John, Wexford

It is a long-established group, with a membership of well over 3,500 members.

Tim has a Facebook account and you could message him there directly.

The "nickname" is my description for the alternative name, and not anything formal.

I suppose you could say that, when it comes to Irish Traditional Music on the Anglo Concertina, the concertina has two names: the formal name, as in the names of the rows - G/D, C/G, D/A etc. and the "nickname." The nickname is usually one note above the first key, so a C/G would be a D or concert-pitch concertina. A C#/G# would be an E flat concertina, a B flat / F concertina would be a C concertina and an A flat / E flat concertina would be known as a B flat concertina.

Many current concertina makers will offer tuning options for their Anglo concertinas ranging from F/C right up to D/A.

I think things have changed in the aftermath of Covid-19.

I'm getting a "404 Not Found" error on this one.

An 18 month delay is a tad optimistic. I've been hearing of people who are waiting between 5 and 7 years for a concertina from Jürgen Suttner.

It looks gorgeous!

Hi Leah, The "superfast" AAA triplet is a giveaway that the player, and, (in this case), the composer Brenda Stubbert is a fiddle player, and so you will have to find alternative ornaments for this part of the tune. I'm sorry but I've never heard of the expression "regular-fast" to describe two successive A notes in a tune, but there is absolutely no need to alternate or use different bellows directions for these two notes. This is where the grace-notes come in handy, and, in this particular tune, a grace-note would also be on the beat. Here are some suggestions, but not exhaustive, to deal with those repeated A notes for the first part of this tune: Simon, Unfortunately, neither one-finger triplets, bellows reversals or bellows quivers will suffice for Irish Traditional Music, for obvious reasons. Regards, John.

You could just grace the first note of the second phrase.

There's lots of information about the tune here as well: https://thesession.org/tunes/922

Sorry Irina, I'm only seeing this now. Coming from a flute perspective, you're never going to be able to get exactly the same sort of rolls on the concertina, as you could get previously on the concert flute. In some cases the rolls will not be as good as those on the flute, but in other cases the rolls can be very much better. Have a bash at this one, it might be a little bit different to what you'd expect, and see how you get on. I like to use my 2nd playing finger for the first B, and glance it upwards, to replace it with your 1st playing finger, again on B. (You could do it the other way around, but at least, this way, your fingers are back in the "home" position.) Regards, John.

I'm not sure if you have ever played the Silver Spear for a Céilí.

This article by Gearóid is freely accessible from Clare County Library: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/music/heartland_clare_concertina/introduction.htm I hope this is of some assistance.