Jim Besser

Oh yes, I ordered In the Round as soon as it became available. Amazing ensemble playing that really raises the bar.

Bit of a first take but heyho! The top two lines of a village band arrangement intended for a variety of instruments. It sort of works on two ECs. We follow New Anything with Italian Rant, another Playford tune, which coincidentally appears on the latest Leveret CD. Yes, they're wonderful. They rarely rehearse together - just send each other tunes on their phones - and there are no arrangements, just glorious sympathetic weaving in and out of each other's playing, fresh every time. We had two thirds of them as part of the Hurricane Party last night, accompanying Fay Hield. Great concert. And, as well as concertina and fiddle, Robert Harbron played the banjo once - who knew? Nice combination of tunes, and I really like your two-instrument arrangements! Very different from the ones I've worked on with Randy Stein.

I'd really like to hear your version! I have a feeling the Leveret CDs are going to have a huge impact on traditional musicians. The group is so tight, they are all so talented, it's just amazing music.

Bob's answer pretty much reflects my own experience. Let your ear be your guide, and less is often more. For contra dance playing, I spend a lot of time practicing to recordings. I don't have much trouble taking leads except on the very fast and very notey tunes, but I'm not as skilled at playing a backup role, and that's what I work on the most. I do a lot of drones and bass lines. Sometimes countermelodies and harmonies. I try to mix it up a lot. Sometimes just rhythmic pulses. And while I mostly play melody plus left hand accompaniment, I don't do much of that in a band situation, especially when there are strong rhythm players; on a 30 button Anglo, I can't possibly match the chordal richness of the piano, the piano accordion or the guitar. It seems to me that one of the most important skills to learn is what to leave OUT in a band situation.

Hmm, I checked the link and it works here. Reposted on soundcloud: see if this works https://soundcloud.com/concertinist/new-anything-set-bessermp3

Update: I just posted in music and videos. Let's see what happens!

Here's a set I've been working on for a while, and am still not satisfied with. I posted an earlier version I played with Randy Stein, but I haven't figured out exactly how to make this work solo. Update: Link worked, then didn't work. Here it is on Soundcloud. The tunes: The New Anything and St. Catherine's, both from the Playford repertoire. http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=tunearch.org/wiki/New_Anything.no-ext/0001 http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/book/JohnWalsh/St_Catherine/0000 The set was included on the first CD by Leveret, with Rob Harbron on English concertina, and I loved the sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tev4RxJQwJE I'd be very interested in hearing how others play these tunes! Played on a Morse G/D Anglo hybrid.

I hear you all, I share your pain. When the TOTM worked, it was great fun, and it benefited my playing a lot. But there's no reason why the basic concept - being introduced to new music, learning it, recording and posting it and finally hearing how other musicians approach the same tune - has to die. Perhaps the format was too rigid and our numbers too small to make such a formal forum work. So here's a challenge for a self directed forum. Learn a new tune. Record it and post it in the Concertina Music and Videos forum. If you have dots, or links to dots, post that as well. And post your challenge: "I want to see how other musicians approach this tune." Or record and post an old tune that you'd like to freshen and see what others do with it. For me, that was the beauty of the TOTM. I wanted to be exposed to new tunes, but I also wanted to learn from how other musicians played those tunes. I recorded my share, and the discipline of recording was a very useful learning tool, but I also benefited from hearing how Jody played it, and Bob, and Wolf, and Daria, and everybody else. There's no reason why there has to be only one tune at a time. Maybe collect all in a single thread: TOTM Offspring. We should start the ball rolling and see what happens; maybe it will work!

There was a fellow on the contra dance circuit in upstate NY and Pennsylvania in the late 70s/early 80s who played dances solo on hammered dulcimer - and called at the same time (and drank Jim Beam from the bottle while doing both). He was fantastic - focusing on just rhythm as he called, then adding melody lines when the dancers got it. Wish I could remember his name to see if there are any videos of him performing this magic.

I don't know about printed material, but you live in Brooklyn, where one of the premier Anglo players and teachers offers lessons. I can't imagine anything that would jump start your playing as effectively as lessons with Jody Kruskal.

Among many others who once were part of our online community: Big Nick Robertshaw, the powerhouse Jeffries duet player, and my old bandmate and Northeast Squeeze In roommate Michael Reid, who joined my band playing English concertina, then decided he wanted to do Irish music only and took up Anglo, with great success. I remember Rhomylly. She wrote a book on the Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance. Nick and I overlapped for about a year on the Foggy Bottom Morris Men, and I learned more in that year than I did in my previous 10 as Morris musician. Here's a little snippet of Nick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKRbR_LUxSs

Nice. Ah, the REd Clay Ramblers. One of my all time favorite bands. Still have all the old vinyl, including Hard Times.

Well done! Cool tune, too.

Very nice. I think I'll give this a go on Anglo - suspect the fingering will be awkward, to say the least.

I posted a version of this a while back, but we've been working on our arrangement and trying to get tighter. It's from a recent rehearsal of The Squeezers: Randy Stein on English concertina, Gus Voorhees on 2 row G/D melodeon, me on Jeffries G/D Anglo. Tune: The Orphan. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/68325595/Test/Sq_11_17_15_Orphan2.mp3 Comments? Suggestions?

Really nice. Shows off the capabilities of the duet. More of a bounce than most versions I"ve heard - I like that a lot.

David - actually, I did that at the 2014 NESI: printed notation for all the TOTM tunes up to that point, and about 10 of us played through most of them. Decided not to repeat myself this year! And I plan to continue recording and posting, as well.

I'm glad it was of value to you. The decision about unlocking is entirely Paul's - my moderator powers are highly limited, as is my understanding of the various demands of running a complex board like this. It's his call, as it should be.

About the Tune of the Month forum.... Since March, 2013, we've done 32 Tunes of the Month and almost as many themes, and it's been great fun. The discipline of learning tunes that might not ordinarily be on my playlists and recording them for public consumption has been helpful for my own playing, and I hope the same is true for others. But nothing lasts forever on the Web. It's become apparent to me that there just isn't a critical mass of players posting tunes, and participation has been declining in the past six months, to the point where I no longer think there's enough interest to justify the work of searching for interesting tunes, posting the polls, finding YouTube videos and notation and monitoring the forum. At least for me. I've put this to Paul, who so graciously allowed me to run with the TOTM idea, and he's closed the forum. There's no reason folks can't pursue the basic Tune of the Month or Theme of the Month idea in a more informal context in the recordings and videos forum. Maybe something unstructured will work better for people. In any event, my sincere thanks to c.netters who have suggested, recorded and commented on tunes. Thanks for an unusually civil (for the Internet) level of discourse. And as always, thanks to Paul and Ken for concertina.net, which remains the premier Web resource for our peculiar little slice of humanity.

Yep. I've always heard this tune performed for sword dancing -and in that context, it's never very interesting. One of the things that's interested me in recent years is playing Morris tunes in a concert context, as Dapper has done. Some of the tunes are so lovely, and deserve to be played with more attention to melody than we can do when playing for Morris.

Gorgeous. You a deft touch with doing accompaniment on the Anglo - no easy feat.

I'm such a nerd, I actually got that. To clarify: what he was spelling in Morse code was "LOL." Says this one time amateur radio operator.

I'm such a nerd, I actually got that.

Especially tunes with codas.

Listening to that, I decided it was too fast and too rigid for the tune, so here again is "Coilsfield House Revisited" - a second take, a bit slower and freer. On same George Case 'tina. Again, very nice!