Gail_Smith

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 sharper than equal temperament D#.

Thank you to everyone for your help on this. I now have a workable concertina again. I eventually used the 1" woodscrews kindly sent to me by a member of this forum. Thanks ! They are a little thicker than the originals, but that will help them stay put. They have gone in OK and don't seem to have damaged the posts, and I decided to live with the difference in length between the thumb and finger screws. If they had failed I would have used the machine screws, nuts and washers. what a helpful forum ! Hope you are well Dave. Gail

thanks ! Not easy to figure out what the best search terms for an internet search are. I spent a lot of time on model-making and dolls house websites.

Hm - but I can't find slot-head screws that are small enough.

I will try the machine screw option first, and the second (your suggestion of a post, screwing into both ends) if I split the wooden post while installing the machine screws. A nylon (rather than brass) post looks like an option. I hope to be replacing other smaller (rusted) screws at the same time - it looks like I will be having Pozidrive heads to everything eventually. I'm sure Mr. Lachenal - as an engineer - would approve of Pozidrive screws, and wish he had invented them. Thank you so much, both of you, for your really helpful suggestions. Gail

thank you.

goodness--- i didn't want to make people leave.... sorry

I'm having trouble finding suitable woodscrews for replacing those that hold the plates on to my ediophone. They go through the plate or thumbstrap, down through a wooden post (post is about 13mm long) and then through - and out the other side even - the wooden plate through which all the valve holes are cut out.. Multiple repairs and over the years (all of which require these screws to be removed), and some rusting on the screws has resulted in damage to the heads. The "slot" at the top of the screws are now damaged and so its increasiungly difficult to remove and replace them. I suspect the use of the "wrong size" of screwdriver has also contributed (I have no idea what the "right size" would be... presumably the one Mr. Lachenal used in his workshop ). Anybody got any ideas where I can get x4 replacement screws? My internet searches have been unsuccessful - but maybe I am not using the right keywords. Approx 1 mm diameter 25 mm long thread on the bottom 12 mm countersunk I would also like to replace the shorter screws holding the thumbstrap and finger unit in place. thank you Gail

why is it important for us to declare our gender before discussing concerinas on this forum ?

think I have almost got the hang of this. Thanks

thank you

Thank you so much. I'm sure mine was not orange ! Gail

Hello, I have bought the paper version of the above tunebook twice, and have foolishly lent it to someone-unknown and the replacement was "lost in the post" (along with a lot of my other dots...), so I feel as if i have some sort of "moral right" to the book even though i don't currently own a copy! . I am now trying to go digital , and Googling identifies several places where I could download it - but none of them work for me. Does anyone know where it might be available as pdfs please ? than you Gail

the classic tune that everyone (?) knows is the irish washerwoman. The type of thing I'm trying to explain is in bars 5 and 6 of the B music, where i would want to only "just touch the string" for the repeated g. Its easier to do when the "light touch" note is higher then the melody (as here) because the higher notes do not sound as loud as the lower ones with similar pressure. But other tunes (or indeed this one, if you use the G an octave lower) have the repeated note lower than the melody line - often requiring changes of which finger you have to use on the button to accommodate the rest of the tune. I do use the "drone" approach a bit when the repeated notes are higher than the melody (I like drone music- i play the hurdy-gurdy - badly- as well as the concertina) but i think they overpower the melody if used for lower notes. I can manage different volumes with the repeat notes, using bellows pressure, when playing slowly - but slowly isn't how these tunes are played in the Liverpool/UK part of the world. Too fast for me to exchange fingers for them, never mind getting different emphasis on the second and third notes. I will experiment with shortening notes/not opening the valve fully and see if i can get that to work. More practice needed (as always). Thank you for comments so far. Gail

the classic tune that everyone (?) knows is the irish washerwoman. The type of thing I'm trying to explain is in bars 5 and 6 of the B music, where i would want to only "just touch the string" for the repeated g. Its easier to do when the "light touch" note is higher then the melody (as here) because the higher notes do not sound as loud as the lower ones with similar pressure. But other tunes (or indeed this one, if you use the G an octave lower) have the repeated note lower than the melody line - often requiring changes of which finger you have to use on the button to accommodate the rest of the tune.

Daniel - how would you describe what you do please? And is it a different thing that you do on the anglo to the duet when trying to get this effect - or the same sort of thing?

Quite a few traditional tunes that fiddlers like have sequences that "bounce" between a descending (or ascending) sequence of notes and a single string position on a fiddle . A very polite gentleman fiddler recently told me that the problem with my playing is that "you should only just touch" the intermediate (static) string for his style of irish playing.... rather than playing them at a similar volume to the other - main tune - notes. He was oblivious to the lack of strings in a concertina! However, try as i might I cant get anywhere near the sort of bellows control that enables me to do this as part of a fast sequence of notes. Can anyone point me at a video of someone who DOES manage this ? or give me some advice please? Thanks , Gail p.s. i should have said that this is for an English concertina but i am guessing that its a similar thing for other systems

Thanks. Is there a cheap compact preamp that will amplify lapel mikes up to line level for the P1.? I dont know how to do an onlin e seach on this....

I have been given a Behringer Powerplay P1 personal in-ear amplifier. Does anyone know of compatible microphones I could use with it that don't cost a fortune? I need to hear myself against a group of melodeons. (Please....I have read all the arguments about the pros and cons of self-monitoring, and I do not need anyone to be rude about melodeons. thanks. ) cheers Gail

well i did have a plastic tube/bag over the bellows. Just not over the ends.

Even if you play a concertina under an umbrella it is going to suck water in. After a very wet Morris Federation day of dance recently, I had"lost" several notes and one sounded continuously. The problem was the leather valves sticking - and then eventually drying out in contorted ways. It has taken me a week to sort out all the problems, which I did partly by very gently re-damping the offending valves and stroking them flat while they dried. Two questions arise... 1. Does anyone have a better way of solving this problem? Next time should I take the instrument apart as soon as possible to do repairs, t=rather than waiting more than a day before I could get it home? Should I try to dry it out faster to protect the reeds, or slower to protect the valves? 2. I hate the number of times I have taken the ends of the concertina off and re-assembled them during this process. Is there a shortcut to reassembly in order to check out whether or not a reed "sounds" ? No only is it time-consuming, but I also worry about what mutiple unscrewing and rescrewing is doing to the threads on the screws. thanks Gail

hello. I would like to better understand how to use the fiddle-specific marks on written music to improve my english concertina playing. I think i know how to approach slurs - but there are also bowing marks, various turns (where i don't think i could manage a whole turn in the time available - and I'm wondering if the fiddle players do) and various bowing marks. It seems that some will translate sensibly into playing more staccato. And others will translate into getting more "attack" by using the bellows differently. Any thoughts (other then listening to fiddle players, which im trying to do but doesn't seem to help)? Resources ? thanks Gail

thanks for replies. I have a couple of Lachenal concertinas - one is a wooden-ended standard job and the other is a metal-ended ediophone that i use to compete with melodeons :}