Jeff Jetton

Thanks for the review, Doug. One of these years I might take the plunge myself.

There's also the Berklee "Developing Your Musicianship" course. Next round starts in a few days: https://www.coursera.org/course/musicianship

Which one did you get? Stagi or Rochelle?

Nice! Love the "natural" look. So, no leather reed valves then?

Ack! Spoke to soon. Amazon just emailed me that they're shipping out Gary's book ahead of the other one.

I actually wound up ordering another book along with yours (to get over the $35 "Super Saver Shipping" level). The other book has a bit of a wait on delivery, so the order is far from being shipped. Which turns out to be good for me! I'll let the rest of you guys work the bugs out while I wait. :-)

Perfect for concertina players who have a tin ear.

I come, firstly, from a piano background. So I'm normally a standard notation guy too. But standard notation tends to drop the ball when it comes to instruments that A.) have multiple ways to play any given note, and B.) have not developed any sort of universally-accepted system for playing notes, given those multiple ways. A specific arrangement of a piece is really dealing with three dimensions of information: What pitch (or pitches) to play, when to play that pitch (and for how long), and where (on your instrument) to play that pitch. Standard notation just covers those first two dimensions (unless you want to use multiple staves, as with organ). For piano, there's only one option for the "where", so that's no big deal. For violin, there are fairly standard assumptions about the "where". For Anglo concertina... not so much. :-) (For me, I prefer a combination of the two: Standard notation on one staff, tab on another. But that's just me and YMMV...)

Okay, so I'm working my way through "The First Gun Is Fired", which so far sounds like I'm going to really enjoy. The few parts my meager talents are currently able to play in full are sounding quite nice! But... should that be a "2" over the E note in measure 15? Or maybe that note should be G instead of E? (Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the tab?)

Actually, even as an Anglo player I was a bit thrown by that too when sussing out the tab. I agree that it would be nice to see the accompaniment notated along with the melody as reference to what the finished product should sound like. But I just now bought a copy, so it obviously wasn't a dealbreaker. :-) Looking forward to getting it!

Incidentally, this thread prompted me to seek out the "Leaving Lerwick Harbour" CD. Found a new copy from a 3rd-party seller on Amazon, reasonably priced. Very pleased with it! It is a fantastic album. Thanks for bringing it up, Peter.

And, while this may be reading too much into things, the town name might have been picked partly for it being symbolic of bold exploration and of new and undiscovered worlds laying ahead of you. The narrator seems to be abandoning the city of Columbus along with the idea of "Columbus". (Note the bit at the end about his "sails" going slack.)

Glad to hear you say that. Because... https://soundcloud.com/jeffjetton/zelda Not nearly as good as I would like it to be, but since it is now May, I figure it's time to abandon this one where it lay and move on to the next. :-)

For anyone who might find it useful, here's a leadsheet I put together with chords based on that Mozart scoring (I find it easier to have the harmony summarized like that, rather than have to always read down all the parts--particularly when there are transposing instruments involved). I've never heard anyone play this in a folk context, so I don't know what chords, if any, are normally used when it's going under the name of "Michael Turner's". I'd imagine they're more or less on the Mozart lines, eh? Mozart Deutsche Tanze 2 (Trio).pdf

Thanks Jody, I'll give that fingering a test drive and see what happens!