Pianist
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Posts posted by Pianist
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4 hours ago, Ubizmo said:
There's a high Ab on the left hand. I guess better concertinas have enharmonics on both hands?
Yes for G#.
Playing Ab is possible but tricky, if you go F# G# A because they're all on the same side of the concertina.
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Yes, my bad. It's the topG# that's missing and that's a pain if you play any pipe marches which all live up ther and use G#.
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On 10/29/2025 at 9:55 PM, Ubizmo said:
I imagine the added range of the 48 buttons would be mainly relevant to the classical repertoire. That's not a major concern for me, but I guess you never know.
I'm having fun, that's the main thing.
Great. Having fun is the main thing
48 keys aren't just for classical. Depending on the style you play you canl run across a lot of accidentals. The main problem iwth the Jack / Jackie is the lack of a G# in the middle. You have an A flat at the top (enharmonic equivalent) but that can be tricky to finge and a G# at the bottom. This makes tunes in A major - mainly Scottish- a bit tricky.
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Have a look at the Salvation Army Tutor, After some basic scales and tunes it's off into exercises in thirds, sixths, octaves and tenths. It suggests that you should start by playing a basic tune and then add start adding thirds and sixths below where appropriate. Basic exercises on dotted rhythms and syncopation are followed by tunes with harmony parts.
It's teaching it all at once in a sensible manner.
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Yes, the concertina was used for complex music. Somebody like Dave Townsend makes it look easy when he plays Bach. The Salvation Army Tutor gives loads of details about chords and includes things like Handel's Largo However, most people now play conertina in sessions as a melody instrument with chord players on guitars and such providing the rhythm rather than the harmony.
Chord playing or vamping on a piano (or piano accordion as second box in a dance band) is mainly about rhythm. This means that you don't move your right hand much and play the chords with your hand between A3 and A4 regardless of inversions or voice leading with a base octave on the root note in the left hand. A walking base in the left is a nice touch. You can add left hand chords below a melody but you tend to move between a base octave and the rest of the chord in a typical oompah pattern.
If concertina players want complex harmonies, they often play in groups with different instruments taking on different parts.
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Try something like irfanview - https://www.irfanview.com/ - to reduce them. Lovely littlwe program, once you've got it installed, click on the first image in your folder and then on image in te menu bar. The select resize, resample and scale it down. Click on file and then save as and give it a different name, ideally in a different folder. The nice thing is that if you press the space bar, it loads the next image. Repeat until they're all done.
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We moved to the York area six years ago. My wife grew up in York and we've visited regularly over the years. We stayed just off Bootham for six months till we found a place to buy. Yes, it's more trafficy and touristy. It's alot more gentrified than when my wife grew up there and went to Queen Annes. That's why we moved out to Easingwold.
Tthere is, however, lots of music. We went to the York U3A folk group and found that the guy who ran it then played a duet. We also went over to Ripon and there are two other concertina players there - one Anglo and the other English (like me).
There's also a flourishing Scottish Country Dance scene and there was a Ceilidh club up at Tang Hall.
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4 hours ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:
On my set up I get a message about it being 'not secured' - yet it seems ok to me when have looked on it.
Basically this means that the site does not have an SSL certificate installed. This means that all communication with the site is in plain text and not encrypted. For ordinary data this doesn't matter. It does matter if you've got passwords or are doing web commerce as the traffic is not secure.
In general many hobby sites have difficulty with SSL certificates either because they use a simple server or they are not configured properly. It usually doesn't matter but don't buy anythingfrom them or give out any important details.
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Maybe because of the link format.
I'm on chrome and it downloads. You can then click on the download link and it opens in a new tab.
If you're used to sites where you click on a pdf and it opens directly either in a new tab or a modal window then the download behaviout may be confusing.
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On 5/4/2025 at 7:52 PM, Paul_Hardy said:
It does annoy me that we still seem to be continuing the multi-century inflation in tempos, and deflation of typical note lengths. We are making yet more use of semiquavers and demisemiquavers (16th and 32th notes in USA), and less of semibreves and minims (whole notes and half notes). In original stave-based musical notation, the breve (US Double note) was the shortest note (breve = brief), with longer ones being the Lunga and the Maxima. Now the breve is the longest one used.
It seems that people writing music wanted to hear it faster, so wrote it with shorter note lengths. However the singers and players wanted it slower, so they stretched the played length of a crotchet, quaver etc. Over time we had to use shorter and shorter written notes for the same sound!
Hmm. Look at something like the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book or any decent book of divisions.The tune may start in mininims or whole notes but after three divisions it's quavers (8th notes) after four divisions it's semiquavers (16th notes) and the final divison would be demisemiquavers (32nd notes). Nothing to do with wanting it faster, just a natural development of the tune.
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Combination of things.Yes, you only need the thumb tips in the straps to be able to get to the first octave. It helps to tighten the straps to make this firmer. Yes, you only need to hook onto the rest to get some control. No you shouldn't be supporting the weight. Rest the concentina on one knee and use that to support the weight. Look at videos of players to see how they do it.
