Jim Besser
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Posts posted by Jim Besser
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4 hours ago, Kathryn Wheeler said:
but did remember going to some Scottish ceilidh dancing. Some people there were terribly serious about it and probably did all sorts of more serious Scottish dancing. I gave up because there’d always be some dreaded dancers you’d see coming who’d outdo each other in how hard they could whirl you round or grab your hand. Ugh!! 😆
That's a big problem in contra dancing around here. I know several dancers who've been injured by partners flinging them around. in our local venue, they post notices warning against abusive dancing, but they are too often ignored. From the stage, I've actually witnessed a dancer being taken out on a stretcher.
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3 hours ago, wunks said:
A second fiddler is ideal so I can play viola and ( soon I hope ) concertina! I remember playing for big dances in the long gone days at NEFFA, Old Songs and the Dance Flurry in Saratoga. It was exciting but a different beast altogether...😊
Yes, a different beast. I enjoy playing for small dances - last year I did a family dance with about 6 couples, and it was a blast - but my normal environment is a very big and very crowded hall, which requires very different strategies.
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1 hour ago, wunks said:
I like playing a single tune for a dance. Two is fun but three is fun mostly for the musicians and we begin to lose sight of our mission. You don't ask the caller " What three tunes would be good?" That's when they're liable to say
"oh well, anything". If you have lots of dancers a good caller will divide them up into shorter sets. In big halls with long lines you need a bit more prep.
My primary band these days mostly does 2 tune sets, but we do a lot of variations to keep things interesting. But 3 tune sets make sense in a big hall with lots of dancers, and for bands that don't do a lot of messing around with tunes.
When our Glen Echo Spanish Ballroom is really full, a single dance can take 9 or 10 minutes. Bands that don't do a lot of variation can get pretty boring.
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Part of the challenge in playing for many trad social dance forms is communicating with the caller. For English country dance musicians, it's usually easy - specific tunes go with named dances. For contras: that's the exception to the rule, except for things like Chorus Jig, Petronella, etc.
Most callers around here are adept at telling the band what they want: a smooth jig, a marchy reel, a chunky jig, something slinky, etc. What I really like to hear is something specific: "something that works with a balance at the top of the B."
We almost never know what dances the caller will do in advance, and have to make quick decisions about what in our playlist works with the next dance (actually, what TUNES - we always play 2 or 3 tune sets). I've been playing for dances for decades, and can't think of a time when we knew what the caller was going to do before getting on stage. So having someone in the band who's adept at quickly finding tunes that work with what the caller is about to call is critical.
What is a problem is when a caller doesn't communicate, or doesn't understand the relationship between the music and the dance. When I'm talking to the caller about the next dance, what I really hate to hear is "oh well, anything." That's a prescription for disaster, because "anything" can really mess the dancers up. Well-chosen tunes, on the other hand, really propel and energize the dance.
Fortunately, in our neck of the woods we have an abundance of talented callers who do a great job working with bands.
When we play English ceilidhs, there are probably more dances that work best with specific tunes - Sir Roger de Coverly is one that we almost always play, and sometimes Nottingham Swing, although lately we've been getting away from the tune usually associated with the dance.
We can't possibly know all the dances - especially with so many recently choreographed contras. So knowing what kinds of tunes work with different elements of a dance is critical. As is having a caller who knows how to communicate with a band.
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Filberts, a tune by Rob Harbron, and The Trip to Pakistan, by Niall Kenny, played on a 30 button Jeffries GD Anglo concertina.I've long admired Harbron's tunes but find many difficult to arrange on Anglo. His playing is so smooth and fluid, and the Anglo is so chunky....I finally gave up trying to imitate him and tried to work out something more suited to the diatonic box.
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This is an interesting browser anomaly.
I mostly use Safari. From any of the forum pages: it used to be that clicking on the date of the last reply brought me to....the last entry. Now, it always brings me to the first entry in the thread. So if it's a thread with a lot of messages - think "current makes of concertinas" - I have to scroll down each page and hit the highest page number, and when I get to the last one, scroll down to the last message.
I switched to Chrome; same problem
But with Firefox, it worked properly; clicking on the last entry from the forum page brought me to the last entry of the target thread.
Just FYI, it's no big deal.
