Yuxin Ding

And nowadays, depends on my research, the number of manufacturers are no more than that. What I've found are: Blazefine(also Trinity College/Scarlatti) in East China, Yuewei(seems they use to made concertinas for Hohner) in North China, and Firston in South China. All of these factories are located in traditional chromatic accordion producing area. The Music China Expo, an international musical instrument fair will hold in Shanghai in Oct as usual. I'll go and see if I can find something else about concertinas this year. By the way, it's maybe not well-know in the west, there is a accordion maker in Beijing invented his own-styled concertina called "WF System," which is depends on the 20 keys CG instrument with a original C-row generally and rearranged the G-row to the sharp and flat notes to the C-row notes. I'd like to call it a "Sino Concertina." In the attached image, chart on the top represents the right hand side, and below is the left hand side.

Thank you for advising. I've practiced on this bastari for months and had a lot of fun. It's a fabulous instrument to me and I'm surely not going to abandon it! Btw, switch to a better Anglo is on my to-do list already......

Thank you! It's quite a shock to have any appreciations here for a bilibili posting. Gary the nice guy send me partial of his book with the Moon and the note chart to me by email very soon after this posting.

What I used to play is bayan which is chromatic. As many Chinese do, I never knew there are diatonic or bisonoric squeezeboxes. Maybe many people have seen concertinas in European and American film or tv dramas and know there are instruments like those, but that's it. And actually, except harmonicas, diatonic western instrument are already very uncommon in China. However, it seems that there are few people can play garmons in the border areas with Russia or the countries of the former USSR.

I guess what Juris meant was chromatic English Concertinas which more completed with sharp and flat notes, so they may have a better compatibility to play more moded scales.

Hi Juris, I just figured a little bit about the English layout, I think it’s a less challenging and maybe the Anglo can make more fun! But sure someday I’ll get an English and try. Thank you for your suggestion.

It seems that my concerns are unnecessary! thank you for your reply. But here is a problem I forgot to mention above: maybe because the size of 40 keys is too large, which causes the outcome is somewhat “obcuse” when play some brief notes. I don’t know if this problem is related to the reason I mentioned, maybe this is a difference in reed type, or maybe it’s just a quality problem? After check the pinned top topic “current make” in this forum, I assume the Bastari has no essential difference to a “cheap Chinese” even though it’s couple times higher on price, and maybe that’s the reason. And also, could you please let me know which one of your book includes the “Moon” tune? That would be the best starter because that was one of the very first tunes I can play on an accordion decades ago. Thanks a lot!

Here’s greeting from China. Not surprisingly, any kind of Concertina is very niche in China. Although this country produces many models that are common on the market, very few people play it there. But bandoneon is an exception, because of the influence of tango music, bandoneon has a certain popularity. But due to the generally high prices, bandoneonist is actually very rare in China. But in Japan, Concertina has a large number of fans, which made me feel a little puzzled at first. I guess it might be because Concertina was widely popular in the world when China was in a period of revolution and war, so this musical instrument failed to enter China. At the same time, Japan was actively accepting new things in Europe, so Concertina has retained a certain degree of popularity in Japan to this day. However, due to the influence of the Soviet Union after the war, the accordion (bayan) was actually very popular in China until today. Recent days my friend bought a Bastari 40 keys Anglo from Japan(Taniguchi Gakki, recommended store by Toru Kato)for me as a gift and I’m struggling on it. It seems that it is impossible to find a teacher to learn, because there is no or it is difficult to find someone who can play this instrument in this country. What I’m thinking is maybe I should buy a 30 keys model first to practice and then try to shift to 40 keys later, since almost all the tune-books that I can find are written regard 30 keys. And here’s a discovery. Hohner is like the 1st famous foreign accordion brand in China and I thought they also have good concertinas. But when I browse a website of a Chinese instrument factory, Yuewei or Rowell of Tientsin(http://www.yueweimusic.com/list/1/385/), I found almost all the hohner model are actually re-labeled from their concertinas. Of course, like a common sense, Chinese Concertinas do not give the performers a good experience of play, but they are indeed, very cheap. This really confuses me. If you guys have any suggestions for my situation, that would be great.