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Chris Allert

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Everything posted by Chris Allert

  1. this is a wooden ended 30 button c/g stagi w-15ln that i bought used from the button box a few months ago for $595. i'm willing to sell it for the same amount to anyone who is desperate for an instrument. a few things to know about it: 1) i bought it for a friend to borrow who ended up not practicing very much and who decided to give it up. (i'd be surprised if it was played more than a total of 2 hours in the time he had it) 2) you're probably better off waiting for the rochelle (concertinaconnection.com) to come out, but it's anyone's guess when that will be 3) you won't be covered by the button box warantee since you're buying it from me and not them 4) i'm not particularly eager to sell it so i won't negotiate the price, but if you're desperate for an instrument to learn on it may be worth it to you. 5) you can buy the same instrument new from the button box for only $100 more, and i would strongly recommend this over buying this instrument from me. but if they are out of stock when you read this then you may prefer not to wait for them to get more. 6) i haven't noticed any problems with this instrument, but it's a stagi, so i make no guarantees. you can try it for 30 days. if you don't like it you can ship it back to me at your own expense and i'll refund your $595 (but not shipping). 7) i can only accept checks in us funds drawn on a us bank or money orders in us funds. If you're interested, send me an e-mail through the concertina.net site (you must be a member of this site to do this). please post questions about the instrument to this forum so i can answer them for everyone. As I said, i'm not particularly eager to sell it since it's handy having a spare concertina around, but i don't really feel right about keeping it when there is such a shortage of instruments. I will post to this forum if the instrument sells, so if you're reading this several months from now, this instrument is still available unless I have posted otherwise.
  2. When i first encountered irish music, i had a similar reaction, and it was definitely an acquired taste for me. i probably wouldn't have acquired the taste for this music if i had a music teacher willing to teach a different style. but after listening very closely and often to a few solo recordings for a few months it began to grow on me. there are many tunes that seemed simple and repetitive to me when i first heard them, but take on intensity and subtlety as i become more familiar with them. when i started learning the concertina, the only two recordings i could find of the concertina were bernard o'sullivan and tommy mcmahon's cassette on ossian records "irish traditional music of county clare" and the first jacky daly topic album "music from sliabh luachra". i listened to these records every day for a few months on my bus ride to and from work. several of the tunes on the o'sullivan/mcmahon album made a lot more sense to me after attending willie clancy week in miltown malbay about six months after being introduced to irish music. it wasn't so much hearing people play in ireland as much as hearing the way the local people in miltown malbay talked to one another, and the rythms in their speech. the main reason i tend to object to vamping in most cases is that it so often strips the tune of both subtlety and intensity. i suppose this is a matter of taste. i prefer a double shot of espresso to a flavored latte as well, but i didn't always. if i go to starbucks i still prefer a flavored latte since in that case you need the milk and syrup to cover up the burnt coffee they use. but i wouldn't dream of adding anything to the coffee from my local roaster. my teacher who introduced me to irish music had similar feelings about vamping, and the way i feel today probably has a lot to do with his influence. he likened it to the difference between hearing a radio drama and seeing a film. in the radio drama, things are suggested and much of the scenery is left to the imagination. in a film there is less to imagine. and many films make poor decisions as to how things should look. i don't tend to imagine chord structures around a tune since harmonizing was never something i was very good at, but like you, i also had a very difficult time at first memorizing tunes, especially reels.
  3. i'm inclined to agree with this sentiment in most cases, but i have found a few exceptions. The piano accompinament on chris droney's album "the fertile rock" i think works very well. George Byrt is the pianist on this album, and i have recommended this album to people interested in accompanying irish music. Mary MacNamara's first album is also a very good example of how piano accompinament and recording studio techniques can enhance rather than drown out a performance. (I don't have a copy of her later albums, so i can't say whether they work as well). Another album with good vamping is the hugh gillespie (fiddle) album, currently on green linnet records (glcd3066). this is a collection of recordings made in the late 1930s. this album is unusual for it's time in that it uses a guitar rather than a piano for accompinament. on some tracks he is accompanied by his neighbor mark callahan, and on others by jack mckenna. it was gillespie's choice to use a guitar rather than a piano for these recordings, so perhaps he had more control over what the accompanist would do than other artists who recorded at the time. unfortunately i can think of very few other irish music recordings where the accompinament and studio production techniques don't do more harm than good. the albums i listen to most were made as field recordings. for some reason the noises in the background don't really bother me, but most of the over-produced albums i hear i simply can't stand to listen to more than a few times.
