Roger Hare

Hah! I just had a look at page 17. No wonder you got your knickers in a twist if you tried playing 'Monk's March' using this page! I hope you have more success using the real page 15.

My pleasure! Picture sent via email...

It will be Monday at the earliest before I can get to a copier/scanner, but I will take a copy of this page and send it to an email address, or post it here. Your call...

Quite some time down the road, some-one just reacted to the previous post. I'm minded therefore to add a gentle reminder that the button numbering scheme used for the tabs in both the scores I posted in this thread is not that used in Gary Coover's books, but that used in this tablature system. It's the only one I use...

I just tried this for concertina (my only instrument, sigh...🙁). Brilliant! Thank you!

Apropos nothing at all, I think that's pretty much true. My simple-minded bean-counting program told me about 3 years ago that I was using 114 different notes in my 'master ABC tune book'. Today it's 115 - an increase of 1 after adding hundreds of new tunes to the file. I also read somewhere that 98% of folk music never strays outside the 2-octave (ABC) range of C ->c'. The figure I extract from aforementioned bean-counter is 98.3%. Close enough to make that particular 'factoid' believable?

Thanks! When I import the xml for this tune into EasyABC I'm seeing several instances of text annotations which may(?) be meant to be accompaniment chords? In the 'worst' case, I'm seeing three consecutive text annotations ("^A""^E""_A") which appear (as might be expected) as an E and an A above the staff and an A below the staff. Are these intended to be accompaniment chords, or has EasyABC mangled the xml in some way? Thanks.

The Frank Butler tutorial is available at: http://www.concertina.com/butler/butler-the-concertina-tutor.pdf There is also the Simplicity tutor available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hk32ndn8cnvy1mu/Simplicity Tutor - The English Concertina.pdf

If you have real problems identifying the beast, the folks at the Czech Area Concertina Club might be able to offer advice? That's the web page but I think they also have a FaceBook page...

Unfortunately not - the site was up and running some time earlier this year (in the last couple or three months), along with details of how to purchase the books. It's gone AWOL some time recently and I suspect that the stuff may simply no longer be available. The Irish Concertina book is still available from another publisher, but it's the two Anglo books we're after. Time to resort to the photocopier, I think... Thanks - I always forget about the Wayback machine - it's certainly sometimes very useful, not in this case, I'm afraid...

Mick Bramich's web site: http://mickbramich.co.uk/ seems to have disappeared. Does anyone here know anything about this - I'd like to recommend his excellent introductory books to a new player. Thanks.

It's me!!! I have a low 'panic threshold' I'm afraid, and just get jittery when I see peculiar stuff like this...🙂

I dunno? I looked at the relevant part of the ABC specification at the time, and the description there didn't seem to 'fit' in the sense that in the examples in the documentation, the notes being 'tupled', and the tuplet specification were separated, whereas in the example I found, the notes were intermixed with 'individual' tuplet specifications? It just seemed weird - it still does...🙂 FWIW, I found another even more baroque incantation about an hour ago - I won't bore a long-suffering public with the details of that one. I shall file it away somewhere to ponder over during the long winter nights...🙂

Thanks for that! [1] yes it is from The Session and I found it while 'randomly' sampling tunes using ME's program - I deliberately 'anonymised' the sample as it didn't seem particularly relevant, but I did find a few other examples of this syntax: https://thesession.org/tunes/4732 https://thesession.org/tunes/6885 https://thesession.org/tunes/11494 (2nd setting) Those 3 in The Session, plus one from Joe Offer's Tune Book - for a grand total of 5, so it ain't a major problem - I was just curious as I hadn't seen that particular incantation before... The transcriptions are all from different folks, and ar all very old - maybe there was some software around at the time which did something wonderful with this encoding... [2] Yes, there seem to be many ways of expressing triplets. I have a small collection which I've found here and there, and which I treasure. Me I'm a simple soul - I stick with the basic (3xyz...🙂 Michael, thanks for that test. It behaves as I would expect when I run it past EasyABC. What was puzzling me was the '1' in the 3:2:1 incantation, and (mostly) the application of that incantation to each individual note in the sequence...🙂 Thanks, both...

