Little John

In my experience one reason for this can be the set-up of the reeds. The low reeds often speak more easily than the high reeds, and this makes them louder at all air pressures. Try this experiment. Hold down the button for a low note (G3, say) and a higher note (G5, say) with no pressure on the bellows. Now slowly apply pressure until one reed sounds. If it's the lower reed that sounds this could be your problem. As you apply more pressure the higher note starts to sound, but the low note has already got louder. You can increase the pressure further but the low note will always be louder than the higher note. If this is your problem it can be solved. Take the instrument to a good repairer and ask them to set the reeds so that they all sound at the same low pressure. This will go a good way to solving the problem. It will also allow you to use more expression in your playing. LJ

I'm not really familiar with the C' notation. According to wikipedia it's called Helmholtz pitch notation and c' is middle C (or C4 in scientific notation). The lowest note on David's chart is "f" which is a fifth below middle C (F3). LJ

Thanks, that's very clear (and not at all crude!). So it's a standard treble but with low F and F# added. Very nice! LJ

Well I'm thoroughly confused! On his website Wim says of the E4 "The layout is identical to a tenor english (minus the top 6 notes), but sounding one octave higher." So that gives the range as C4 - C7 with tenor fingering. But above Wim is quoted as saying "The instrument is based on a tenor treble, ..." which gives it treble fingering, confirmed by "It plays just like a normal treble ..." Wim also says "This particular instrument has an extended range down to F." So the range appears to be F3 - F6. Taking all this together, the instrument sounds more like a treble extended down by one note than a soprano. Which I imagine would make it a very attractive instrument for an English player. (Fortunately I'm not tempted - I'm a Crane player now.) LJ

Sorry Gary, I know I'm not your target audience, but for me the 19th century method has it all: true pitch, clear separation of the two hands (by use of the stems) and showing the relationship between all the notes clearly. What do a few ledger lines matter when you've got the button numbers to help you? The shape of the tune is still clear. LJ

I have always assumed they wrote them in the key they were played. Most morris musicians would have been fiddlers at the time so just looking at their fingering would be enough to establish the key. If not, a tuning fork could be used. My theory for this is that the most common instruments for folk music would have been the fiddle or the whistle. Assuming a D whistle then its usable range is D to the B nearly two octaves higher. On the fiddle, ignoring the bottom string the range without leaving first position is D4 to B5. So it would be natural to place tunes within this range. In fact when I did a (not entirely scientific) survey of a sample of folk tunes, 96% fell within this range. There are some exceptions. For example the Rose Tree (Bampton) goes down to a low B repeatedly. I wonder whether it wasn't originally in Bb rather then G. That would bring the range up to D4 - Bb5 and would be easy to finger on the fiddle.

Ditto! In fact, probably even closer to Ali and Phil's version, since that's from where I learnt it.

Looks similar, but I think the right hand is like a chromatic button accordion (CBA) whilst the left hand is something of Tona's own devising. Somewhere on this forum there is a note chart for the instrument. Here's Tona's description: "I play a custom duet made by family Dipper on which the layout is inspired from the layout of the chromatic button accordion... chromatic scale on three rows and 31 buttons for the right hand. Left hand is a bit more complicated, it is not the "mirror" of the right hand. Three rows and 24 buttons."

Thanks for the link. Interesting, but very different from the version I'm familiar with. I wouldn't have recognised it as the same tune. LJ

Could you post it here? The video doesn't play for me. LJ

Only on a forum as generally civilised as this could the discussion be described as "acrimonious"! LJ

Maybe, but not necessarily so. And so do I - basically I'm lucky in that I come from good stock. Maybe, but only after assessing the risks. There are two parts to risk - the likelihood of something happening and the consequences if it does. With coronavirus the first is hard to assess - estimates for the UK seem to range from 1% to 50% of the population. But for the second my belief is that the consequences would be minor for me. So although I'm prepared to take the risk (when allowed to do so) it's only a small one. And actually, I think there's a fair chance I had it back in February, before anyone had talked about it. LJ

Do I detect a hint of moralising here? I, too, have been willing to submit to a period of restriction (unlike some of our politicians and their advisers). I'm not advocating that anyone does otherwise. But as soon as the authorities here deem it safe for pubs to open I shall be in there. Not going to pubs has been one of the hardest things for me. Not playing in public seems to have been one of the hardest things for Randy. So in his position, given the legitimate opportunity to resume an activity I've been missing, I would take it. I don't see anything immoral in that. LJ

What would I do? Go for it. I'm an optimist. Life is for living. LJ

I don't know how to do it, but I know it can be done. When I was playing English seriously Colin Dipper built me a special instrument with two two-note drones. One was D3 - D4 for Scottish tunes and one was G3 - D4 for Northumbrian. The levers had catches so they stayed open without being touched. It worked very well. They were much quieter than ordinary reeds but unfortunately I don't know how that was achieved. I seem to recall them being overall smaller than standard reeds, but that's all. I certainly don't recall any chokes or baffles. I don't recall anything special about the chambers either. LJ

