simon ds

Strangely enough, this is a coincidence, I was really into Led Zeppelin when I was young in the 70s, and this morning I spent a bit of time writing out the ABC file for Stairway to Heaven. Now I know this song quite well! I know it well because I bought the LP and then for the car, I bought the cassette tape, and then I bought the CD, and then I was just about to buy the music to put onto my computer and I thought, ‘no way, sorry Jimmy, but I’ve paid out enough!’ 😂 So I tabbed it out into .abc ... from memory using the mandolin. EC would work well too. try: Mandolintab.net

Here’s a vid from the 2017 Festival. And here’s the ‘appetiser’, I think they call it in Hollywood, for 2021

Lovely performances Gavin! Thanks.

Robert Burns’ girlfriend lived there... https://tunearch.org//wiki/Annotation:Coilsfield_House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

Nice one Alex, I was just thinking of high doses of rhubarb crumble with orange sauce, and it’s oxalic acid content, definitely something to consider (delicious 😀) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalic_acid#Occurrence

I’m guessing that UV light might work too, the type of devices that are used to whiten teeth. One problem might be if the buttons are stained with something dark, metals etc, something that doesn’t whiten with UV light. In that case you’d probably get more contrast in the shading.

The main ingredient of household bleach is sodium hypochlorite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach

Here’s another for bellows practice, it’s also jig time but it’s sort of on the other side of a straight jig, more like a slip jig. The second and fifth eighth notes are missing which I find helps me to remember the distance between the first and the third and then the fourth and the sixth eighths. Hope this makes sense! (I did do a Strathspey setting too, which is REALLY authentic !)

Ha,ha, while we’re on the subject, one of the things I really like about some Morris tunes is the way it can be played with hesitations, or silence at the beginning of each phrase or dance move and then there’s a great solid rhythm till the next hesitation. It reminds me of some medieval music where the emphasis is on word phrases of differing length and time, as though each phrase is it’s own tune.

Nice playing, lovely tune, thanks.

Some interesting ideas, thanks. I’m thinking of mandola and octave mandolin, there’s definitely a jump in thinking between playing a straight melody and then adding rhythm or singing. Learning solid simple bass line accompaniments can be valuable. For the English concertina, from what I’ve heard it’s the ability to sing, and throw in precisely timed melodic riffs that often reply to the main melody or play a third above, and then the occasional alternating bass to hold the structure together. A lot of it seems to be what you don’t play, and the silence between riffs. An arrangement in this case would be a balanced collage of the different techniques.

Hi Rebecca, for the English concertina you’ll probably be looking at keys C D or G major and their relative minors, Am,Bm and Em. along with the melody plus bass lines -notes a guitar might use when accompanying in the same key. A very simple example could be playing four low C notes per measure while you play a melody in the key of C major. Here are some: http://www.rudemex.co.uk/library/RM_arrangements/01tunelib_RMarr.php notice that when a C major chord is playing in a measure the accompaniment is often C E or G notes ie. 135. Try learning the names of notes in each chord. Good Luck!

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com or do a search for ‘guitar’ and ‘tab’. These sites will only sometimes give you notation but at least you’ll definitely have the lyrics and chords. Most sites let you transcribe the song to your favourite key too. Funnily enough there are a fair number of French sites that give you notation for well known English and US pop songs. Another great one is Musescore.com you have, I believe, a 15 US dollar per annum fee but the quality of user shared music (midi player) is very high. Again the music can be transcribed to your favourite key. Yet one more. It’s anything to do with ‘ukulele’ or ‘pdf’ as a search word. These guys are great! Lots of fun and popular songs often collated into pdfs. Almost every song is in the key of C major/A minor, so good for ear training and they give a good idea of songs that work for audiences, at least. Good luck!!

Ha, ha it will probably be helpful. -and of course it will only say ‘4:30am M5 Gloucester Services’ if that’s where your phone and your concertina were together at 4:30 or if there’s someone there with the Tileapp app active on their phone. Actually, you could possibly get readings from the locator months later.

Here’s another one for cats. Actually, I might build something like this. https://perfectight.store/products/cat-gps-tracker-locator-device-for-pets?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=Bing Shopping&msclkid=2dda3fe90b3d1e22906a5fc2b2c65190 Hmmmm. It would be easy just strip out the gps module, use a large, long-life wafer thin battery secretly glued under a veneer on the reed pan, a blue tooth arduino for added options and a large wattage battery in the base of a beautiful mahogany concertina box used as a charging unit -one which works when placed on it’s side. This would allow you to be aware of the location of your concertina 24 hours a day at ten minute intervals. Another much simpler option would be to fit the concertinas with tracking coils (that they have in shops), use a database, and have sensors and silent alarms at the doors of pubs, venues etc.