MikeE

Last contact was a bit more than 5 years ago. I heard she and husband Bob may have moved to S California. may have moved to S California

I've got two very loud anglos and I still sometimes strain to hear. i end up with a poorer than normal perch with leg crossed to lift the concertina a few inches closer to my ears. Last week I noticed I was getting a sore neck and realized I had turned my head to the right with left ear close to the box. My neck was stiff the next day. I wondered about some of those inexpensive hearing boosters, but you'd have to buy two. Best solution is to sit in the corner, but then you are trapped in the corner. Mike San Rafael, California

Any one from Arizona? A friend of mine moved there for a time, to Camp Verde. Her name is Martha, but can't remember her last. Can anyone help? Mike, in San Rafael, where she first took up the concertina

Across the rows, Irish

It won't get better, but you may get used to it. I have very large hands and I've found some cheap concertinas that I can't reach the outside row, or on others, the inside row. In the case of the one that I owned, I opened it up and moved the hand rest, when that didn't work, I made a new one that was not so tall. After ten years and a lot of playing, the bellows on my Suttner are still stiff. Much stiffer than the much, much older Jefferies I own. And the action is stiffer too. I think I moved the hand rest of the Jeff too. At least two local players have instruments, classics, not a modern build, that the action is so stiff I can't imagine playing it and any speed for any length of time. One of them claims to have double springed the action to get that stiffness desired. By contrast they can't stand the light touch of my Jefferies. I only have to think about a button and it plays. The action of the Suttner is light, but not so light as the Jeff. They are all different

First with the memorization, even if you can read music having the tune in your head is important,, especially if you are attempting to play any traditional music. I have a few sheets of music on my stand, new tunes I want to learn, with audio reference for reminder. After a warm up of tunes I enjoy, I play through the new tunes a few times each, working to the point of eventually being able to play with only the title for reminder. I don't usually labor over tunes until I can play them free of the dots. This usually takes about a week, the tunes I am less fond of either take another week or get dropped. After the tunes have been played a few times each, I go back to playing tunes I know and love. The actual practicing of new tunes is probably less than 20 minutes of my hour or so of playing. It is important to end practice time playing well so you go away feeling good about your music After I can play the tune easily, then I fill out the tune by working on fingering, which I usually don't do much changing now, with 25 years of Anglo concertina playing, and any ornamenting or doubling, what I want to do to make the tune mine. For me, the final step is pairing the tune with another tune or two to make a set so that it gets played regularly. A tune left on its own doesn't get played as much, and thus is forgotten. Mike

excellent!