Gail_Smith

thank you. Some lovely tunes here.

if anyone wants a harmonium as a restoration project, I have one you could have (near Liverpool, UK)

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.

This is a question that comes up again and again and again. I am wondering if having a thread at the top of General Discussion on this , or a FAQ elsewhere on the site would be helpful. It could include 1. anglo, english or duet ? 2. what you get for your money at different price points 3. pointers to tutor books and online tutors. Point people who ask the question at this standard document/post - and then they can ask the more individual and interesting questions to the group ? Gail

but the Mona Lisa has got that concertina fixed-expression-of-concentration-linked-to-mild-panic perfectly. I now know that she was thinking "what the hell is the b music ??..how does it start ???.. and its coming up soon..."

Hm, it turns out that I already try to play a set with that great Paddy Faheys tune in it - its the other tunes i the same set that give me headaches ! Working on it tho...

interesting- thanks. That's a different Paddy Fahey's reel from the one I usually trip over at full speed (and no, I'm not getting confued with Paddy Fahey's jig). So I will give it a go. Thanks. I like Northumberland tunes and I have a lot of those long thin booklets with very small dots in them that are slightly too difficult for me to read without photo-enlarging. But the tunes do tend to bounce around a lot rather than have easy-to-play-on-an-EC runs. Interesting idea on the Bee's wing ! I see its often played in G as well. Confounding fiddlers isn'

Hi I'm looking for a reel or two that fall naturally under the fingers on an english concertina. The plan would be to get them up to speed to play in a public session (or post on the net in these strange times) . So, lots of nice runs, easy keys, and no repeat-note triplets please ! I seem to choose to practice interesting (often far too difficult) tunes rather than those i could get to a respectable standard. So it would be good to work on something that is naturally easier for a change. It would be even better if the tunes were hard to play on the fiddle.

OK- I DID say "aide-memoire". My point wasn't to sight-read at speed (although i do try to do that with the 2-box-files-of-paper the longstanding group in the Irish Centre in Liverpool have as their repertoire - in the hope that eventually i will be able to play many more of the sets without referring to the notation) There are tunes i can happily play at home, but cant necessarily remember how to start the second tune in the set when I am in public. I like to use dots to get over that awful panic when you feel the B music approaching and you are so nervous tha

I am wondering if its getting to be more socially acceptable to have the dots in front of you as an aide-memoire in sessions ? This used to be a definite no-no. The Kingston Irish Tunebook implies that you need to sit at the feet of the gurus for months, and get a nod from the guys in charge, before even daring to get an instrument out. However, I have "dropped in " on a small number of sessions in the last few years and found that people were happily reading off paper and tablets. Particularly people reading lyrics and strumming on guitars. The friendliest was in Ulverstone,

Well, that was easy, when i finally had the time and courage to follow up your advice. Both D#s were loose in their reed shoes, as were a couple of the very high notes [I don't play these very often either]. They are now not loose and are essentially in tune. By the way - i was not intending ever to tune a reed higher just to please the fiddler, but i could see that she had a valid complaint when it was flat. The "swap the D# for the Eb" idea was a great bit of lateral thinking that would have been my next step. Thank you to everyone, particularly

Thank you everyone for PMs as well as this thread. I have been away for a few days and will get round to checking the reed bed tomorrow (which is now sounding to be the most likely explanation) and go through the tunings with an electronic tuner to see what i actually have. Particular thanks to David for reminding me how he tuned the concertina (its the Ediophone) and when he did it ! I have now looked up various different ways of tuning (I also have a hurdy-gurdy that has been set up using "just" tuning) and its clearly a really important issue for some people and can

Thanks for the hint about the reed shoe. i will try that.

I don't often play D# and i don't have a particularly good sense of pitch anyway. so I'm not sure - Until last month, i only really used it for some 18th century stuff and Adam Sutherland's "Road to Errogie" which he wrote in B, because he could. I'm now trying to get another Adam Sutherland tune - Inspector John Duff of Braemar Mountain Rescue - up to performance standard, but this time playing along with others. I think it probably been gradually going out of tune since it was last tuned as part of a general overhaul by the Concertina Tinker about years ago.

My D# [left hand, middle octave on a 48 key English system ] is about a quarter tone flat according to a fiddle player i play with who would ideally like it to be just a little bit sharp (just because of where the emphasis and drive are in the piece) on a piece we are playing together. I'm finding it really difficult to play the Eb instead. I don't want to send the instrument away .... is re-tuning it likely to be something i can do myself?I'm not proposing to tune it to anything other than a conventional D# - although it could be a D# in just temperament which is a teeny bit s