Jim Besser

You know how you hear a tune on a CD and don't think anything of it, and they a year later you hear it and think "OMG, this is great?" That's the way it was with this tune, Unanimity. I heard it on one of the Leveret CDs a while back, and maybe because their CDs are so full of good tunes, I didn't pay any attention. Then, yesterday, I heard Andy Turner's version on his previously mentioned blog, and I was gobsmacked. So this morning I worked my way through it. It's rough, but it seems to me to be one of those tunes that's uniquely suited to the Anglo concertina. Now I have to go back and see what Leveret did with it. https://soundcloud.com/concertinist/unanimity-march-29

It's a weird time. I have a LOT of time to play, but that'll end next week when the grandkid and his parents come to stay with us for the duration. With gigs canceled for the foreseeable future, I'm getting to work on tunes I never had time for.

Here it is - another tune for the times: The World Turned Upside Down.

Craig - I didn't think about that one. Foggy Bottom Morris does a dance ' Cavalier' to The World Turned Upside Down. Maybe I'll record it today.

Yes, it was Skeeter Davis . I worked this up a couple of years ago at the Northeast Squeeze In - for a session called "Pity Party, " tunes / songs of doom and gloom - and then forgot about it until yesterday. Reading the morning news about hoarding toilet paper and crashing stock markets, it suddenly came to mind. I can't imagine why. It's fun trying some of these old pop songs on concertina. One I worked up a while back: Blame it on the Bossa Nova. Maybe that will be today's quarantine project.

With so much free time thanks to our new social separation, I've been recording a few things. Here's a set of French tunes - Rondeau des Chiens Battus, by Stephane Delicq, and Bourree D'Aurora Sand, traditional.

Hearing the news today - stock market crashes, quarantines, disease, politicians doing their politician thing - this tune came to mind. Those of you over a certain age may recognize it.

So: It's a strange time for musicians, with so many events canceled, gigs disappeared into thin air, sessions on hold. So why not come together despite our physical isolation and share tunes through the medium of Facebook? (I'm doing this on FB and not c.net because this isn't restricted to concertinas, although I'm hoping lots of concertina friends will participate) Here's the idea: record (video or audio) a tune or a set you're working on during these quarantined times. Any genre, any instrument, and we're not looking for perfection. Just fun stuff that you're working on. What do you think? Let's give it a try and see what happens. https://www.facebook.com/groups/670435983731956/

Thanks; that's interesting. I keep thinking of Jeffries as scarce, but it occurred to me that I really don't know what that means.

As a matter of curiosity, I'm wondering if anybody knows how many Jeffries - all systems, or just Anglos, all the different iterations of the company - were built?

My experience : the Morse C/G is a fast and very playable instrument; I can play it interchangeably with my good vintage instrument and don't see much of a difference when playing fast reels. Every hybrid G/D I've played, including the Morse, is a little harder to play fast than a really good vintage box. I feel a significant difference between my G/D Morse and my Jeffries. That said, I've played many contra dances and ceilidhs with the Morse G/D. So strictly in terms of playability, I don't think you'd gain very much. Sound, of course, is a different matter entirely.

As always, a work in progress. It's maddening, how slow progress comes these days!

Wonderful tunes and wonderful playing, Felix!

Concertina and piano accordion. And a lot of craziness.

Here's my version in Bm on a Jeffries 30 button GD Anglo. Still playing around with the chords. And, like with so many mazurkas, I have a hard time playing it with the smoothness it requires. Bill N - I've never tried it in Bm on the CG. I would think that limits one's chording/bass options, but I'll give it a try and see what comes out! jb

Nicely done, Robin! I love playing this tune. It falls very nicely in Bm on the G/D. If I get a chance this weekend i'll record my version.

I have the book. It 's very eccentric in the way it's organized, but I've found some obscure tunes in it.

Ha. The accidental posts were weird. When I hit "submit reply," I got a message about flow control and telling me to "wait 23 seconds and submit again." I did so several times, always getting the same message (and not being returned to the page). I gave up - and when I backed out, I saw my message had been posted several times. 23 seconds? What's that about?

Hmmm.. how did my post get duplicated? Deleted.

My rule of thumb: there is no rule of thumb. People have different ways of learning, different goals in playing music. Finding your own way is a critical step. For me, what works is doing both. I maintain a weekly music to-do list that always includes learning, or at least trying, one or two new tunes; working to perfect some that I have tried and liked in the recent past; and finally, focused practice on tunes for the various bands I'm in. I often find myself tilting toward the new tune side of things because I find it more fun than the hard work of actually practicing, but can usually strongarm myself back to the program. And I maintain a spreadsheet of tunes I've worked on over the past 20 years, and often pick a point on the spreadsheet and try to play the tunes I've probably already forgotten. The current spreadsheet is more than 800 tunes long, but I probably could't start more than 10 percent of them at a session without a crutch like notation. But every week, I'll spend a half hour or hour just going down these old lists and playing. I also look at tunes that I have a hard time distinguishing from other tunes with similar qualities. This week, I printed out notation for 3 Stephane Delicq I've been working on; they have a very similar feel, and I have a hard time keeping them straight, so I'll play all three back to back. hoping to burn them into my aging brain. The other thing I do that seems to help: playing the same tune in different keys. As Anglo players, we tend to get locked into patterns that emphasize muscle memory over memory of the actual melody. For me, taking a tune I'm learning and doing it in multiple keys really helps me remember. But it's all personal; everybody learns and remembers in their own unique way. I've been playing for many years and am stiil working on refining what works for me (and, of course working to overcome laziness)

It's so strange; I don't know where they find screws with such soft slots. It's just another reason I always have duct tape in my sound box!

Sorry, sold.

I'll be honest; I don't much like these. But they're convenient, they don't cost alot and there aren't many solutions to amplifying a concertina that don't cost much more. So if you're looking for a Microvox, you can have this one for $60 plus shipping. It's in good condition, except that - like all 3 Microvoxes I've owned - the Phillips head screw heads accessing the battery compartment are starting to strip. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they don't use better quality screws. The solution is just to not try to tighten them too much. You can check them out at the BUtton Box site: https://buttonbox.com/accessories.html#microphones COmplete with the luxurious (just a joke) zipper case. Includes the belt-pack power supply / volume control and the mics themselves, which fasten to the concertina with velcro. US sale only, sorry.

I went from a minidisc to a Zoom H2n, and thence to a Zoom H4n. I've used my iphone in emergencies, and that works, but the dedicated recorder is far superior. An H4n in a reasonably quiet environment, with good mic placement, produces outstanding sound. I generally record in MP3 format to save disc space; I remove the SD card and load the files into Audacity on my desktop, so I can edit. For demo recordings and the like, I record in .wav format for better sound. The H4n is very flexible - the built in mics are very good, but you can also use external mics via XLR; the recorder also provides phantom power, so you can use a good condenser mic if you want to ratchet up quality. But for something like the Noel Hill school, you'll get great recordings using the internal mics. In that kind of environment, you'l want the recorder to be relatively close to the person you're recording to avoid the jabbering of other students, coughs, etc.. What I'd do is let it record in half hour or so chunks, with the recorder close to Noel. And then upload to Audacity, edit and export individual tracks. It sounds like a complicated process, but it's actually pretty easy.

Sorry to hear this. I played with two Northwest sides over the years, and both met the same fate. It's always sad when the dancing ends.