Gail_Smith
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Posts posted by Gail_Smith
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I recently tried to play the "organ" line for Telstar on the English Concertina.
It starts with four major chords
F#
G
G#
A
they are all easy enough to play individually, but moving between them is very tricky because there is (obviously) no note or backup position in common between successive chords, and i often get lost whilst moving up or down a semitone. I'm hoping to have 4 notes playing for each chord with the tonic at the top and bottom. Is there any hope at all for a smooth succession of chords?
This got me started on trying to do what I probably should have done years ago, which is to practice chord scales. Most of the chords are not complicated but some are fiendish as part of a semitone scale including C# and G# (even though I have a choice of Ab or G#).
Has anyone got any hints and tips on how not to get lost going up and down a semitone-scale ? Before I develop some very bad habits ?
I havnt even started on minor chords yet....
Thank you
Gail
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I avoid sitting next to other box players. If I sit next to my friend who also plays concertina, all we hear is each others mistakes.
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Inherited it from my grandmother . She didnt play... I have only theories about why she had it.
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Harvest Home is not an easy tune on the EC. Repeated notes...arpeggios with the hand in an awkward position.....
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thanks Clive. That makes sense. I was very close to the microphone so I can blame the "proximity effect", and sit further away next time.
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I can mike up my concertina with a setup I have involving microphone leads running down the sleeves of a jacket. This works Ok for heaing myself play in a noisy environment eg. having to sit betweek a melodeon and a piano-accordion in a session. It also works well if I am plugged directly into a sound system and I have time to work with someone to get the sound right.
I also have a mike on my desk that I plug into my computer for zoom .
These both sound OK on recordings.
However, i have recently had problems dealing with a "naked" mike , set up for people to sing into (maybe playing a guitar). The sort of thing you get landed with suddenly at an open-mike evening, without the opportunity to fiddle with
I put the microphone at slightly-lower than concertina height yesterday - and didnt like the sound. The lower notes were really loud compared to the higher ones and they also seemed to come in too strongly and a little bit late. I also had poor recordings (done by a friend witha phone) problems at an open-mike evening as well.
Did the mike position/ type of mike / how far I was from it / ? / ? emphasis my poor playing ? Or was it something else ? Are most microphones optimised for voice ?
Any ideas on the best way to set up under these circumstances ?
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Hi. In equal-tempered tuning ( which is what most of us have on our ECs ), the EC does have Dbs. They're C#s.
Took me ages to get used to reading the dots for them though... I could see a Db geting closer and closer but didnt have the brain capacity to remember where to put my finger when I got there.
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I try not to be pedantic about which fingers go where, partly because it makes me more adaptable. Several really good players sometimes play two notes simultaneously with the same finger.
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I just use the "settings" (cogwheel icon) to slow down tunes I like on YouTube to 75% .
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I play EC standing for a Morris side, but sitting for more complicated tunes (where I sometimes use my little finger to play notes).
I have put a sash through the thumb straps and round my neck for playing when i am standing. This takes a proportion of the weight off the little fingers. It also means that I can carry it around more easily, so it is less likely to get stolen or roll down a hill into a river (I had a near-miss on this before I adoped using the strap). If I want to wave the instrument around while playing, I just let the sash loose. Maybe this idea would help you ?
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Andy - if he wants some informal support and getting started stuff, he is welcome to come round and we can work on things together. I'm in Neston. Contact me here or via Richard in Mersey or anyone from Mockbeggar. , Gail
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an added advantage of the "chords" approach is that many tunes we all see are written out with a melody line along with a "guitar" chord. So a first approximation can be to play the chord tonic (i.e. E for Em) as an accompaniment.
After that, if you are playing an EC in the most common keys that dont have many sharp or flats, and you want to accompany the tune with lower notes (including at the same time you play the tune) , one of the low A,G,B, Bb, C#, E or Eb notes are usually in the written chords somewhere (i.e. as a third or a fifth) and you can usually manage to find one of them that your fingers can drop onto relatively easily .
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its not as bad as playing a trumpet or tuba.