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Very cool, Doug. I've never focused much on ITM, but I always appreciated her playing. Must have been an amazing experience.
See you in Sept, i assume!
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On 7/13/2023 at 8:57 PM, David Barnert said:
In the early 1980s I played (hammered dulcimer—I hadn’t yet found my way to the concertina) in a contradance band in New York City and learned the tune from our accordion player, who had brought it back from a workshop he’d attended in Seattle. Only problem was he couldn’t remember the title, so we called it “Spots on a Page.” For decades I couldn’t find anyone who could set me straight on the title, until finally one day at Pinewoods Camp I played it for Steve Hickman and he recognized it and knew the name.
Jim, we must play it at the next Squeeze-In.
On 7/13/2023 at 8:57 PM, David Barnert said:Jim, we must play it at the next Squeeze-In.
Absolutely!
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Two sprightly English tunes - Whinham's Reel and Bachelors of Every Nation, played on a 30 button Jeffries GD Anglo. I found Whinham's on Andy Turner's always-excellent Squeezed Out blog, and first heard Bachelors on a Brian Peters CD. Both great fun to play.
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Like David: participated in the rec.music.makers.squeezebox Usenet group and somehow transitioned to concertina.net when it was created, probably because it was being discussed at the Northeast Squeeze In.
Kudos to Paul and Ken for keeping it going all these years; on the internet, where everything is ephemeral, cnet's longevity must be some kind of record.
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39 minutes ago, Randy Stein said:
She's in the upper NE. That would be a very long drive
Ah, I missed that. Hope there's a good open band near her!
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3 hours ago, Randy Stein said:
I recently had a discussion with a musician new to the English Concertina. She has always participated in contra dances and finally decided to play the music she liked to dance to. Thanks to my friend Jim Besser and the Portland Collection, there is a lot of music I could recommend to her to learn.
She should come to the Glen Echo Open band, which plays every other month for the Friday contra dance series.
Tell her that newbies can sit in the back row, and no matter how loud they play, nobody will hear them. Only the front row is amplified, and there are up to 40 musicians on stage, so it's pretty much a wall of sound.
It's also a good way to get more proficient at learning by ear, since there are no prepared setlists and no distributed notation.
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Like many others, I've been much taken with melodeonist Frank Lee's gorgeous new CD, "Bric a Brac Box," and I've been playing around with arranging some of the tunes for Anglo concertina. As I understand it, this one - Dear Tobacco" - is a Cumbrian tune dating from the early 19th Century. But that information comes from the Internet, so it could well be inaccurate.What's not inaccurate: I'm playing on a Jeffries GD Anglo.
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6 minutes ago, Alan Day said:
How do you play ?
Al
Hi Al - my hand positions are fairly static, but do shift sometimes, primarily when I do low bass runs. Example: the tune Whistling Rufus, with the cool bass run in the A part. If I don't shift my left hand down a position for that measure, the run involves hitting successive notes with my pinky, not a happy situation.
But for most tunes involving low basses and low chords, the pinky is heavily involved. My right hand never shifts positions.
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Greg Jowaisas is also an outstanding concertina technician, but I don't know if he works on hybrids. He's just outside Cincinnati.
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8 hours ago, leahv said:
I just got a new-to-me used hybrid (an Edgely Professional about 10 years old), and it's lovely but it does need a tune-up: a few pitchy reeds, one or two that buzz, that sort of thing. Now that the Button Box is closing even for repairs, is there anyone in the northeastern US who does this sort of work?
Last I heard, Bob is relocating to North Carolina, and going independent. He will continue doing repairs, but there will be a pause while he moves and gets set up. And he will no longer be in the Northeast, or working under the Button Box banner.
That said, I don't know if he works on hybrid concertinas other than those produced by the Button Box.
You might want to touch base with Bob Tedrow in Alabama - not Northeast, but there aren't a lot of options. Or send it back to Frank.
Some accordion repair shops will do simple stuff on accordion-reeded concertinas - I checked for my own Morse instruments - but this would not be my first choice.
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7 minutes ago, xgx said:
Thanks Jim, when do you use the GD?
Switching between layouts/systems shouldn't be too much of a problem,
I already use an EC and an Anglo plus CBA, BC and DG systems to the same depths of mediocrity
Well, if you do all that, you'll have no problems switching! I watched an old friend play both EC and Anglo, and it made my head hurt.