  4. could the rochelle be one step closer to being ready? the concertina connection web-site has been reorganized and they've made a space for it: http://www.concertinaconnection.com/rochelle.htm nothing there yet though.
  5. i recall that the nortwest squeeze-in was supposed to happen about a month ago. did i miss it? i didn't hear anything about it so i'm assuming it's still being organized. and are there any new developments on it? i'm still in favor of it being somewhere on puget sound that the bus goes to. i remeber someone mentioning fort casey as a potential location. seattle would probably be the easiest for people to get to, and there are plenty of options for accomodation there. anyway, is the same person still organizing it? if not, does anyone else want to organize it?
  6. yes, they get a few dippers and suttners in occasionally. they always have a few of these on order, and i actually saw a dipper county clare in the seattle store back in 2001 which they had priced at about $6000 and which sold in about a week. the trick to finding out which new concertinas they're getting is to call the warehouse and to ask for don haight. when i was inquiring a few months ago i was told that they probably won't see any new suttners until at least 2007, but they're supposed to get a dipper in sooner than that (i can't remember when). anyway, if you don't want to wait several years and have a lot of extra money to spend lark in the morning is actually an option. i'm guessing that their next county clare will be even more expensive since the dollar is so weak right now. they basically charge double whatever they pay for anything, so i wont be at all surprised if it's more like $7000 - $8000. maybe i should take bets on how many days it will take to sell. if i were going to bet, i'd say that even at $8000 there's an even chance it will sell before making it to the store. i wonder just how high you would have to price new concertinas to keep them in stock.
  7. i'm not certain as to the origin of this term, but i'm pretty sure it has something to do with the piano accompinament on 78rpm records that was mandated by the record company in order to suck the life out of the recording. it may also have something to do with the many similarities between record companies and vampires -- the inability to produce life, and the ability to live forever by drinking the blood of the living.
  8. careful what you wish for. i know for a fact that both andrew norman and bob tedrow are able to deliver conertinas in unusual colors. the bellows can be any color that their leather suppliers can deliver, which is just about anything. on a slightly related note, here in olympia, washington there is a very active local music scene that i'm unfortunately a little out of touch with. i've met about three or four people here that are interested in trying to use the concertina in their bands and have expressed an interest in the instrument. i know that there are at least two of those chinese 20 button anglos around town being used for this purpose. somehow i doubt the concertina will ever be as popular as the accordion is among this crowd since most people don't even know what a concertina is, but there's definitely a chance of the concertina becoming trendy for a little while.
  9. so there have been a few comments in this thread about the lack of built-in transposing on the midi concertina. if your synthesizer can't transpose, i'd recommend a midi solutions event processor. ( http://www.midisolutions.com/prodepp.htm ). midi solutions make a number of other useful devices as well. the only drawback to the event processor is that you must use windows xp to program it using their utility if you don't want to manually edit a midi sysex file. the other thing about the event processor is it needs power from the midi cable, so if the wakker midi box doesn't provide power you'll need to run the signal through something else that does. i've got a wakker midi anglo on order as well and i'm hoping that this discussion means it will be on its way to me soon. i'm planning to use it to run analog syntesizers, which i'm not sure has been done before, but i'd love to hear from anyone else who's doing this. right now i'm thinking that a midi anglo and a dave smith evolver ( http://www.davesmithinstruments.com/evolver/design.html ) will make a nice portable combination for performances. what kind of syntesizers are other midi anglo owners using?
  10. I've been wary of purchasing some of the 'older' instruments as I'm not too sure how well they would hold up in the climate that I live in. Calgary, Canada is known for being a very dry climate and not being too kind to some types of wood. That being said, if I were to look to purchase a Lachenal what (if anything) should I be concerned with? Purchasing over the net is the "buyer beware" zone - and if you don't ask the right questions (or don't know what the right questions are) you can get ripped off fairly easily. Thanks again for your help! John for vintage instruments, chris algar and the button box are both very reputable dealers. chris algar is probably the only dealer with a very extensive selection. but neither of these dealers will have anything in your price range. any 20 button lachenal you get for under $500 is going to have a lot of problems. i spoke with chris algar on the phone once and he's very honest and helpful and there's always the possibility that he has the exact instrument you're looking for in you price range. he can be reached at http://www.concertina.co.uk/
  11. can you tell us any more about this concertina? like which reputable dealer did you originally buy it from? if you bought it from the button box and they tuned it before selling it to you then it's worth more. the current bid of $347 is about the maximum i'd want to pay not knowing whether or not it's been tuned or has sticky buttons. but if someone already took care of all the problems then i'd be willing to pay up to $500 for it if i were in the market for it.
