Theodore Kloba

I'm another Noteworthy user, and it's definitely worth it. I like the keyboard shortcuts; I find it quicker placing notes by keystroke than by mouse (which you can still do if you prefer). I never tried Musette, but did try Finale Notepad; its lack of workable keyboard shortcuts led me to abandon it. That was several years ago, though.

That "thing" could be what's left of it. It could also merely be missing (i.e. lost). I have seen some instruments (though they were 1960s era American & Italian made) with the air valve going through the valve board rather than the frame, but still having a lever rather than a button. See this one:

Try playing in C (with tonic on the draw) and you'll appreciate that F more.

You have push and pull reversed. The center row is A (with tonic on push); outer (top) row is G; inner (bottom) row is like E with some accidentals.

Before I posted, I searched this subforum to see if it had been suggested before. I guess those prior discussions must have been posted in the wrong place.

What do you think of a subforum specifically for non-concertina topics (but ones that we think might be of interest to other C.net members)?

Performers are required to obtain licenses ($100/yr). No amplified music allowed.Community Arts Advocates has quite a bit about Chicago's history with regulation of street performers. One particular difficulty remaining is that there are so few publicly-owned public spaces in the downtown area (See The Malling of America). The good spots (except for the lakefront) are all on private property. If I were one of those kids, I would have started singing along in an Elmer Fudd voice. I wish I had handy my copy of A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut (who passed away yesterday). He quotes an artist friend (whose name escapes me now)... Paraphrasing: "There are two kinds of artist: One creates in response to the history of their art so far; the other creates in response to their own state of life." And why not?

I bet if I were playing "out in the neighborhoods" as we say, I would have seen a different response. I can imagine the thoughts of those suburban parents downtown: "You pestered me for months to go to the American Girl Place and the IMAX theater and dammit we're going to the American Girl Place now and not stopping because we already paid for the IMAX tickets." That's such a massive generalisation! I wouldn't know where to begin addressing that, so I'm not even going to try... I think the distinction is not so much between "rock" and "pop" but between "music" and "the music industry." I wonder if I had heard Joshua Bell playing without seeing him, if I'd dismiss it as recorded background, since one rarely encounters a street musician who can play so flawlwessly... You expect the odd mistake. Hmm... I thought unaccompanied singing was the oldest form of music. Drifting from topic, but tying the Russian couple and Naturally 7 together: Ever heard The Black Slavics by Les Anges Compagnie? The album is a "music fiction"-- as if the Russian Empire had taken African slaves, who combined their native vocal styles with those they encountered in Russia. Worth a listen: The story with samples. Buy from the JARO records.

I have them somewhere, but I had not tracked the source of many of them, and couldn't verify the copyright status. I really should have checked the status before putting them up on SB101 to begin with. The Squeezebox Field Guide section has those photos where I had proper permission.

At first as I started reading, I thought I was going to reply with something clever like (extrapolating Kant) "one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments, and this was Washington D.C. after all." This article turned out to be about something else entirely. One thing that struck me since a similar thing occurred to me: Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away. When you consider that the people in this article were on the way to work and trying to get their children to school or daycare, it's more understandable than the situation where I encountered it: I was near a rail terminal that was delivering suburban day tourists to downtown at midday in summer. I guess it wasn't every kid that was pushed along by parents, but I was surprised by how many.

It's time for the Cicero Concertina Circle's annual May party! If you'll be in the Chicago area on May 4 and you're curious about that other kind of concertina, you're welcome to join us! Details: Friday May 4th 2007, 7:00 PM Drexel Community Hall 3539 S. 54th Ave, in Cicero, Illinois (Map) Buffet Dinner Open stage $10 per person Please email me via C.net by April 27 if you would like to attend. The Cicero Concertina Circle is a Chemnitzer Concertina club that has been meeting since 1919.

I recently discovered this web-only broadcaster (physically located in Alaska) that includes a good share of acoustic/folk/traditional music (along with other genres). Might be a good place for C.netters with recorded material to submit: Whole Wheat Radio They're featuring the music of Diane Marie Kloba today; that's another reason I'm mentioning them. Doing a keyword search for "concertina" only turns up three songs, so get to work!

But not from Google... A few relics of the discussion that were passed on to usenet through the gateway can be found by searching Google Groups.

Another word to send us to the English -> American translation dictionary.

Considering the age, is it possible that those double-reeded instruments were just out of tune?

I'm guessing that since England is in red, the page is blank. Following the link takes you to edit the page, which requires registration.

The price is not necessarily a surprise to me-- I imagine labor is less expensive there. The duration is a surprise, though. Maybe their definition of “completely rebuild the internals” is different from mine. I think maybe one of the advantages (in terms of popularity) the Chemnitzer has in this regard is that many players don't expect to play more than polkas in a few keys with oompah bass. Tango requires more coordination, dynamics and more complex rhythm. Although bandoneons have a greater range than Chemnitzers, the layouts are still very similar-- I switch back and forth without a whole lot of difficulty. If you try to look for the logic, it will seem complex. Just learn where the notes are by rote.

I saw wildlife art (a painting of two birds) too... Look at the title: Sandhill Crane Duet.

I would say that depends on the Chemnitzer and the Bandoneon! At least the keyboard layout... This is as much as I have on ©CN: http://www.geocities.com/heytud/faq.html#faq22 It will at least make your eyes water. That's why it's called a bandONION.

No need to apologize; I know the information is incomplete and flawed. Maybe you'll see why I took down my old "Squeezebox 101" site and replaced it with the wiki: I started out with The (Chemnitzer) Concertina Novice, whose scope seemed clear, but I was constantly emailed questions that had to do with accordions or other types of concertinas. (Not even Wikipedia existed then; there was no single page where I could send someone to classify the mysterious contraption that their dear uncle had bequeathed them...) I assembled SB101 from bits I had gleaned here, on rec.music.makers.squeezebox, and similar sources. This didn't stop the emails; in fact it caused a new type of email to appear: Corrections. I kept up with these for some time but then I realized it wasn't what I really wanted to be doing. Once I put everything onto wikia, I declared it no longer mine. Although I may spend some time improving information about the things that really matter to me, I take no personal offense at criticisms. I no longer worry that I'm responsible for the inaccuracies that may be there. I also learned to ignore emails.

Aren't you in California, though? I brought my (Chemnitzer) concertina into work (in downtown Chicago) a few years ago and two said "my uncle played one of those". Another said "I haven't seen one of those in a while!"

I started a free-reed wiki, and it's still at squeezebox.wikia.com. Originally, I took the content from my "Squeezebox 101" page, which I no longer wanted to maintain. I thought my wiki failed because its focus was too broad. There have been occasional contributions, but there are currently no registered users besides me.

I would bet there may be more amateur players anyway. There may be more professional bandoneon players. Since they were never really manufactured in Argentina, though, I think it may have kept them out of the hands of the masses to a degree, unlike the US, where there were many makers. Maybe many decades ago it was. Where would I even find a "Polish Ghetto" now? The Polish-americans playing them have largely left urban areas. The instrument is also found among descendants of Polish, German, Czech, etc. immigrants in rural areas. I don't know how it's any easier to locate an elderly retired farmer or mechanic playing for his own enjoyment in the age of the internet than it was in the age of the Pony Express.

We were talking about playing only on the "pull" and you said that Band "pushed" his layout. In construction, reed types, etc., so they sound different from bandoneons.

At least they started that way. American- and Italian-made Chemnitzers ended up a lot different. Pun intended? This is especially true when playing solo. Here's a good example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrKYIHKJre4