JimmyM

Im having a clear out and have a Hohner 48 button English concertina on Ebay for sale. I expect most of the users of this forum will be used to something a little better but maybe you know of someone just starting out.... i bought it second hand a bout a year ago because i was curious about the English system. I think if i wasnt already a few years down the road with the Anglo i'd have kept it but there you go ;-) If it sells through here I will make a donation to the site if you or anyone you know is interested the link is http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=172322649229#ht_500wt_1288 thanks

Keep that instrument! Sell the kids! (just joking obvs) Drape a big towel over it when your playing. Find time in another part of your day to practice. in the car, when the kids are doing something else

I'm guessing its a "WOW -thats a lot of money" I started out with a chinese made £400 30button Anglo instrument, which i still have and take to work every day but the next step up was 3x that amount. Thats quite a jump and represents (to me) a serious investment. Fortunately I was able to sell my first born into slavery and my soul to the devil

Assuming that you've written the opening post yourself, read and pretty much understood all the answers, I would reckon that you have the capacity to read at least the melody line of 'dots on the stave' type music. Having messed about with almost as many types of TAB as there are languages, I came to the conclusion that a music score is just another type of TAB but it just happens to be the most popular and widely available. Nowadays the internet can provide you with a music score and it won't take too much effort for you to convert that to an abc type text but why bother? You've learned to read and write English, which is a pretty complex and not totally logical language. Getting a basic grasp of musical notation and applying that to your instrument is relatively easy by comparison. :-) having said all that, I do use abc players and even (for melodeon) a fingering generator but I'm still a big fan of reading the score. Hopefully it all helps me to learn and play

That would be great, if you've time. Will message you nearer to November and see how you're fixed. We're only a few miles from Calstock Arts Centre in Cornwall so if you needed accommodation...

Hmm i guess the usual advice would be what kind of music do you want to play, any teachers local to you may influence your choice of system. How much money you have available for an instrument and probably lots more questions ;-) for example, I've always played Irish/English traditional type music. So when i decided I'd like to play concertina I pretty much knew what kind of music I wanted to play and what system (anglo) I would use to do it. I bought a cheapish chinese made concertina that served me well during my first year but you soon want to upgrade ;-) I have tried the English system too. Tbh, i think if id started with that i may have stuck with it. Theres a certain logic to it. However I didnt, I started with a 30 button anglo and several years later i play every day and love it ;-) Good luck on your journey

I'd noticed this listing too. Is the seller known to members on this forum? It seemed a reasonable 'buy it now' price but not too much info on the concertina itself.

You and Geoff Lakeman in Cornwall. Well that's certainly not to be missed.

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that doesnt understand this sentence?

Hiya I've just messaged you my email for pics and perhaps a sound file. I'm quite interested myself but I could upload any pics you send me,if you like?

Welcome to the world of squezeboxes ;-) I used a free tuning app on my fone to 'map' out all the notes when i first started, or you could use a cheap electronic tuner for guitars type thing

Hello sorry Ive not been online for a week or so. Would you be able to put up any pictures please? And which layout does it have? thanks jimmy

What kind of price are you after?

My step father was a man that could hear a piece of music and then play along within minutes on has piano accordian. I have vivd memories of playing him the latest Stevie wonder album in the 70's and then him playing along to it! :-) I, on the other hand, have no such talent. I slavishly practice on my own every day and take opportunities to play with others when i can ( i work shifts) The tunes i know, i can play fairly well and I try to learn a new tune at least one a month. i can read written music just about but once a tune is in my head I would probably never look at the sheet music again. I liken it to an actor learning a script. I'm sure there are probably better and more efficient ways of learning but the repitition seems to work for me. Having said that, I try to spend as much time playing stuff I know well as I do learning new stuff. What interests me, as well, is how many tunes can i hold in my head. I'm in my mid 50's and assuming that my mental faculties are well in decline by now :-)

I'm guessing that your concertina is in the keys C/G? and as a 20 button theres still LOTS of tunes avaialble to you before you start to need the extra notes available on a 30 button. Lots of the Irish stuff in the key of G, some in the key of D. Lots and lots of English trad tunes. Just off the top of my head: Egan's Polka, O'Keefe's Slide. Rakes of Mallow. Speed the plough. Soldiers joy.... The music for all these is readily available on the interweb Thinking about it, I've only been playing a year and i have a 30 button but, at the moment. i very rarely venture into that top row :-)

I've recently had a scam approach when selling. I had a cheap English concertina that i wasnt using so i put it up for sale on Gumtree, Very quickly I had someone offering to buy it at the full asking price (around the £100 mark) from an African country. They said they were going to get their courier to collect it from me and wanted to know my bank details so they could transfer the money. Somehow this didnt seem to ring true. They hardly mentioned the concertina (i.e. its condition, tuning...) and it seemed an awful lot of trouble and expense to go to for what was a pretty cheap chinese concertina. At the time there was a programme on Radio 4 telling how some scammers offer to buy and then send you an over payment by 'mistake' and ask you to refund the difference only to find that their original payment is then reclaimed somehow. I decided that this was what was going on and stopped responding to their emails. Maybe i lost out on a genuine sale but i dont think so. 'If it seems to good to be true, it probably is'

