Roger Gawley

Thanks Steve, reassuring in it's way. Happy New Year to you and anyone else reading this.

Not working for me: all I get is Error establishing a database connection Am I alone? Any idea what is the problem? [ and although it says 6:43 on the timestamp, it is quarter to six here ]

Ambiguity is the essence of English humour.

OK, OK next year we will handle this better. We did not set out to upset the membership. If people are unclear about their membership status, they are welcome to email the membership secretary (but not all at once please, Martin is struggling to keep up). Sorry that we caused so much dismay. At least it shows people care. Roger Gawley Secretary, ICA

So I should bring some copies of Line Up for sale at Swaledale, should I? (He asks wearing Roots2Music hat) Actually, there is a reasonable concertina connection: Alistair Anderson wrote some of the tunes and plays on the CD. Emily plays viola on one track and has a tune named for her. (Declaration of second interest. Emily has taught concertina classes I have been in and is teaching me to play fiddle.) See y'all in Swaledale

I spoke to The Music Room yesterday. (Not trying to guzzump you Pete, needed to talk about something else.) They cannot find Warren's email but promised to contact him to sort his out. It may be worth repeating what is said elsewhere, that the DVD comes without dots. My view is that some of what Vicki and Alistair say makes little sense unless you can see what they are looking at. Music Room seem to have a different view. Alistair has emailed dots to me and several other people. I would be happy to pass them on. We might place them on the ICA website if nobody objects. Think it is OK to say this here; members of the International Concertina Association can get a discount on the DVD.

That worked fine. The resolution is just right. The only problem is that it needs to be rotated 90 degrees to the right. But to answer your question, an 8.5" x 11" page of music should be easily readable on a computer screen at 72 dpi. For decent printing, it should be 300 dpi, although I have occasionally used 150 dpi and that looks OK if file size is a concern. You have posted the image as about 14" x 18" at 72 dpi, which translates to 8.5" x 11" at about 116 dpi. Better than you need for screen resolution, but it will look a little grainy if printed at 8.5" x 11" (and even grainier at 14" x 18"). The answer to Wendy's question, according to this, appears to be BR Antony, as Jeremy stated above. Edited for typo. To agree with Dave Barnert and then argue with him (don't really do smilies; put your own in here) your resolution is fine Jeremy, but your orientation is interesting. Most of us think in terms of A4 or whatever: 8.5 by 11 is pretty close given decent margins. When I was involved in digital typesetting, anything below a thousand dots per inch was regarded as "low resolution". We can tolerate less than that but what looks good enough on screen can look poor on paper.

Knurled plastic nuts seem to be bad news: I broke one at Witney a couple of years ago revealing the steel hexagonal nut that really did the job. It was quite easy to tighten that using a spanner or replace it by a wingnut. Unfortunately, I had neither with me.

FolkAcademy seems to be a trading name of The Music Room. The DVD was filmed at The Music Room in Cleckheaton and is sold by them. I had a invitation to the filming but failed to get there. The weather was bad. Vicki Elliott, the pupil in the masterclass, only just made it. It is presented in masterclass format, one teacher, one pupil and a live audience. I do not think you get to see the audience. I have not had time to view the whole thing, just dipped into sections. It looks very much like a typical Alistair Anderson tutorial: working on bringing out the best in a tune. As he says, "this is the way I play it today. Try it and see if you like it. You might prefer a different way to play the tune. I may play it differently tomorrow". This is not a DVD to teach you from scratch how to play English concertina. It assumes that you can play and want to play better. The packaging is fairly minimal. The DVD itself is almost plain, but it is a double-sided DVD wih PAL on one side and NTSC on the other, which does not leave much room for the label. Now the good news. If you are a member of the International Concertina Association, you can get a discount on the price. Sorry if this comes too late but we only fixed the details yesterday. If you ring up the Music Room, tell them you are an ICA member. If you use their website, you need a code. This will appear in the next Concertina World but, if you cannot wait, contact me.

I guess that "tomorrow" is now yesterday. How did it go? Never mind little slips-up, I just looked at the book and think it would take me a month to play it at all. Phil does suggest playing it fairly slowly but even so I would need a week to memorise the repeat structure. Hope it was wonderful, Roger

I go to very few sessions. Reading this thread has reminded me of why. That said, I am off in an hour or so to a semi-private pub session at which half of us will have dots in front of us, using them in different ways (different between people and between tunes). The ear players in the group keep telling us that we would be better off without the dots but there is no animosity involved. For several years the wonderful Foss has organised a "dotty session" on Friday evening at the Swaledale Squeeze. This has been very popular for people who enjoy the comradeship but cannot face playing without notation. And the International Concertina Association has arranged a gathering before Concertinas at Witney for a few years where dots are used at least at the start of the evening. In both situations you have a collection of concertina players some of whom are perfectly happy without dots, some are terrified and many are somewhere between. It allows everyone to share something. Maybe you do not think of those as "proper sessions". You may be right but one of the problems with words is that they do not hold a precise meaning for very long.

