$15 + postage. At current exchange rates that works out at about 18 bucks fifty US or 14 quid UK, reasonable in those parts I feel.
Of course anyone could always just record the song from the link but I would hope they would consider a small donation to the Leukaemia Foundation.
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G'day Dan,
For your Australian correspondent I don't think you could go past one of Cnet's own, Warren Fahey. I've not canvassed his interest but I suggest you PM him.
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I am pleased to announce the availability of my new CD, "The Flying Concertina". For the listener's enjoyment there are songs across various genre albeit with an Aussie slant. There are bush songs, novelty items, contemporary and original material and even a dash of jazz and a couple of tunes thrown in. Not hemmed-in by musical boundaries, in a sense, my concertina flies. As well, the title track is tribute to the use of the concertina in circus but with a fanciful twist.
To purchase go to my website via the above link where you can peruse the track list and hear a few audio samples. Sorry there is no Pay Pal or CD baby option, you'll have to make personal contact. How good is that? All sale proceeds are being donated to my preferred charity, the Leukaemia Foundation but if you don't want to buy the CD you could just make an appropriate donation to the foundation and receive a free CD!
Cheers All,
Steve.
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Inspirational. Thanks for posting. At first I thought this fellow is playing a duet but on closer inspection is it an anglo?
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Why would anyone want to avoid you anyway Chris, you're such a gentleman. Thanks for coming along to Con Con last weekend and for bringing your friends.
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Wonderful as usual. Played with finesse and discretion. Is that a tuba in the mix, are you playing that too? And the CD will be available.........?
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I caught up with him at Cobargo Folk Festival just one week ago. He's been a regular performer there over the years but this time he was a shadow of his former self. Myself and probably all who knew him had grave concerns which now so soon have been sadly realized. He was hoping to make it to the National FF this Easter where he was booked to perform. I expect there will be a memorial performance at the National now and he will be there in spirit. RIP Danny.
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Good advice Adrian. It is exactly what I do and it fact I keep a list of "tricky bits" which I work through regularly and don't cross any off until a bit is thoroughly nailed. I also list my entire repertoire and have date columns to the right and just tick off an item when it is practiced on any particular day. Looking back across the page I can see immediately if I haven't practiced a song or tune for a week or two. A book keeping type of book is good with their many narrow columns or of course one could do it on a computer. I find if I don't practice a song at least every week or two I will sometimes start to lose it which means wasted practice time getting it back up to scratch.
Cheers, Steve.
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One is the arrangement of "Around the Samovar" by Boris Matusewitch. I fell in love with this piece of music when I first heard Danny's version on Soundcloud via Cnet. I presume it is a traditional Russian tune but do I have an issue with copyright regarding his arrangement? Do his descendants hold some copyright over his arrangements? My connection is I bought my (almost) first concertina, the one I learned to play on, from Boris.
Check out this thread. Concertina.net member ematuse would be Boris' son Eric. I'm pretty sure he would be glad to give you permission.
If you PM Eric, he should get an email saying you've done so. If that fails, I can think of two other possibilities for contact:
- Maybe our member Randy Stein is in contact with Eric? Randy's a former student of Boris, and it looks like he and Eric don't live too far apart these days.
- Or try getting in touch with Eric through the ICA (International Concertina Association), since they published "The Matusewitch Family Story" in Concertina World magazine issue #463, September 2015..
Good luck.
Thanks Jim, I've sent Eric a message. I didn't realize he was a member so thanks to you and your vast knowledge of Cnet postings there is "movement at the station". I did think of contacting Randy, will do if I don't hear from Eric.
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Hello All,
I have followed this thread with some interest since I may have some copyright issues with a CD I'm currently working on. The CD will comprise some original and traditional tracks but also four tracks of others works. Two of those I have cleared with the composers but two are more difficult.
One is the arrangement of "Around the Samovar" by Boris Matusewitch. I fell in love with this piece of music when I first heard Danny's version on Soundcloud via Cnet. I presume it is a traditional Russian tune but do I have an issue with copyright regarding his arrangement? Do his descendants hold some copyright over his arrangements? My connection is I bought my (almost) first concertina, the one I learned to play on, from Boris.
The second regards a song, the lyrics of which I've composed but used an adaptation of music composed by John Bosserman, an American composer of march music. He has a website where he posts all his music and says it's available for free. I've emailed John but recieved no reply. He is ninety one and I wonder about his health.
The sale proceeds of the CD will be 100% for charity, I'm not interested in profit for myself. The production run will be reasonably small and almost all sales in Australia with a few internationally (hey, I'm counting on some of you lot). Considering the circumstances (remoteness, small run, charity) I'm inclined to just go ahead and deal with any unlikely repercussions later. Wadda ya think?
Cheers,Steve.
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Congratulations, have a good gig.
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It's taken a little while since I've not logged in recently but let me be the next to commend you on the concertina and the musicianship. Wonderful.
On mics, I only use one in my home environment studio. It's a Sennheiser MK4, a condenser mic set up straight in front. Seems to work OK to my ear. No doubt a professional sound engineer would have issues.
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Three concers already, gettin' a bit greedy Bob!! Congrats. Delightfully played as usual.
PS. I have three concertinas too and I don't feel I'm being greedy. I know quite a few folk who have just one but never or rarely play them. At least I play all of mine. Enjoy yours.
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Some sound samples would be good. Any chance?
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I'm pretty sure Jody Kruskal does lessons via skype. If you are going to have lessons it's probably advisable to have them with an experienced teacher and excellent player of the anglo concertina. Jody certainly is an excellent player. With skype there would be no travel involved at all so no petrol or tube ticket costs. I've no idea what the cost would be but a bit more expensive these days for Brits after, what was it you did? Brexit?
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I totally agree, Danny is a wonderful player with such "smoothness and expression". On a level above most of us I'd suggest. Some just have the gift and don't have to labour over technique and I suspect this is the case with Danny. He's just really good and probably the recording technology doesn't play too much of a part except for his latest offering and the use of multi tracking. He does have a very good concer which makes a huge difference. What does Danny think? yes I'd love to hear from him too.
A few years ago I heard his recording of Around the Samovar and fell in love with that piece of music and felt some affinity as many years ago I'd acquired my (almost) first concertina from Boris Matusewitch. It took me a long time to learn "Samovar" but I certainly can't play it like Danny and doubt if I ever will.
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To all beginners, or others, just be aware with three chords or sometimes even just two, it's possible to accompany yourself on squillions of songs (if you're a singer). It's (almost) instant concertina accomplishment.
Cowboy Concertina - New Book?
in Tunes /Songs
Posted
In Australia they are not called cowboys but rather "stockmen" and of course there is a wonderful history and tradition surrounding them, think "The Man from Snowy River". For a token Aussie inclusion "The Overlander" jumps at me, or for more bounce "Travelling Down the Castlereagh", or for something more wistful there is "The Banks of the Condamine"
Just a few thoughts.
Cheers Steve.