Paul Hardy, who i believe posts here sometimes (and has a great website where you can download Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook www.paulhardy.net ) has a midi English Concertina that he converted himself. I saw him playing it in the bar at WCCP Kilve weekend last year Anyhow he is probably the man to talk to

I too was a little suprised by the tone of some of the replies in this thread. I have to say i dont really understand where people are coming from. An Iranian/Scottish concertina player who is in his twenties??? How cool is that? And there can be no question of his ability. I'm new to the concertina, i didnt pick one up till my mid 50's. We need more young people like this playing ALL kinds of music if the instrument is to survive and be part of a living growing tradition ( whatever that means ;-) )

great pics. love the one of you in the chair - very atmospheric.

Now that's the best argument for getting a second concertina that I've heard yet!...or you just stick with the EC! Yes it's weird. When I first started I thought that there was no way that I was going to take up the Anglo after five years of playing the melodeon. However, having bought a couple of cheapies just to dip my toe in the water, I really got into it and now it's my "weapon of choice". Having said that, I still love playing the EC which is far more straightforward than the Anglo (to me anyway). I'm about a year down the road on my c/g anglo - and loving it. mainly cross rowing ITM ( or 'diddley diddley' as its known in our house :-) ) however i bought a cheap English on a whim and have to say the logic of its layout and the bisonoric-ness(is that even a word?) do appeal to me. I wonder if I'd started with an English.... well who knows? I tend to learn tunes rather than any specific system. So I know a few tunes that go up and down the rows. a few that go across the row and some very basic (harmonica style?) harmonised pieces. I've had a couple of Gary Coovers book's for a while now but not really dipped into them as i had got used to the tab system from Dave Mallinsons books. I'm now looking at Gary's books again as I too would like to add some 'harmonic' style tunes to my repertoire. I must have learned something as the tab no longer seems too difficult and with all the practice i've had over the last year I can usually cobble something together straight from the stave then find some better fingering options later. So i guess my 10p's worth would be to try a little bit of everything and see what works for you. :-)

thanks for your input Wendy. I read your blogpage - I cant say I understood all of it :-) I'm sure the English system has a lot going for it. I attended a concertina reidential weekend organised by the West Country Concertina Players and i would estimate that maybe 70% of the players there were English system players. Which suprised me. I am quite new to the world of concertinas and until fairly recently was only really aware of the Anglo system. So that was the system i originally went with -and its fine. I've spent a year getting to know it and will probably spend the remainder of my life doing so :-) I discovered that the B and Bflat on the left hand side are also reversed. I spoke to the guy i bought it from and he hadnt realised either. He said he bought it new from a major chain of folk music instrument suppliers here in the UK -so they obviously hadnt been checking what they sold either. At some point I may attempt to swap the reads round myself. They are accordion reads and waxed into place. But in the mean time i shall pick up my Anglo and put the English up on the shelf as a little reminder that, mostly, you get what you pay for :-)... and the gig bag that came with it is ok ;-)

i quite like it. I think its a take on the classical tattoo of hands in prayer usually with prayer beads draped over them. kind of saying how important the instrument is to the tattooed person. Just a shame its not an anglo

thanks for the replies folks. I have checked it with an electric tuner and just those two are reversed. i will ask the original owner if he had it done but somehow I think you'd tell any prospective buyer before hand I suspect, as Theo says, that it probably came from China like that. Who knows? maybe it'll be worth loads of money like when the post office produce a defective sheet of stamps or something? I think this marks the end of my Chinese acquisitions -though my Sutherland Bronwyn Anglo has been a great starter instrument I bought it because it was cheap and i wanted to try out the English system -I can see the appeal; logical layout of the buttons and unisonoric but i think i may have travelled too far down the Anglo road already. I'll keep hold of it for a while longer at least and certainly either swap the valves around myself or get someone else to do it. thanks again

hello I've just received a Scarlatti SCE30 which i bought second hand privately. A quick look on the internet tells me that my buttons should be as per the attached foto This would seem to make sense to me HOWEVER on the left handside the F and F# buttons are reversed. The right handside is exactly as per the foto (Where my picture says it should be a high F its an F# and where it says the note should be an F# its an F) The instrument is in as new condition and I'm guessing that the guy that sold to me did not realise this -an error in production perhaps? Anyhow my question is, how easy is it to put this right?

That's not just a bit suspicious it is a well known scam and should be reported to Ebay. In fact circus a hijacked Ebay account. Look at the sellers other items and you will see similar offers shown in photos. i saw this ad last night and thought it must be some kind of scam - though i have bid £5 :-) I was going to report it to ebay but the app on my fone doesnt seem to allow this. How does the scam work? Do i email them and they then offer to do a deal outside of ebay and i subsequently send them my cash ect etc? Does this mean I'm not going to get a jefferies for £5?! :-)