Kathryn Wheeler

Much appreciated!

Thank you!

Thankyou very much. I love how you described this, like a flowing watercourse! It links with something I've found in quite a few traditional Welsh tunes - some of them, in particular, seem to have no obvious end and could literally burble onwards like a bubbling brook forever.

Thankyou very much!

This is really interesting - speaking as someone who both uses Musescore and likes to write down what I've arranged, lest I forget someday!

I have another video of a really beautiful Welsh piece - Gwel yr Adeilad here:

I wonder which Skerry island that is - Northern Ireland, Shetland?

As do I - its my go-to when I want to play something for myself. Especially the slower stuff. It always deserves lots of airing, as does the work of many a fine Welsh music band. Most of what I listen to is for stringed instruments (such as VRï, at the moment who are doing really interesting arrangements of trad stuff for string trio), but I love how the anglo lends itself very well indeed to so many of these tunes. I also love anything with non-standard phrase lengths (like in this piece) and how the rhythms of the language appear in the music (such as the short-long rhythm that appears in the tune which I've taken and used as an accompaniment the second time round). Do you play much Welsh stuff?

Thankyou! Do you mean the end section? I think when I came up with it, I had the melody going in my head and the two parts go with it, more or less, if that makes sense. It wasn't something that was planned out, more it just happened and fell under the fingers. As many interesting things often do! It came out of playing with sixths and mostly moves in a parallel way, and both have the same rhythm. Certainly both parts would work on their own as melodies as well as going together. I often harmonise when other people are playing melodies (or singing), so this sort of thing transfers to the concertina like this.

I'm so glad, thank you for letting me know! The Traditional Tune Archive setting is really interesting - especially because there's an extra bar in there (bar 8 ) (I think it might be to make it a standard 8 bar phrase), compared to the version I know where there's a rather unusual, and I must admit, very lovely, pause at the end of bar 7 before resuming the tune). I came across the version I play in the tunebook by the band Alaw, but now I've just had a look at the version in Nicholas Bennett's collection "Alawon fy ngwlad". Isn't it great that it's available to look at! https://archive.org/details/alawonfyngwladla01benn/page/n33/mode/2up

This is a gorgeous traditional Welsh tune, often played on harp. I've arranged it for 20 button G/D anglo concertina, with a little contrasting dance, based on the tune, at the end. I have heard it played as a very slow air, but it feels so nice as a lilting waltz. Morfa is an old word, still used in place names, meaning a place by the sea, a coastal landscape, such as mudflats, saltmarsh or sand dunes. Neither land nor sea - a place in between. I'm not sure which queen would have reigned over this particular saltmarsh, maybe in medieval times. Perhaps it is one of folklore - somewhere on the western coast, where there are legends of a lost land, now sunken - Cantre'r Gwaelod. Perhaps she roams it, mourning the loss of her kingdom!

I'm looking to sell my Bb/F 32 button anglo by David Leggett - lovely mellow tone. From his own description: Made using Lachenal reed frames. It has walnut ends with an "Arts and Crafts" design, 33 imitation bone keys (one is a squeaker), riveted action, steel reeds. Plain black 6-fold bellows. Barleycorn concertinas (where I originally bought it in 2022) described it thus: "David was a small-scale maker who would repurpose reeds from wrecked concertinas to make new instruments. We presume this one has Lachenal reeds inside". I bought it from Barleycorn for £1900. Selling as I really just play 20 button instruments! I'm playing it here:

You can also shift hand position and/or come up with a fingering so that you don't play everything with the little finger.

Yes! It's the same sort of effect when I bow two high notes together on a violin. You get the impression there's a lower note that's weird happening at the same time - it's an auditory hallucination apparently, to do with the way our ears work. A Tartini tone. It's apparently the difference between the frequencies of the two notes being played. Thing is, on a concertina which is tuned to fixed pitches, presumably equal temperament* - it'll sound really quite off. On a violin you can do a fun trick, which is minutely change the position of one of the notes and see how that effects the extra tone. I only find I notice them when the notes are high. But of course on a C/G anglo, anything on the right hand is high enough. *and now I realise I haven't investigated how anglos are tuned... This is all on top of what happens when you play three high notes together in a chord - then you've got even more weird tones going on! Perhaps you're noticing it as particularly weird when you also play a low note because that low note will be sounding at the same time as the low Tartini tone?

We go wassailing every year, here in Worcestershire, with Bow Brook Border Morris in local orchards or pubs with apple trees. The picture of me with concertina has caught me at the end of a song, doing a bit of a flourish with the instrument - I must say I don't play in that position! 20 button anglo is fabulous for accompanying all the Wassail songs. I did get the piano accordion out for some accompanying of other groups' songs (you know what it's like, people inevitably start singing in A flat or something equally impossible on 20 button).