Steve Schulteis

No such problems with my copy. I agree with Simon - leave it under some heavy books and it will probably sort itself out.

I've seen you mention button pressing technique once before, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone else describe anything similar. Are you saying you sometimes press a button part way in order to restrict airflow to the reed? What sorts of effects are you trying to accomplish?

I'm one of your (sporadic) users, and the speedup is much appreciated - that was really my primary pain point. This has turned out to be a really handy improvement over a simple button diagram. The fact that it's always as close as my phone is also a huge plus, since I don't always have my music folder with me when I start thinking about an arrangement. Thanks for all the work you've put in!

You can use the circle of fifths to figure out which chords you're actually playing. To translate, find the chord that's written, and move one step around the circle in the same direction as C to G. So C chords become G chords, G becomes D, Am becomes Em, and so on. I also find it helpful to think about chords relative to the current key. Gary's books are a great place to start. I still make heavy use of the basic chord finger patterns found there. There are only so many ways to play a G chord on the left hand, and some are clearly better defaults than others. But eventually, it is worthwhile to sit down with a button diagram (or the fabulous anglopiano.com by @Luke Hillman) and work out different options yourself.

I suppose you could make a bow as long as you want. You just need to find a musician with long enough arms to use it. 😛

Hmm, I'm seeing the same thing. It's been a bit since I've used it; it's a shame if it doesn't work anymore.

I'm not aware of any preexisting transposed notation. Maybe somebody else is, though. I play G/D now, and I started out with the same book, but playing a C/G at the time. When I switched, I retrained to read music for the G/D. There are a few options, depending on your goals: If you're not concerned with reading standard music notation, you could just play from the tablature. These days, that's mostly what I do for harmonic arrangements from Gary's books and that others share online. I still read standard notation for melody-only pieces and my own arrangements, especially when playing with others. If you're not concerned with playing sheet music in the key written (e.g. when playing with others), you could read the notation as written for C/G, treating the G/D as a transposing instrument, similar to Bb trumpet versus C trumpet. Ironically, this is actually how I treat the C/G now, when I go back to it. You could try using some kind of OCR software to automatically convert the music to a format that's easy to automatically transpose. I don't have any experience with such software, but it's been discussed on this forum in the past. If you do manual entry, I'd copy it down in the original key first, to make it faster (and easier to check for errors). Then let software do the transposing. I like https://www.mandolintab.net/abcconverter.php for that, but I also use MuseScore a lot.

I started out with the benefit of this forum. Without it, I might not have started concertina at all. In addition to all the helpful info, I've purchased each of my instruments from the buy/sell forum. I'm quite thankful, both for the work that goes into running the forum, and for all the interesting folks that populate it. Here in Iowa, the concertina is pretty novel. I know one other player - they play English and I play Anglo. I doubt I'm the only Anglo player in the state, but I have yet to find that I'm not, so I'm really glad for a place like this to learn and share tips, music, repairs, and so on.

Not quite what you asked for, but in Account Settings, under Content View Behavior, try setting "When opening content..." to "Take me to comments I haven't read".

Do you mean the orientation of a button diagram? As in this: http://www.korbo.com/piedcrow/diagrams/30btn0gc.gif Versus this? https://www.concertina.info/tina.faq/images/finger3.htm If so, I also like the horizontal layout better. But I've encountered people who strongly prefer the vertical arrangement and find the horizontal one totally nonsensical.

I'm not trying to say better or worse in that case. Just clearly different as a consequence of the instrument itself.

Absolutely. While drastic changes in the instrument can definitely affect the result (for an undisputable example consider trading a violin for a banjo), I think that a lot of the differences in quality have more of an impact on the performer than the audience. That's not to say they don't matter, though. The musician's enjoyment is important too, and it will help produce a more natural performance. I agree, but there's still the option of changing media when it's not appropriate for the works you want to produce. That doesn't always mean an "upgrade", either. Every tool has its limitations, and part of the artistry is deciding when to work within them and when to switch to something else. Limitations can breed creativity, but they can also be... limitations. 20-button Anglos are a great example of this. The notes that are available together force a different approach to some music, but other music is simply impossible to play on that instrument.

Simon, perhaps there is a miscommunication here? I don't think any of us are saying that you specifically need to get a different instrument if you are happy with the one you have. I, and I think most others, are more concerned with the advice we would give new and prospective players.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes, great music does come out of the more basic instruments. I've seen some really impressive playing on a Rochelle, for example. And I like the philosophy of making the most of what you have. On the other hand, for those that can afford it, the difference between lower and higher quality concertinas is astounding. Switching to a higher end instrument is like taking off heavy weights. The cheaper instruments generally have stiffer bellows and slower reed response. A skilled player may still get wonderful music out of them, but they'll likely do far better still with a nicer instrument, and it will be a more pleasurable experience for the musician. I think the right answer is actually the the usual advice: get the best concertina that you can afford. If all you can afford is the "entry level" instrument, then get that, and enjoy playing it. If/when you can afford something better, you'll be glad for the upgrade. Finally, once you get past a certain threshold of quality, I think the differences become more a matter of taste: do you like the sound of this instrument better than that, which one fits your hands better, etc. There may be trends in those preferences, but it's ok to disagree with the fashion. And there is something to be said here for the character of those cheaper instruments. Sometimes it might be just what you're looking for. For some music, a cigar box guitar is a better fit than a Martin. But given the choice, I'd spend most of my time playing the better instrument, and keep the cheapy around as a backup.