  12. my advice is to wait. i recently put in an order for a midi concertina with wim wakker, and i asked him when the rochelle starter anglo would be available. he said that the prototype is done and he was hoping that they'll be in production by april. he said that getting the instrument to work right took longer than expected, but now that the prototype is done it won't be long before they're available. he was also pretty sure that these instruments would be less than us$300. wim wakker can be contacted through the concertina connection web-site ( http://www.concertinaconnection.com/ ) this topic has been discussed quite a bit here, but it's kind of hard to find what you're looking for using the search feature on this site.
  13. and what's worse than a politician making bad laws *and* playing the concertina badly? while you can in theory vote the politician out of office, you'll have a much harder time getting the politician to play better. i agree that playing the concertina doesn't make you a better person, and from my own experience, it actually makes you worse at your day job. so it's very likely that if all politicians took up the concertina we would end up with even worse laws. i seem to remeber a thread not long ago about how playing the concertina means you're going to hell, though i also recall that there was a problem with the logic leading to this conclusion.
  14. Because it will increase the concertina-to-Big-Mac ratio. What an absolutely marvellous concept! Thank you, that made my day. Chris i've been thinking about this. while the concertina / big mac ratio will be increased in favor of concertinas in the usa, it will unfortunately be increased in favor of big macs in the exporting country. fortunately for the world as a whole, the global concertina / big mac ratio remains unchanged as a result of the transaction.
  15. playing the anglo in other keys is very difficult, and the farther away from c and g you get, the wierder it gets. i play irish music on the anglo, where most tunes are in g or d, and the instrument is well suited to this music. there's also a long tradition of playing this kind of music on a c/g anglo, and even a long tradition of making it work on 20 button instruments. but i don't think it's really the best instrument for playing hymns. recently i spoke with wim wakker on the phone about ordering a midi anglo and also had a chance to talk to him about the "jackie" model english concertina. he said that that they sell these to people all over the world and a lot of them use them to play hymns, basically in the place of a piano. i decided to order one of these as well since it's not much of a risk for me if i don't like it (less than $300) ( http://www.concertinaconnection.com/ ). so i would say that for playing an accompanying church hymns, you're probably better off switching to the english system than upgrading to a better anglo. the english system was designed from the beginning to play classical music in any key, and you can find very good english system instruments for a lot less than money than good anglos. the concertina connection jackie is a well built and playable instrument, unlike anything else in its price range. for a playable 30 button anglo, you have to spend at least $600 for an instrument that's not that great (this will change around april when the concertina connection starts selling the "rochelle" cheap anglo) switching to a duet system is another option, but you're not going to be able to find a playable instrument for $300 if you go this route. you'll also have a harder time finding instruction and books on playing whichever duet system to choose. i'm sure that i'll continue to play irish music on the anglo, but i'm looking forward to learning the english.
  16. i'm planning to create some public domain electronic music using midi concertina performances as a starting point. i'll be using the midi files to drive various analog equipment. synthesizers used include a dave smith evolver, a syntesizers.com 44 module system, various moogerfoogers, and various blacet research modules. so if you have access to a midi concertina, please send me some midi files of your performances, and i'll try to include them in this project. because of the nature of analog equipment, single melody line playing styles will be easier for me to deal with, but if you play a lot of chords, i'll try to get to you eventually (i have to do a lot of multitrack editing to get this to work, so it will probably be a while). i currently have a midi anglo on order from the concertina connection, but i won't have it for a few months. when i do have it, anyone travelling through olympia, washington will be welcome to lay down a few tracks on it for this project. please only send me midi files. i can't do anything easily with rendered wave files. all performances will be published on the internet archive (archive.org). please release your midi files to the public domain before sending them as all the derivative works i make of them will also be in the public domain.
