Steve Schulteis

The notation shared here has the ties+tab thing I was talking about:

I think this is a good advice for any concertina system, with the caveat that Anglo will have some bellows phrasing limitations that are not present on the others.

Having the concertina play mostly single notes at a time will avoid a lot of potential problems. It's a valid and common style on the instrument. And then look at bellows notation as a suggestion that the player might deviate from as part of their performance.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that does require a certain amount of experimentation. This is fine as a starting point, but I wouldn't be surprised if there need to be adjustments made by an experienced player. Awkward button jumps are sometimes worse for phrasing than bellows changes. The dashed lines are to indicate buttons being held across multiple melody notes. I've seen other methods of showing rhythm in the harmony part. One that I particularly liked was using ties in the staff notation. The chord names are redundant. They're nice if a guitarist wants to back you up. They're nice if you want to use them as a starting point for developing a different harmony yourself. Totally optional.

It's probably worth mentioning that "Duet" isn't a single layout - there are multiple different duet systems. I'm also curious where you got the impression that duet is more common amongst pro players than English. I would have expected the opposite. I certainly don't think of duets as being a close second to the Anglo in terms of popularity, amongst pro players or anyone else.

I think most concertina players probably spend most of their time within a relatively narrow subset of the instrument's range. I've seen notation with a lot of ledger lines, and I've used 8va before myself. I don't think there's an agreed upon convention. Tab is helpful because there are multiple ways to play the same note (or combination of notes), and which one is best will depend not only on what came before, but what's coming after. It includes bellows direction, which is important for phrasing. For simple melodies, it's normal to read from standard notation and develop a sort of intuition for this, figure it out yourself on any given tune, and scribble notes if needed (or probably more commonly, just memorize your choices). For playing harmonically, my experience thus far has been that learning from staff notation requires a lot of effort, because it leaves out a lot of important information. This is compounded by the fact that almost no music is written in this format specifically for concertina, so it usually requires adaptation to be playable at all. This is all ignoring that a lot of players don't rely on any notation at all. Playing by ear isn't uncommon.

Bisonoric would mean Anglo, which is what I play. At least for single note melody, regular staff notation is just fine. Single staff, treble clef is going to be preferred. If you want the concertina playing multiple notes at once, practice will vary more. A lot of people just think in terms of chords, and won't go much beyond a basic lead sheet. If the notes are close together (e.g. thirds to fifths) and only a couple at a time, you might still get away with standard notation. Otherwise, you'll probably be looking at some kind of tablature. I'd wager Gary Coover's tab is the most widely used. The range of available notes isn't fully continuous, so check a layout chart for that. Also make sure that all notes being played simultaneously are available in the same bellows direction. Here are links to the most common layouts: https://anglopiano.com/?cg-wheatstone-30 https://anglopiano.com/?cg-jeffries-30

Thanks. I guess I should have been more specific, because I'm especially curious to see the action (the button levers).

I'd be interested in seeing photos of the insides of you're up for that.

I prefer scientific pitch notation, which is your option 3, because it unambiguously identifies absolute pitch. ABC notation is ok too, but people aren't super consistent about representing absolute octaves (compare your option 4 with this), so I think of it as a relative system, similar to your remaining options. At the end of the day, I can work with any of them. At least they indicate relative octaves - I've seen button charts that failed to do even that much.

I sea what you did there. 😉

Last I checked, MuseScore 4's plugin system hasn't yet gotten the attention it needs. So it isn't surprising that you'd have a hard time finding anything that works well with it. I haven't updated my own plugin yet - still waiting on better support.

I actually started with that book, and probably made it half way through the tutorial portion before getting distracted by other music. I have no regrets about it. Starting from the beginning, a lot of it is less tricky than it looks, so don't be intimidated. You'll see many of the same chord patterns occur across the tunes, just like Clive was saying, and they become second nature before long. Sometimes there is a tricky reach, or you have to use different fingers than you normally would so you can hit the next button without disrupting the rhythm, but if you go in order, these get introduced a little bit at a time.

I like to rest the concertina on a corner. I find this allows a more ergonomic arm/wrist position. YMMV

Paul's advice to prop your knee up a bit is good. Are you resting your concertina on a flat or a corner?