Sometimes, but not always. On one tune I have consecutive A4, D5, G5 and I step up middle, ring, middle; or something like that - hard to remember when you're not playing. In another I have D5, G5, D5 so I use middle, index, middle. Frequently. With a tune like British Grenadiers there's no other option (apart from chopping which, as RAc suggests, should generally be avoided). It starts D4, G4, D4, G4, A4, B4 ... . In other circumstances you might be able to use ring, middle, ring, middle to start, but the subsequent A, B precludes that, so little finger it is. RAc mentions Kurt Braun. Here's an illustration of his technique. Look at bars 3 and 4 of this tune: You naturally arrive on the D in bar 3 with your middle finger, but then have to jump down to A. If you use your ring finger for A then your little finger (pinkie) is ready for the following G and the G at the start of bar 4. Your ring finger is in position for for the three Es. For those seven notes you've been in Kurt's "inner" position. Now your middle finger is ready to jump up to the A and you're back in the more usual "outer position. And you've just played two intervals of a fourth without having to "chop". RAc also points out the advantage for left hand chords of the fourth being vertical. It is particularly useful to me for first inversion chords. For example first inversion of D would be little finger on the F# and middle finger covering A and D. I'd use that for the second half of bar 2, leading nicely up to the G in Bar 3. My general advice would be (1) practice using the little finger on both hands, (2) be flexible about which pair of fingers to use for playing fourths - the best choice will depend on where you've come from and where you're going to. LJ

All the experience I've come across on this site (including my own) is that this is unnecessary. With 1/5 comma tuning other musicians simply don't notice that you're tuned any different from them. It makes sense to minimise your deviation from ET if you plan to play with other instruments. Curiously, that doesn't mean you centre your tuning on your most commonly used key. If G major is your most commonly used key (which for many it is - largely I suspect because of D/G melodeons) then you should centre your tuning on A. In your case, if G minor (relative minor to Bb) is your most common key then tuning for that means centring around C. But as I said earlier, centring on A will cover all bases adequately. LJ

Richard - I posted a spreadsheet some time ago on this topic; specifically for fifth comma MT. The absolute deviations from ET weren't quite right (I used the wrong comma!) but the general conclusions still stand: 1. If you place the wolf fifth at G# - Eb you can play in the major keys of Bb, F, C, G, D and A and the minor keys of G, D, A, E, B and F# (and, of course, the related Dorian and Mixolydian modes). This covers your particular requirement of G and D minor as well as most of the other common keys used in folk music. 2. If you play mainly in the keys of G and D major the deviation of MT from ET is minimised by centring the tuning on A (which conveniently means you can give a pitch to fiddles). If you're playing mainly in G and D minor then, as Wolf says, you might want to centre round some other key (I think C would minimise deviation from ET) but, unless you're playing with other instruments, it really doesn't matter. And even if you are playing with other instruments it won't matter much. If I were you I'd stick to standard mean tone tuning (either 1/5 comma or 1/4 comma). That way you know, within the six major and minor keys available to you, all intervals will be consonant and all thirds will be sweeter. LJ

A better analogy might be to compare music notation systems with recipes for food. Both are an instruction for how to create the music / meal. Recipes can use different "notations", e.g. quantity by weight or volume etc. We will all have our own preferences, but each type of recipe gives us the opportunity to create a similar dish. Indeed it would. I can understand how one can read music from ABC notation or tonic sol-fa but, like Ken, I'm happy with western classical notation. Nevertheless, Łukasz, if you could produce a PDF of the two systems side-by-side it would be interesting. LJ

There's no need to "lose the convenience of meaningful bellows changes" as you put it. One is unlikely to use both B and Bb in the same phrase (or even tune) so you just have to think ahead slightly and start the phrase in the direction required for the note. It soon becomes almost second nature. No different, really, from closing the bellows of an Anglo prior to a long "pull" phrase or using a non-standard finger for a note because it makes the fingering of the subsequent notes easier. LJ

You could have both if you were willing to countenance having and "anglo" button. That's exactly what I do with my Crane duets - have a B/Bb button where the C# would normally be. I use both notes often enough to make it worth having them, but not so often that the anglo action becomes a problem.

My instinct would be to stick with the standard clefs for SATB arrangements: treble for S and A, treble with a little 8 under it for T and bass clef for B. That's how it's done at the West Gallery workshop I attend each year; singers and instrumentalists using the same score. (Bb and Eb parts are provided for transposing instruments but you wouldn't need that for concertinas unless you had an F-tenor or an F-bass, as mine was before I had it converted.) I normally play my bass at these workshops, reading from the bass clef. One year when my bass was in for repair I played the tenor part on the left hand of a Crane duet. Strangely, I was the only instrumentalist playing at the intended pitch. The others were playing an octave above the singers.

I have an A P James mini-anglo which manages to fit a row of 5 buttons in a 3 5/8" box; and an Andrew Norman semi-mini which fits two rows of 5 button in a 4 15/16" box. So you could make a Crane at that size but at one note per button you wouldn't get a very useful instrument. In the end I think it's the number of reeds needed that drives the size. Certainly, constraining my @alex_holden Crane to 6 1/4" it was the reeds that limited the buttons to 44. On a Hayden system, which has fewer low (and hence large) reeds Alex has fitted 47 into the instrument he's currently building at the same size.

I'm interested in miniature and semi-miniature concertinas and I'm a Crane player, so this is a topic i've given some thought to in the past. Miniatures really are novelty instruments. I've seen a 16 button Crane mini - six notes on the left and ten on the right. Sure, you could find a few tunes which would fit on it but it would never be a serious instrument. When it comes to semi-miniature duets there is always going to be a compromise. If the instrument is to be 5 1/4" or less then you can't fit in enough buttons for a really useful instrument, so you've got something which is neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat. To make an instrument "affordable" (a loose term!) probably means using accordion reeds, and these take more space than concertina reeds so that militates against small size. Unless you want the novelty of a real miniature then I'd suggest the standard 6 1/4" size is the minimum to consider. Alex Holden made me a 44-button Crane in this size and I think that's about the limit. If someone wanted to make an affordable Crane with accordion reeds you could probably do it at 6 1/4" based on the 35 button layout - though I'd give the layout a couple of tweeks to make it more usable. LJ

I've never encountered it in a Crane. I've come across the idea somewhere else (probably on this forum) but I think it applied to Anglos. LJ