I know a man called Mr Lang He has a neon sign. Now Mr Lang is very old So they call it Old Lang's Sign Sorry. couldn't resist. Thanks for the nicely played tune and very best wishes to one and all.

Well, strictly personally you understand, not expressing any party line, I am not sure that twenty quid is exactly "nominal". It had to go up though and the plan is to hold it at that level for as long as possible. Now, where is this Naughty Chair Band meeting? All the best for 2012 to all ICA members and (season of good will and all that) those who are not yet members, Roger

This is good news. The book is beautiful and Alex comes over as someone you would like to meet. It is not designed for concertina playing though. It would be easy enough to pick out the melody but would miss a lot by doing that. Duet players may find more to go at. Good to see it available again in any case.

One of the aims of the International Concertina Association is to encourage the playing of the concertina. This includes young people and we are particularly keen to encourage them. It is not completely clear what is the best way. One thing we do is to award a bursary in support of a player at the Folkworks Youth Summer School. Nobody asked for one this year but last year we awarded two. One of the recipients is now doing the folk degree course at Newcastle University. The other, ten years old at the time, is still playing with the North East Concertina Players. I am not convinced that cost is such a big barrier. As has been pointed out, economical concertinas are in the same range as many other instruments. Visibility may be more of an issue. Any suggestions on ways to make concertinas more visible and to encourage young players would be very welcome.

Cross-finger it as several people have already said. Try it different ways, give each a fair chance because they will all feel strange to start with. You may wany to cross over in a different way in different places or for different tunes. And sometimes, the best thing to do is just to jump it (or maybe use your little finger if you have already used all the others). Be bold!

If you work out the dates, you will find that NECP will be meeting in the Ceddesfield Hall from 2pm this Sunday. Not exactly a session; mainly band playing from dots. Most of us play English although Geoff "Tootler" Walker will probably be there with his Anglo. He lives in Middlesbrough and probably knows more about sessions near Saltburn. You would be very welcome.

Many thanks for this: a sevice to humanity. To save you asking, I cannot play much of this at any useful speed but the idea is to develop fingering technique. Not sure that I would use the fingers suggested by Regondi, but it is good to know that you could if you needed to.

I have only just spotted this and Jeremy is away for a bit but I am sure that the answer is, yes, you can use some of the tunes that were played at Dungworth. (I am planning to use a couple of them at the dotty session on the Friday evening at the start of Concertinas at Witney.) Please tell people that they were extracted from the ICA library but go ahead and do it!

It is really interesting to see all these people differing so amicably. And thanks for the plug for the ICA, Jim. Not sure that we regard ourselves as a backbone but we do try to bring people together so I guess that we are a kind of community.

I find Barry Green's book infuriating and disagree with much of what he says. The good parts are great: everyone here could gain from reading it. The book is actually the third in a series. The first two are by Timothy Galwey (some kind of anagram but no relation of mine), The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Golf. The main thesis of these is that top sportsmen beat themselves by negative attitudes. Barry Green felt that the ideas also applied to music and, with Galwey's approval and assistance, wrote the music book. Get one, shout at it, pick from it ideas that will help you improve.

One thing to add to the pile of good advice already here: try not to signal "mistakes". Do not grimace. If you feel you must mark the excursion, smile. This has two effects. It confirms to the rest of the band and the 50% of the audience that did notice that all was not quite as intended (with luck the other 50% will think that you simply smiled). And it gives yourself permission to be human and carry on. ("Well, that was interesting but now we are going to play the rest of the tune.")

They can be but they do not have to be. The baritone that I normally play is decidedly slow and uneven in response towards the bottom end but I have played an instrument that was even and responsive all the way. Not mine, I regret. I did not ask but I suspect that the value would exceed that of my car.

I'll have to ponder that one! Is its meaning hidden in a cloud of ash? I think it was joke in dubious taste. Afraid I cannot help with your package although I will be at Swaledale.

What should happen is that you get four publications a year: three copies of Concertina World (with music supplement) and one copy of Papers of the International Concertina Association, with roughly three-month gaps. This time we were a bit late and PICA caught up with CW, so you got three documents in one envelope. Normal service should now be resumed.