Aren't some Chinese free reed instruments made by making a cut to create the tongue and shoe from the same sheet?

I'd love to see a picture of the reed pans.

If you're planning to travel any time soon, you might ask here if there's any concertina players in the area you're visiting.

I'm afraid I don't have a scope. I'll throw an instrumentation amp in my next digikey order and see what that produces with a faster adc.

So far no luck with adjusting the dead zone of the load cell. I think it makes some difference, but it isn't getting me all the way there. There are a few more ways I can approach it, but I'm doubting this is really my issue. Looking at the electronics again, I'm using an HX711 to read the load cell value. This part has a max read speed of 80 samples per second. Compared with Richard's pure analog approach (which sounds super cool, by the way), that's likely to be a noteworthy difference in timing. It's still relatively quick as far as human perception is concerned, which is why I've mostly dismissed it up to this point. Maybe I'll give a faster amp/ADC a try at some point. I currently think the most likely difference is just how we're each playing the instrument. The fact that Richard found it strange to focus on bellows motion instead of bellows pressure suggests that we each think about the mechanics of the instrument a bit differently. For the record, I do think the resistance of the bellows is important/useful feedback while playing. But maybe the motion component is more important for me than it is for Richard. Or maybe it's that I'm just a less skilled player in general - I wouldn't be offended by that suggestion. 😛

That's definitely a possibility. I had tried adding some dead zone, and I remember it being unsatisfactory somehow, but I'll give it another shot. I can't really argue with that - I expect it would be utterly destroyed. I wonder how well most budget instruments would handle that sort of playing, though. The end tilt thing is definitely a limitation, and one that I had accepted. I suppose I could fashion some kind of u-joint on each end, but I'm not sure if that would help or hurt, and this thing is absurd enough already.

I don't think it's a delay in electronics or software - as far as I can tell, it's how quickly the bar actually flexes. Maybe it's my sloppy playing, but I get bellows changes after button presses that produce a sort of chirpy sound that I don't get with my acoustic. I've tried a number of changes to correct it, including more practice. If you're getting good results, I'd be interested to compare notes. My plan is to use the rate of change of the position. I agree that it's not a perfect analog for a real bellows, but an unmoving pressure sensor isn't either. Each captures only half of the feel of a real bellows.

Sorry to post over and over to my own thread, but in looking for that last link, I also stumbled onto this: https://www.midi.org/midi/midi/midi-articles/tirare-midi-string-instrument, which led me to discover that there is actually a device called a "string potentiometer" that is exactly what Owen described in a ready-made package. So there's another possibility for you.

Found the thing I was thinking of: http://www.crewdson.net/the-concertronica.html

A few other approaches that I've considered: Time-of-Flight Distance Sensor These operate by emitting a signal and measuring how long it takes to return after echoing off a target object. I've never been terribly impressed with the accuracy or reliability of ultrasonic distance sensors, but there are also an assortment of light-based options that should work better. This solution requires that the end with the sensor stays pointed toward the other end without anything in between. Some things to watch for with these sensors are response time, resolution, and effective range. Something like this might do the trick: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18993 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/5396/16129669 I've wondered if a DIY version of this could place the emitter and receiver on opposite ends of the instrument, removing the need to bounce the signal off a specific surface and eliminating the downsides of this approach. It would probably have to be ultrasonic to be feasible, but it might still be worth a try. I haven't found any commercially available products that function in this way - the emitter and receiver are always integrated into the same part. IMU In theory it should be possible to place a 9-DOF IMU in each end of the concertina, compute their relative positions/orientations, and use that to determine bellows motion. The main reason I didn't explore this route further is that it is one of the more expensive options short of building a real bellows. I've seen this approach suggested in the forum, but as far as I know, nobody has actually tried it. Capacitance-based Proximity Sensing This is probably too susceptible to interference (e.g. from the user's body) to work as a bellows sensor.

Because of how the mechanical linkage works, the rotation speed is nonlinear in relation to the bellows motion. The hall effect sensor gives me absolute position, not just speed, which will allow me to correct for this in software. There are optical encoders that can do this, but the hall effect sensor gets me 12-bit precision in a relatively small space for a few dollars. I considered that, and I think I've seen the idea suggested (maybe even implemented?) somewhere else. You would need at least three strings to account for tilting the ends relative to each other, unless you did something to prevent that, like my mechanism does. It would also produce a force trying to close the bellows, which you might want to counteract somehow. I may run into the same thing with my approach, since I expect a little bit of preload on the sensor arm will help reliability and responsiveness. The main reason I didn't go the string-winder route is that I didn't want to mess with multi-turn torsion springs and tangled strings.