  17. has anyone found a good concertina patch yet? this topic has been discussed a few times before, but i thought i'd bring it up again. I think i recall someone saying that the closest thing to a good concertina patch was a bandoneon which you can get on various latin instrument collections. Someone else mentioned a home-made concertina soundfont that someone put together (i think they were referring to this: http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/download.html ) i'm still looking for some kind of stand-alone midi expander solution that will sound like a concertina. (or irish pipes) i found a cd of accordion samples someone is selling here that includes concertina samples: http://www.soundengine.com/html/products/A...ordionsWAV.html but then i read this on the product description page: i think this is the first time i've heard such a positive review of a stagi. so i guess i'll keep looking. has anyone had any more luck than i have?
  18. a while ago i started a discussion on this topic because i was wondering the same thing. at the risk of giving dana johnson unwanted publicity, here is a link to that discussion: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3004
  19. yes, even if i win the lottery, i still have to wait for the concertina i want. if someone said to you "i'll pay a million dollars for your concertina", would you really sell it? i know i'd have to give the matter some thought. weighing the options "never work another day in my life" vs "still have concertina to play". not an easy choice.
  20. when i started trying to learn the concertina in 2000, i took lessons from mike euritt in san rafael every week until moving to olympia, washington in 2001. i'm not sure what he's up to these days, but i certainly found it helpful to be able to get a lesson from him every week. here is his contact information found through a quick internet search: i don't know if that band is still together, but he plays pipes and concertina (someone else is the fiddler).
  21. i have been thinking about ordering an a3 ever since i attended noel hill's workshop in 2001 and heard his wheatstone that the a3 is modelled after. if you're interested in this design, wally carroll's instruments are also worth considering since, as far as i know, they are also modelled on a very similar instrument to noel hill's wheatstone. (but you're looking at a similar wait either way). i used to own a suttner a2, (which i'm supposed to get a replacement for in a few months), and i thought it sounded a lot warmer than any jeffries i've heard. i've been told that one reason for this is that some materials used to construct jeffries concertinas are no longer available (such as cuban mahogony used for the reedpan). it's hard to say what a suttner a2 will sound like 100 years from now or what any particular jeffries sounded like 100 years ago. so i'm not sure what this observation is worth. one other thing to keep in mind is that the a2 is suttner's most popular model (based on the number of suttners i've seen), so he's built more of these than any other model. i don't know if this makes a difference, but according to at least a few people i've talked to, the quality of this model has improved quite a bit over the years. i decided against ordering mine with any changes to the key layout. i can see how a d drone would be useful, but something about changing this just didn't sit right with me. i also didn't want to get used to having anything more convenient on the accidental row since it would just make it difficult for me to play other instruments. (it's enough trouble just switching between wheatstone and jeffries layout.)
  22. just to be clear, the charts i made have nothing to do with button layout and fingering, they are simply to help visualize how pitches are related to one another in the system of unequal temprament that my new concertina will employ. but on a typical new concertina (or any other new instrument) all intervals of a given size will sound the same since that's how equal temprament works. also, just so you know, bob tedrow can also tune any concertina he builds to any system you want. i decided to have him tune mine to equal temprament since i wasn't sure exactly what i wanted yet. as for shifting fingering patterns to change keys, this doesn't really work on either the anglo or english systems. it would theoretically work on a hayden duet, since these have a key layout similar to a continental chromatic accordion, but i've heard that in practice it doesn't really work that well because there simply aren't enough buttons to give you much room for shifting around. playing in different keys on the english is probably easier than on the anglo, since the chromatic layout is more logically laid out. on the anglo, there is really no rhyme or reason to how the accidental row is arranged, and so each key has a radically different fingering (and a radically different rhythm due to which notes you get in which direction). like most players of irish music, i really only know how to play tunes in G and D. i think the album "the wind among the reeds" by members of the mccarthy family has a concertina and pipes playing together. i haven't heard this album, but i think i'll order a copy from the button box now. in my earlier discussion on the topic of equal temprament, someone commented that he had tuned jacqueline mccarthy's concertina for this album. here's a link to that discussion: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2913 i usually just play a few easy tunes. then when i'm warmed up, i try to work on hard stuff, or else i play more tunes that i enjoy. there are a few tunes that i'll probably never manage to get quite right. but i still work on them for some reason. i haven't seen any good books on playing irish music on the anglo concertina, but i haven't seen frank edgley's book yet so i could be wrong. there is no substitute for getting instruction from an experienced player, and for people in many parts of the world, attending one of noel hill's workshops is the best option available. from reading frank edgley's comments on this forum, i expect that his book is good, and since he includes it with all concertinas he builds, i'll post my impressions of it here when i get it. also, i haven't seen john william's book or video, but since he is an accomplished irish player, i'd expect his book to be somewhat helpful for learning this style of playing.
