Roger Gawley

Hello Mike! We (the ICA) seem to have messed you up quite badly. We are trying to sort you out. You should have had CW 444 by now and we believe that everyone else has. Anyone who has not could email membership@concertina.org to rectify matters. Cheers, Roger Gawley, Secretary ICA

We are improving: the ICA has been known to list her as Irish Bishop. There are a few mistakes in that music supplement (all typing slips rather than musical errors, I believe). Jon McNamara told me that he completed it in a great rush.

Harry Scurfield is indeed a good man to ask about this one. He was behind the Squashbox CD that started this thread. Not now available but it does turn up sometimes.

I feel impelled to point out the Concertina World is the newsletter of the International Concertina Association. Pauline is the Editor, and very good she is too.

The instrument could. The player would have to work hard. Just wiping your hand along the keyboard is not going to do the job.

The Swaledale Squeeze held in glorious Grinton. Dates for 2010 are May 14 to 16. You really should go to all of these. How long can you stay?

Well, you could ask Dave Ball. The gear that he used worked pretty well.

Okay, so where do we get a copy of the dots from? And for which part - treble, bass, baritone? Chris Well I have a copy of the tune at the moment because Jenny Cox intends to do it again at Witney next Sunday. Not too sure about the copyright status. Will speak to Jenny at Witney. It might even be possible to put something up on the ICA website.

If only my music reading were up to joining in. Chris You could probably manage Lady Florence with a bit of practice. Taken at a fair lick but the tune is reasonably straightforward. We played it at Hawkwood in January (the "non-invited" band). I thought it OK but nothing special. The invited band on the CD have lifted it somehow. I think that the difference is crisper timing.

Happy to oblige: try http://www.shop.edirectory.co.uk/roots_mus...ia/pid/10926553 Actually, it has only been there for about ten minutes. If you order now, we will register your interest and make sure we get enough copies. We will bill your card and dispatch the CD on September 28th. You might still get it faster via Jenny's website if you are in a position to send a sterling cheque. For some reason, the track listing and other details do not show up. Working on this. Looks a bit better now.

Roots2Music will have it on our website any day now. That takes credit card payments. Right now I only have the copy that Jenny posted to me (and you are not having that!) but I will collect copies from her at Witney and we can mail them right after. People going to the squeeze-in may do better that way, but if you happen to be in Australia or . . .

Off at a bit of a tangent, but have you considered Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park"?

Vic Gammon plays a four-row Anglo. I suspect that the instrument may have been something else at one time

Except that they still have an out of date phone number. It should be 01985 840516

You can get repeated notes by bellows alone on any instrument that produces the same note in both directions. It is a bit easier with the bellows nearly closed but does not sound the same as cross-fingering. I am really impressed that Dirge can do that on a Mccann but the second note comes out comparatively weak. You really need to keep the presure high and cross-finger that one. Like so many things, learn all the techniques, try them all with any new tune and see which one you prefer.

The problem with a rating system, as several people have already noted one way or another, is that one person's easy tune is someone else's hard tune and vice verca. Tunes that look hard can often be quite simple once you work them out. For instance a decorative twiddle that goes "B, Bflat, Bnatural, Bflat" looks horrible written down. Playing it (at least on English) is easy.

Don't know about visiting in person, you'll have to ask. I wouldn't exactly describe it as all digital though. I would not exactly describe it as all digital either. (There is a sort to self-mocking sarcasm that seems to be peculiar to the English and colonies; it does not always come over properly by computer.) We, the ICA are working on it though. Digitising the library, I mean. Dave is very hospitable and you could visit by prior arrangement. Get a move on though: he wants to stop being Librarian at the end of the year. Do join the ICA and do go and look at the material in the library. Roger (Secretary to the ICA)

Many thanks for this. Having decided that I would need several years to get this right, I dug out the Syncopace CD. Many delights there. Now I feel inspired to persist with the tune. Maybe only two years!

The ICA does have a physical archive (the library!) We are currently thinking about ways to make it more widely available. We would be very interested in this collection. Do not post the originals! Roger Gawley, ICA Secretary

Rather depends on what the keys are and what you are used to. On an English concertina going up or down a fifth (taking a tune from G to D or C for example) is relatively easy. You start in a different place and remember the extra sharp or flat. Other changes, such as G to A, are harder! What you can do is to take a tune that you know well and work it out in a different key. First time you do this will be slow. Like most other activities, its gets easier with practice. So I am told anyway. If you really want to play lots of tunes in lots of different keys, buy a Hayden duet.

I find a lot of snobbery in both directions, mainly arising from lack of personal confidence. I would absolutely love to be able to pick up a tune by ear. I would also like to read music better than I do. Life is short. What I would never do is deride anybody for what they cannot do at present. Seen that one lots of times. Seems to me that many people learn tunes in a hybrid way. This has been said implicitly here already. It does not have to be one of the other.

Yes, but as a dots player I don't know and I don't care what the notes are called, I simply map the position on the written notation onto the keyboard.

You can find the form on the ICA website at http://www.concertina.org/events/swaledale_form.pdf This probably does not show up in google yet. edited to be more helpful!

Too late I fear. As with many fields of human activity, you have one group of people using the words on one way and another using them in a different way. Nobody is going to change now. You could try to come up with a completely new set of terms and try to get everyone to use those instead but historical experience suggests that you are unlikely to succeed.

You are right: you need to undo the bolt and move to another hole. This is a respectable way to do it: Charles Wheatstone used the same idea although the heads on the Jackie bolts are smaller. You should be OK using pliers with a bit of cloth to avoid marking. About the buzzing B, I can only say that my Jackie does not do this. I would suspect a valve/flap problem but there will be others here who understand this much better. (and no I do not normally play a Jackie but my usual instrument is in for repair)