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I had piano lessons as a child and picked it up again in retirement. My wife plays folk fiddle and it was a natural match. However, a piano, even a keyboard, is far from portable. I tried piano accordion but to no avail so decided on the English concertina as a portable alternative. The English suits a pianist and it's easy to sight read once you get the hang of it. I started with a borrowed Jackie and then bought one to see how I got on. After going to Swaledale Squeeze in 2017, I ended up with a nice Lachenal and haven't looked back. We both play at two local U3A groups and find it great fun.
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Depends what you play. Scots tune (really traditional) often require the fiddler to use 3rd position so high c3 is quite usual. Similarly, both Scott Skinner and Phil Cunningham will start on a low A and work up. Scots tunes can often be in A major so use a lot of G#.
Playford tunes will often be in B flat - again a challenge. The real beggar is Carolan who can write in F minor (A flat major equivalent) and the EC doesn't have a D flat.
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It's not just Banks. York has lost the physical Red Cow Music store as well. However, there are all sorts of outlets around York catering to all sorts of squeezables. Acorn Music - mainly accordions - is at Stillington. Red Cow is up at Thornton-Le-Dale. There's Squeezebox Marketplace at Boroughbridge. A little further afield is Hobgoblin in Leeds. So the death of Banks is not a total disaster.
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On 4/20/2022 at 12:04 PM, Steve Morrison said:
This book is now back in stock at https://redcowmusic.co.uk/product/contemplating-the-concertina/
Be warned: on the very first page of tuition Mr Atlas will have you playing a scale of C# Major in six sharps, as an exercise to familiarise yourself with the enharmonic accidental buttons which the odds are you’ll never have touched before.
C# Major in however many sharps is just D flat major (5 flats with D flat using C# instead) You run across that in F minor or A flat major as well.
The real fun is to play in B# major with double sharps - B# C## D## etc
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Try Dave Townsend
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Chopin preferred to start pupils on B major because that fitted the hand to the piano better - long fingers on sharp notes up high, short fingers on white notes down low. That way pupils developed better technique. Maybe we need to look at what is an "easy" scale on the concertina in the same way.
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I certainly wouldn't call Alistair Anderson reserved. Anybody who's seen him swinging his concertina around will know what I mean. Not on concertina, I knew a fiddler (English but of Irish descent) who played Scots tunes with a distinct Sligo slide feeling. It's musical background and character , not nationality, that tends to affect playing style.
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2 hours ago, Tiposx said:
And here is where I bought my Morse
https://redcowmusic.co.uk/instruments/concertinas/english-concertinas/
The York shop has shut, but was a great place to go.
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We're very well served here in Yorkshire. I've got two shops near me:
and
When I lived in Norfolk, there was also
a first rate restorer used by Barleycorn who also posts on this site.
Don't forget
although they tend to be more expensive.
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10 hours ago, Gail_Smith said:
I play EC. For me the difficulties currently arise when trying to sight-read dots that suddenly hit you with an A# or a Db. Because they are not where I want them to be. I suspect this is something i will get better at in future and eventually it won't be a problem... but it is at the moment. I have no idea if this is also a problem with the various duet systems.
If you're sight reading, you should scan the piece for "fun" bits e.g. B to E on the same side or A# / Db then it becomes a bit easier.
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Interesting problem. One answer is - don't use your thumbs!
Have a look at this by Michael Jary from Swaledale 2013
I saw hime at Swaledale in 2018 and his handling of the box is ... odd!
He's a York bloke and has done workshops at the Yorkshire concertina club - https://yorkshireconcertinaclub.weebly.com/news/michael-jary-workshop
Hope you find some solutions.
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1 hour ago, Geoff Wooff said:
Beyond four sharps and three flats on the English keyboard the regular sharing of notes between left and right hands starts rapidly to breakdown. So Eb, Bb, F, C, G, D, A and E and their relative minors are comfortable keys within the system.
F's relative minor is A flat with Bb Eb Ab and Db. Db is missing and you need C# (if you have equal temperament tuning) so F minor is tricky. But that's the easy one. Bb major has a relative minor of Db ? (and 5 flats) or enchromatically C# and Eb has a relative minor of Gb or enchromatically F# none of which are concertina friendly.
I'm a pianist and have found the English the easiest to adapt to. I play some Scottish tunes which regularly go up to E6. As to tunes in "odd" keys the only one that I regularly play is Miss MacDermott (Carolan) which is a minor key version of Princess Royal. In Carolan it's in F minor, but the usual session version is in G minor which is a lot easier to play.
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1 hour ago, David Colpitts said:
Many musical friends play English. They can play perhaps fastest and most fluidly, since all tunes split between both hands. If I hadn’t spent years on Anglo, and had begun with EC, I suspect that’d be the one for me. But, like piano, seems to require 12 fingering patterns for 12 major keys, and another 12 for 12 minor keys. So, Hayden remains the winner for me.
There are only a limited number of finger patterns. Most of the sharp keys (and their minors) use the same fingering. English is a great system for keyboard players because you are used to working with both hands together and doing different things. It also helps (with equal temperament) when you're playing in crazy keys - like Carolan's Miss McDermot in F minor - where you have to do enharmonic substitutions.
Basically, the choice of system comes down to your musical background and what exactly you want to play.
C sharp and odd keys!
in Teaching and Learning
Posted
If you want something odd try Miss MacDermott by Carolan in F minor as in Donal O'Sullivan book on Carolan.
(It's basically Princess Royal in a minor key and is usually transposed to G minor.)