  23. sorry, i mean't you get the minor thirds going down diagonally the other way. so all the pure minor thirds in this system are: G-Bb, B-D, D-F, F#-A, A-C, C#-E all the pure major thirds are: Eb-G, G-B, Bb-D, D-F#, F-A, A-C#, C-E, E-G# the pure major triads are: Eb-G-Bb, Bb-D-F, F-A-C, G-B-D, D-F#-A, A-C#-E and the pure minor triads are: G-Bb-D, D-F-A, A-C-E, B-D-F#, F#-A-C#, C#-E-G# to find all the other pure intervals of a given size, draw a line from D to the interval you want, then transpose that line to everywhere else it fits in the chart. for example, D-E is a pure second (9/8), and there are five other places in the chart you can draw the same size line. D-C is a minor seventh (9/5), and there are three other 9/5 intervals in this system. the C natural on the pipes regulators usually is tuned to 9/5 of the drone rather than 16/9 (inverse major second), which gives it a really smooth sound against the drone and also means it is a pure major third from the A which is a perfect fifth from D. if you know csound or another sound synthesis language, you can easily experiment with all these intervals to get a better feeling for how they sound.
  24. no, i'm not playing with any other instruments. i've really enjoyed listening to a lot of uilleann pipers and they often have sets of pipes that are tuned quite a bit lower. for this instrument i've asked frank edgley to tune the Bb (same place as D on a c/g) to 480 hertz and to tune everything else in just intervals relative to that. i wanted to start playing some of the chords that pipers play on the regulators, and they'll sound a lot nicer on this instrument. i decided on D = 480 based on a low set of pipes that willie clancy plays on a lot of his records. the reason for having a just d-fingered scale is that most irish tunes are in g and d and their relative minors. here's a chart to visualize how this scale is tuned: Eb G Bb B D F F# A C C# E G# the idea is that you tune everything in pure fifths going down the chart, pure major thirds going diagonally down, and pure minor thirds going diagonally up. all the triangles you can draw on the chart will be pure triads. translating the above chart to ratios, you get 16/15 4/3 8/5 5/3 1 6/5 5/4 3/2 9/5 15/8 9/8 45/32 and then if you multiply all these values by 480 you get 512 640 768 800 480 576 600 720 864 900 540 675
  25. bob tedrow built me a concertina a few months ago that i've been playing a few hours a day. i reviewed it when i first got it, but the thread is buried quite a ways back in this forum. i would echo what others have said about how much recording conditions can vary. i think all the mid-range instrument makers make very good instruments, and i based my decision on who could build me one the soonest at the time. marcus and tedrow were about the same, and the us dollar was really weak at the time, so i ordered from tedrow. one advantage of buying an instrument from bob tedrow is that you can probably get him to customize the appearance of your instrument more than the other makers. but he doesn't do metal ends. another thing i like about the tedrow is that it doesn't feel mass-produced. this is a difficult quality to describe, but you can really feel the personality he puts into each of his instruments. (i don't have enough experience with the other makers to say they lack this quality) if you do order a tedrow, you need to be patient with it at first. it took at least a month for this instrument to break in and speed up. the reeds are much more responsive and nicer sounding than they were when i first got it. i also think that this instrument has a more "concertina-like" sound than other instruments in this range i've tried, but this is fairly subjective, and i'm comparing it to what i think i remember hearing back in 2000 and 2001. the bellows on this instrument is definitely much more solidly built than on the norman i had back in 2001. i have yet to hear an edgley or a geuns-wakker in person, but i know for a fact that none of the mid-range concertinas i've heard in person sound like any of the high-end instruments i've heard. the tedrow i have sounds about a close as i could hope for, and i'm not sure how to characterize the difference exactly except to say that none of these instruments sounds brassy enough to me. i'd characterize the sound of the mid-range instruments as "reedier". but this is an oversimplification. my point is that whoever you order from, don't get your hopes up about having something that sounds like a vintage jeffries. i've also got a stainless-ended Ab/Eb edgley on order which i think is due in april. so that should make for an interesting comparison. the action on the edgley is some kind of radical new design that is supposed to be a lot better (and i think it's similar to the herrington action). the action on the tedrow is similar to what you would find in a vintage lachenal or jeffries (i think), meaning it's a tried and true design that's easy to adjust and that responds like a "real" concertina should respond.
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