I play the Jeffries GD for a majority of the English ceilidh and American contra dance tunes I do. I love a lot of John Kirkpatrick tunes, and - emulating his Anglo playing - play most in C, on the CG.
So many tunes I play in the keys of G and D work fine on either instrument, but the sound is different, and which I play depends on how a particular tune sounds to me. It's very subjective, and I rarely can predict which I'll prefer, so trial and error is the rule.
Increasingly, I'm interested in modern Euro acoustic music - French, Flemish, etc. - and while the GD predominates, I use both, depending to a great degree on what I'm doing with the left hand. Am I doing a lot of bass runs? Specific chording? That plays a big role in determining which I use.
As I said, I prefer the CG for Morris, and play many of the tunes in the key of C; I almost always play solo, so I don't have to worry about melodeon players locked into the key of G. I have a very loud Jeffries GD, but the guys have a much easier time hearing my Lachenal or my hybrid CG.
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4 hours ago, xgx said:
Usage is roughly ...
CG for Irish and English, Scottish etc.
G/D for Morris and owt else that fits
The Jeffries C/G layout seems popular and better suited for ITM.
Is there any advantage to having a G/D in Jeffries or would it be better to opt for the Wheatstone layout?
I prefer the Jeffries layout, but honestly, it doesn't make all that much difference; you get used to what you play. I switch back and forth - my CG is Wheatstone, my GD is a Jeffries. You adapt to what you have.
FWIW, for Morris, I play the CG almost all the time; the higher register cuts through the clatter of sticks, the jingle of bells and the hecklers.
It's also true that if you like the sound of the top Irish players, you'll probably want to stick with the CG. You can play Irish tunes on the GD just fine, but the sound isn't the same.
For English tunes - no hard and fast rule. John Kirkpatrick plays the vast majority of his Anglo tunes on the CG.
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10 hours ago, CrP said:
Nice tune; I like the feeling of your arrangement. There are times when I can easily hear this as being played on a bagpipe of two.
I played this on my Morse hybrid - my Jeffries was in the shop - and i really missed having a drone on this tune. It came back yesterday (a major overhaul; it sounds and plays so much better) and maybe I'll rework the tune with a drone part.
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I recorded this tune - Bagpipers, an English tune from the late 1700s - a couple of years ago. But seeing a recent video of a workshop by the band Topette in which they arranged this tune, I was motivated to try for a more interesting arrangement. Still a work in progress.Played on a 30 button Anglo CG concertina.
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On 5/4/2023 at 12:42 PM, nultylynch said:
my question is this: is this a viable middle step on the progression of concertina ownership? Is the ~$800 a worthwhile investment or is it like replacing the engine and transmission in my 20+ year old suv?thanks!
The short answer is, it depends.
I own a CG Lachenal that was refitted with a Dipper mechanism a number of years ago, one of a group sold by Paul Groff. It is a superb instrument - very fast, great tone, a superb player. My GD is a Jeffries, and I've become much fonder of the Jeffries layout, but I am loathe to give up the refitted Lachenal, so I go back and forth between the two systems.
But Lachenals, to the best of my knowledge, were quite variable in the quality of the reeds. The repair people who have worked on mine have rated its reeds as top quality. But I have played other Lachenals with Dipper internals that play well, but didn't sound nearly as good.
You might want to check with a repair tech like Greg Jowaisas to get a sense of whether a refit would be worthwhile. I wouldn't go into it blind.
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A quirky, fascinating tune by Emma Reid, played on a 30 button Morse GD Anglo.
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The Shropshire Lass, played on a 30 button Morse GD hybrid Anglo. Taken more or less from the playing of Andy Turner.
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Fantastic instrument. Our trombone player has pretty much switched to Harpejji, playing it mostly as an electric bass. And he's using it to compose new tunes; we've played a couple of his new tunes at contras this year. Also an outstanding instrument for those with hand / finger issues; very little stress on the joints.
Trip to Pakistan / Filberts
in Concertina Videos & Music
Posted
Years ago, a bandmate complained that no matter what I played, you could tell I was a Morris dance musician. I suspect she was right.