Tullochgorum

The choice between the English and the Duet is largely driven by what you want to play, and how hard you're prepared to work. If your main interest is fast jigs and reels, the English is much more practical. I know a couple of very good duet players, but they struggle to keep up in sessions. If you are more interested in intricate harmony, the duet is the better choice. But be prepared to work hard - it was developed as a virtuoso instrument for professionals, and it's not a trivial undertaking.

I came across a passage early in Gandhi's autobiography where he describes watching a play as a child: "The agonized lament of the parents over Shravana's death is still fresh in my memory. The melting tune moved me deeply, and I played it on a concertina which my father had purchased for me." Additional information is sparse, but I did find the following image on Pinterest. This suggests that he played the English into later life. Unfortunately the original page is deleted, but there's an anonymous comment that claims he used it to play western classical music: Though it seems he had an ambivalent relationship with the instrument, because I also found the following passage in his essay "The Music Of The Spinning Wheel": Not on the clatter of arms depends the revival of her (India's) prosperity and true independence. It depends most largely upon re-introduction, in every home, of the music of the spinning wheel. It gives sweeter music and is more profitable than the execrable harmonium, concertina and accordion. A search suggests that this hasn't been discussed on the site before. Does anyone have any more information to share?

Pianists and accordian players number 1-5. But they use their thumbs so that makes sense. Like fiddlers, our thumbs are otherwise occupied...

I've just stumbled across a digitised copy of Richard Carlin's out-of-print tutor English Concertina which you can borrow from archive.org. https://archive.org/details/englishconcertin0000carl/mode/2up This is the book I learned from, and it's full of excellent tunes and interesting history. But beware - for some reason he labels the thumb as the 1st finger, with the actual fingers labelled as 2nd, 3rd and 4th. This is very confusing for anyone familiar with string instruments, where these fingers are universally labelled as 1st, 2nd and 3rd. He also advises a rather eccentric way of positioning the instrument on your knee at a tilt towards your body. His two old LPs are available on Spotify, where you can hear him play a number of the tunes in his book.

If you look at Regondi's old tutors, you'll find that he changed bellows direction far more often than most modern EC players - and that was for classical music. It's in the later Victorian tutors that longer legato phrasing became the unquestioned norm. Given that we're playing an instrument with a relatively limited range of expression compared to, say, the fiddle, it seems to me that we should add as many expressive effects to our repertoire as possible. It doesn't mean that we have to use all of them all the time, but it does give us more musical choices. The physics of a bellows change does give a different kind of emphasis compared to a staccato button press or a pulse of the bellows in a single direction, so it's certainly worth experimenting with its tasteful use. Anyone who believes that you can't execute rapid bellows changes on the EC should listen to Simon Thoumire's bellows tremolo - it's fast, controlled and rhythmic. It's just a matter of practice. My suggestion would be to build up gradually to avoid strain injury. I personally like to add as much lift and drive as I can when playing trad dance music, and I often work the bellows pretty hard. I was once at a session where some of the musicians were round a corner. At the end another concertina player popped round to say hello and was surprised to see me playing an EC - he thought I was playing an Anglo! After all they both have similar reeds and bellows - it's mainly the keyboard layout that's different. So with the right technique there's a wide overlap between the sounds you can achieve. For someone like me who plays a lot of Scottish music the EC is more practical than an Anglo, because we play from 3 flats through to 4 sharps. And I appreciate the ease of playing legato for airs. But I don't see why I should have to give up the wonderful drive and lift the best ITM players achieve with their Anglos. And players like Simon are living proof that the EC can equal the Anglo for dance music if you put your mind to it.

Hi folks I'm planning a campaign to improve my rather flaky technique on the English Concertina. Some years back I was in a workshop with Alistair Anderson where he showed us his exercise for working through a range of options for the attack, shape and finish of each note. I remember being impressed at the time but was too lazy to use it regularly. I can't find the notes I took at the time, so my memory is hazy. If anyone is able to share the details, I'd be very grateful!