wes williams

Apparently not. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh, foroverly pedantic Jim: Rhomylly connected the two versions as being one in the first post of this thread. (Oh no she didn't - oh yes she did- but please! lets not get into that waste of bandwidth - that's how I read it). I once got a tape of SO'C from a charity shop, but couldn't stand more than couple of minutes of it, although I tried hard, so will happily admit to knowing SFA about her, and I bow to your vastly superior knowledge of this screaming angst stuff. You are also not the James/Jim Lucas I went to school with (but if you were, it might explain a lot )

As Frank said above Love the music for its inherent musical qualities, not for its dubious political motives. I don't know what axe SO'C was trying to grind here, but 'The Foggy Dew' was being sung at least 100 years before the Easter Uprising (John Bell of Newcastle, MSS at Kings College, c.1810). Be very suspicious of the motives of these kind of people!

This could be for quite a few reasons - if your instrument is old and a bit wheezy, you won't have the spare air. Bellows control is something that has to be learned, and as you play more (and perhaps faster), it will improve. There are a lot of tricks that you can use - for instance, the back row on the left hand, and the front row on the right can give you almost a complete run of notes in either bellows direction. Its worth sitting down and writing out exactly which notes are where, and then planning how you can play a particular tune. You should be able to acheive that with practice. Most people wouldn't start and stop the bellows, although its possible to do that. Going back to the comments above, quite a few notes are duplicated,so you could alternate fingers sometimes, depending on what note you were playing.

Hi, The questions may be general, but the answers will vary according the individual asking them, and what their aim is. I'll try to answer them briefly, but in a different order. If you are the kind of person who learns by playing tunes, rather than worrying about what note you are actually playing, the tutors will help you get an idea of what buttons to press and in what order. If you have a more formal musical background, you may struggle as you'll have to try to forget what you already know, and approach it from a simpler 'do-re-mi' perspective. Depends on what style you play in - Irish style tends towards melody mainly on the left, using the right for notes beyond those available on the left, and for various effects like trills and triplets, etc. English style is melody mainly right, accompaniment left. But there are sub-divisions of each style which will disagree with such a general definition. Again, it depends on the style played. Irish style players rarely use anything but C/G, and tend to treat other pitches in the same way as you would a 'low' set of pipes. Generally, the Irish style explores more 'keys' - which it can do as its much more of a melody-only style. English style players tend to be more row-based, and you'll often find them with a box of two or more instruments, so they can change instrument to change key. In some ways you are starting lucky - a 20k D/A can play in the fiddle keys D/G/A with only C natural missing. But perhaps you'll have to explore the two styles of playing more, before you decide which way you want to go?

I don't think we can praise Bob enough for the work and effort he has put into this! It is a real legacy to the concertina world, although Bob continues to modestly try to hide behind the fact that its a Horniman Museum work. Some of us were lucky enough to be beta testers on the early site, and as Allan Atlas indicates above, some work has already started. We have already produced a draft index by date of C104a (the ledger containing the first 1500 instruments), since it was the only one that is not date based. So before anybody goes off into a research project, its probably worth checking here to see if anybody else is working along the same lines, or has already completed something you need to do. All hands to the pumps! best wishes ..wes

Although perhaps we should also note that Wheatstone reeds generally changed from rivetted to screwed around the start of the period that you propose.

You are welcome, Henk. I'd also like to point out a free ABC music system I've just discovered for PC called ABC Navigator. It seems very easy to use, except you need to change the file extension to .abc to get it to work.

Its probably a 39 key. See Maccann's Tutor for a diagram.

If you can handle ABC format look here. Asturias is next to Galicia.

When faced with something like this, I usually go to Mudcat. There isn't anything thrown up by their search engine that helps, but its a good place to 'ask the experts'.

I had the same information in my mind, and I suspect "Inventor" told me originally. But by coincidence, I found a copy of C&S No.22 (Spring 1990) today, where Stephen Thomas Thorn wrote: Having been trained to repair concertinas by my now father-in-law (Marcus of Marcus Music) for six years, I started my own business (Thomas Concertinas) in 1985. There is also a review of a Thomas Anglo in the same mag. [Edit to add the correct date for C&S No. 22]

Mark, Have a look at this thread re: Neovox

And if you wondered why I complained about misquoting my summary just look at this!. lachenal english concertina no 4138 35button... .. this concertina is obviously used ,having being built in1860. 36 years before it had been invented?

Well below is right. I have Maccanns 1271 and 1272, which are both highly developed instruments. If they didn't start at 1, then I would guess they started no lower than 1000. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've got number 31. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> .. and my first ever concertina is Lachenal Maccann number 689 Guess again?

By the 1910 MTD they had moved to 16 Pilgrim St, but aren't listed in the 1937 MTD.

We know that the 'C' referred to above was Frederick Close, Stanhope Place, a Boosey and Hawkes factory site. Its necessary to understand how much upheaval there was at Wheatstone at this time - the death of Edward Chidley in 1941 had led to the sale of many of the family shares to Boosey and Hawkes, and production was moved to Frederick Close at the end of the war, moving to Ives very shortly afterwards. Its not surprising if numbers are even more muddled at this time. I also believe that Harry Minting didn't join Wheatstone until later, so his references here seem to be based on production factory location, not on year.

Errm, well, yes! I don't publise it much generally, because there is hardly anything there, and until a few weeks ago, the site hadn't changed in three years. The timeline is due for updating and expanding in the near future. The only reason its there now is because Ken (Polish Fireball) Yagelski, wanted to do a timeline, and asked for info on English made boxes. And because people often ask; lvcott = Lovely Cottage, the name of my house, not because its chocolate box (although it is), but because the previous owner won at 20-1 on the 1946 Grand National the week she moved in, by betting on 'Lovely Cottage'.

When in doubt... So I wrote you a little program, and I've emailed it . It won't be perfect but try it and send me suggestions for changes, or problems If anyone else wants a copy, send me a message via email. You can have the source code (Delphi 5) too, if you want.

You can also read this thread for more info on Uhlig

It appeared in "Amateur Work Illustrated", Volume 3 - Popular Re-issue, by Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co. I can't tell you anything about the author. I picked up Volume 2 at a jumble sale many years ago, and it had a small piece about tuning which was published in The Concertina Newsletter (Free Reed) No. 3 January 1972. This article seems to be an expanded version of that.

Ken, Feel free to take the revision, and any future ones, any time you want! Thanks for all your hard work. best wishes ..wes

I can't explain why you are having problems,Theo. The PDF file is put together in exactly the same way as many ICA archive files, and I haven't had any complaints about those yet. The only thing I can think of is that if you are using a slow phone modem Acrobat shows you the pages as empty before they are downloaded. I'm sorry it is as large as 1M, but its original images, and I can't make it much smaller without losing detail.

I've just updated the "Other Makers" section on my site http://www.lvcott.fsnet.co.uk/ but to give you repairing folks here a fair share, I've also added an 1890'ish article on Repairing Concertinas. Hope you enjoy it ... wes

I'm trying hard to get an update to the whole c.net "Dating your Concertina" finished, after years of failing. I've completed (?) the update to the "Other Makers" section, and posted it where the previous update was. It will need some minor changes for the full article update, but please feel free to make any comments. I'll try to add more updated sections as I finish them. Thanks ..wes

So while Chris has phrased it in terms of "demand", it seems to be more that the buyer got the key that a particular maker had used. The article also suggests that many instruments were double reeded, and gives instruction on how to tune these kind of instruments, including: There is a class termed "Celestial", which, properly, should have one note tuned the slightest degree sharper than the other. so playing together would have been even more difficult.