I use fingerless gloves with a metal-ended instrument and its OK.
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This is embarassing. I found my book, after hours of searching . It was in the photocopier. Thank you everyone for your advice. Gail
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I have lost my copy of the Steel Skies (Alistair Andersons tunes for English concertina, mandolin, whistle, and if I remmeber correctly, Northumbrian pipes) score.
Amazingly, there does not ssem to be another copy available on the internet.
I think I now have a group organised who want to play it .
Does anyone have a pdf or a book for sale?
thanks
Gail
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I have poor eyesight, and I use a relatively-inexpensive (compared with an I-pad) PC that will convert into large-screen tablet mode.
I then use a cheap but excellent programme called MuseScore to hold the actual music. Within MuseScore you can get rid of margins and "wasted" space and display the dots however you wish in terms of number of pages per display screen, mangnification, landscape/portrait etc. You can write text on the pages in MuseScore (e.g. play x3) and get it to scroll at whatever tempo you wish. Or scroll using a foot pedal. You can also store your music in "collections" , so something can be e.g. in "Mazurkas" and "French" and "played at so-and-so session" and "key of Bb" (although Key is a separate input term if you wish to enter it) The search function is fast enough to get the image of the dots up for the second-playthrough in a set if you can remember a critical word anywhere in the title whenever someone starts to play a tune.
Input as pdf or image.
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if your old-tunebook tunes are not very obscure there is a good chance that someone else has already put them into MuseScore library.
Although MuseScore is free, you do have to pay for access to the library, but once you are there there are a LOT of tunes in it, organised for a wide variety of instruments. It is not expensive.
You can then output the tunes them from MuseScore to ABC or MIDI files to learn. Or play along with the soundtrack with the notes you are playing highlighted on the score at the same time, which will probably mean that you are learning to read a score anyway. You can change the tempo easily, which means you can learn tunes slowly and then speed up once you know them.
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thanks Dave. I will be in touch if I cant bodge it to buy a bit more time
thanks Gail
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Thank you. Some good ideas to investigate here.
It's not the felt bush though because it is a metal-ended instrurment and has a sort of integral thickening plate that does that job and there is no felt - I should have said this at the beginning
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This is probably a question that has been asked before, but I couldn't find the answer. Sorry.
The left-hand middle B on my Ediophone has started to sound on the "push" after about half an hour of playing after I have put the concertina back together after the latest attempted repair. The button is ever-so-slightly depressed compared to those around it when it is at rest.
I have replaced the spring, but that has not solved the problem.
I have tried gently expanding the new spring to force the finger end up and provide more pressure on the pad, but that didn't solve the problem.
Its an awkward lever, because it is bent round the recently-replaced support post. I'm reasonably certain that the lever is not fouling on the post. The position of the post is such that the lever cant be easily removed from the fulcrum (e.g. to try bending it in a vice)
The problem was there before the post was replaced but has now got worse.
The pad is OK.
Should I
a) try putting the spring base into the wood slightly closer to the button (it is possible that putting it into the old-spring hole did not give it a firm enough foundation so the base is moving )?
b) maybe the replacement spring was a dud ? (see below)
c) add another spring to the lever ? I think i could fit one in, and someone has previously done that to another lever in the instrument)
I have now used up all my repair kit springs, so I would like to buy another half-dozen. Please suggest someone who is selling them in the UK.
Thanks
Gail
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Small point from a learner, that I don't think was covered above.
When trying to play gentle music e.g. slow airs, and ending a phrase softly, I found that i was sometimes losing the final quiet low note, or it was "soundling" later than I wanted. .
I think this is because the lower notes take more air going past them to sound. However, I was intuitively trying to land them at the end of a long drawn out bellows push (or more often, pull).
So I am now trying to change the bellows direction whenever this is a danger, just to avoid losing that critical note.
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thank you. Some lovely tunes here.
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if anyone wants a harmonium as a restoration project, I have one you could have (near Liverpool, UK)
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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.
Music playing game?
in Teaching and Learning
Posted
??? maybe play along to youtube videos ?