I just came across a rather strange specification of a triplet. It can be seen in the following code: X:7961 T:Tom Kinsella's M:4/4 L:1/8 Q:1/4=130 R:March K:Gmaj dc|:B>A Bc dG Bd|eG ce d2 g>f|e>f ge dB GE|A2 AB A2 dc| B>A Bc dG Bd|eG ce d2 g>f|(3:2:1e(3:2:1f(3:2:1g d>B cA FD|1 G2 GF G2 dc:|2 G2 GF G2 ef|] |:gd Bd eG ce|d>e dB G3 B|Ad fa ge ^ce|d>^c de/d/ =cA FD| B>A Bc dG Bd|eG ce d2 g>f|(3:2:1e(3:2:1f(3:2:1g d>B cA FD|1 G2 GF G2 ef:|2 G2 GF G4|] The format is (3:2:1x(3:2:1y(3:2:1z and they appear in the score as a 'triplet' with a '3' below each note in the triplet. They seem to sound as a conventional triplet on playback, and I have replaced them with (3xyz with no apparent deleterious effect. I think the '3:2:1' is saying something like: 'play 3 notes in the time of 2 notes for the next 1 note' which doesn't make much sense? Question: Is there something about this 'odd' way of specifying a triplet which I have completely missed? Thanks.

I got a little more 'interested' in this style, so I did a little cleaning up of the tunes in my Tune Book. Here are 5 more tunes (in 'friendly' keys) in ABC format and as a score (PDF). I can't speak for the 'authenticity' of the tunes, but apart from a little cosmetic editing, the ABC code is 'as found' (the original sources are cited in the code). They all sound quite jolly - I think I may give one or two of them a try... ____________________________ Edit a few minutes later: I just cut-and-pasted the ABC code for the whole batch into ME's program and they all worked fine - you can play around with this, even if you are not familiar with ABC. Try changing the tempi (which may be a little slow)... Zweifacher.abc Zweifacher.pdf

[1] My pleasure! [2] Well worth a look... [3] Yup! That's why I accompanied my post with a heads-up about the possible difficulties of coping with changes in rhythm. I just did a quick-and-dirty extraction of Zwiefacher tunes from my tune book - I came up with 10 tunes - all of them had changes in rhythm, and I know that I would find it awkward coping with this...

Another possibility may be the (Bavarian?) 'Zwiefacher' dance tradition? I can't comment on it's popularity or otherwise during WWI, but if you are ABC-savvy, you will find a few examples on Seymour Shlien's web site - look at the International Dance file. There are 5-6 examples of the Zweifacher form there. With an ABC reader/editor such as EasyABC you should be able to generate simple printable scores (PDF). Otherwise, you can find examples of this folk (dance) form on YouTube. I can't comment on the appropriateness of this style of music for the 'tina because I haven't tried it (yet...). One of it's 'features' apparently, is that the tunes tend to have changes in rhythm, so that may affect it's 'suitability'...

I became the second custodian of this instrument in 2015, and use it regularly for Morris. It's a great instrument. It's been serviced once since I acquired it, and is still firing well on all 4 cylinders. I also have a Traveller and it too is first-rate... Marcus are well worth investigating if you are after a 2nd instrument...

Slight thread drift here, but this is one of my perennial hobby horses. I have seen examples of (non-music related) 2nd hand books being offered for over £200 when the book was still available from the original publisher for the original cover price - approx. £20. As Mike Franch says, beware!

Thank you very much! I have roughly a dozen of these 'slow when not danced' annotations in my collection of ABCs, and they've always left me a bit puzzled - wondering whether they are played at the gallop for a dance, and slowly otherwise, which, as an idea, somehow didn't 'feel' right. That clarifies it! (Later edit: I should perhaps say that those annotations are all in Strathspeys by William Marshall, and that I don't know whether they were in the original (printed?) score, or were additions by the original ABC transcriber - that's why I'm in such a quandary...) I'll have a look at that Paul Anderson video later. Thanks again!

Yup! Apart from weeding out all dodgy rhythms and key sigs., I also ditched tunes from Ukraine, Macedonia, etc. from that small selection. 'Twould have been at least twice as large otherwise.

Thanks for that! I'm a great admirer of William Marshall's music. This is played rather slowly, but I've seen instructions on ABC transcriptions 'Slowly unless danced'. Is it acceptable to play it a bit quicker then?

My pleasure! It keeps me off the streets and out of the public houses, as they say. If you are ABC-savvy, you can always transpose some of the weirder key sigs. into concertina-friendly keys..... Further down the road, I'll be interested to hear how you get on when you actually try this stuff out on an audience of Serbs. I haven't actually tried any of them myself...🙂

I have little or no expertise/knowledge of Eastern European music, but here's a selection of tunes from my 'master tune book' which appear to have some claim to being 'Serbian'. I'll make no comment other than that to me, the origin attributions of some of these tunes sometimes seems a little dubious? I've removed tunes in seriously weird keys and meters, and left in the source attributions so that you stand at least a chance of tracking down the originals if you are so inclined, because (warning!) I have edited all of these a little... I've attached all the tunes as an ABC file, plus one tune as a PDF so you can see what it looks like. If you are not familiar with ABC, I will post a PDF of the complete selection. If you want simple tablature, I will post a PDF with (ABT) tabs. MirkovoKolo.pdf serbia.abc