Steve Moore

Word, saved as a PDF; it's a bit of work. Work out the harmonies and chords on piano and concertina. The staff was generated from ABC; a BMP copy was cut up into 4 pieces and pasted on a page with lots of room between rows. Then type in the button numbers above and below the rows according to the TAB system presented by Gary Coover in his book on harmonic style Anglo.

Heard this on public radio, often as a song, a number of times through this holiday season. The sentiment was much brought to mind as this household ground through twin cases of Covid across the holidays. Basically A minor, it then moves through some major chord voices. I think I discovered a left-hand button or two I've never played before. Drive the Cold Winter Away.pdf

Great comments, ideas and inspiration; thanks everyone! I am beginning to get a feel for the A dorian/minor Irish tunes and harmonies (and a few G major ones) that may fit largely in the right hand on C/G. I may explore a hornpipe soon in this spirit and going forward plan to write out the full tab versions with RH melody notes, as suggested above, so all can interpret. Meanwhile check out another A minor attempt, posted as a separate thread, Drive the Cold Winter Away.

FULL TABLATURE VERSION, PDF. Right hand tab has been added above the staff; left hand harmony (and a few melody notes) below. Enjoy. Joy to the Person_tab.pdf

My G/D is in reserve for future exploration. I can transpose mostly by ear so at some point, summon the nerve to sit in on a slow session and play G, Em and D tunes as if they were in C, Am and G. (I'm not going to think about LH harmonic options yet.)

I should've included the source for this tune, here in D minor on lute, voice and viol. Worth a patient listen. The song lyrics are an exposition of constant but unrequited love (*sigh*). -Steve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLl7K1IlXO0&ab_channel=DiegOrlok Yes, adding the RH tab would make it more accessible. It'll go onto two pages in Word because of spacing limitations. A rainy day project.

"Joy to the Person of my Love" is a baroque era, courtly Scots song with lovely 6-chord minor to major harmonies. It is also played very slowly. As such it makes a good exercise for harmonic Anglo on the Left Hand following tab conventions of G Coover. I've left it to the player to work out the right hand melody, with just a couple of footnoted suggestions. I'm new at this, finding the voicings and getting my fingers to the more distant buttons, so comments and suggestions welcome. Joy to the Person of My Love_Am.docx

KESH JIG TAB Here's the Kesh jig in G, left hand tab below, with substantial but mostly one-note harmony on the left. A, G and F# melody notes have to be covered by the left too. Getting to all these positions on the L seems possible but is challenging for me at this stage, and I'm a long way from intuitively knowing which button combo to move to for a given chord. I also have a G/D instrument, a Herrington. I'll explore G tunes on the right hand at some point later. Addressing the C/G for now (per the format of Gary Coover's book), other G tunes that fit more or less within a G to g octave could be treated like Kesh here, but there don't seem to be many of them. Or, transpose the G tunes to C - therefore mostly right-hand, and with fuller chord possibilities. A dorian tunes that fit in an A to a octave - but try to find one - can be treated like this too and left in the original key; there are good harmonic options with A minor. The Princess Royal set dance and The Stack of Rye hornpipe are candidates. Kesh jig_LH tab for harmonic Anglo.pdf

Really nice waltz. I see it posted on The Session just like this. Not to forget, there is also Joe Heaney's fine love ballad, Will You Come Over the Mountain, a different, also very nice 3/4 tune, in hexatonic A dorian (actually sung in Ab). The images of the moon at midnight, confronting his love at her door, the proposal and response, and the climb up over the pass that awaits them are all precious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18pnS0CDZnw&ab_channel=JoeHeaney-Topic Cheers

Recently began to work through Gary Coover's excellent starter book for left-hand (LH) harmonic accompaniment on Anglo concertina. Many of the melodies presented in his book are English Country dance tunes, Morris tunes, and original compositions. They can be transcribed into C, Am, F, and Dm which have many LH chord patterns for the 3 or 4 chords required for many tunes. Some more limited chording can also accompany G and even D tunes. The practical requirement is that "most" of the tune be playable on the right hand. Many Irish tunes sit in the middle range of the fiddle, whistle, flute and pipes; low parts of melodies will commonly fall below G or A above middle C and are played with the LH on the Anglo. So, even though it's not traditional, I'd like to see, or work on collecting, a list of Irish tunes of any genre that either fall within the right hand, or can be transcribed into a key that fits there. A subset is tunes that have a second, high or B part that is right hand only. My starter tune: Kesh jig. Except for the tonic G and the A that follows, the tune is all right hand, and notes can be found in the LH for the 3 required chords.

I'm contrasting two styles for playing Irish trad, not easily described in few words. Call them A and B. A has been self-taught, emphasizes fingering to minimize bellows reversals, offers many button options for note patterns, and can create legato runs (but with staccato playing still possible.) B is more pedagogic and imparted by an expert, uses a minimum of "allowed" buttons and few fingers, right in the center of the pattern, say, for the G scale, requiring frequent bellows changes and consequent staccato effect. A. If you can play a G scale only on the draw and mostly on the push, isn't it logical to use parts of those smooth scales where bits occur in a tune? Good examples are left-hand F#-G-A on the draw using fingers on all three rows, or (with a Wheatstone config) right-hand F#-G-A on draw and G-A-B push, using three fingers and buttons on the 1st and 3rd rows. With this reasoning long runs of notes can be played without changing the bellows direction. This is an untutored style developed by exploration of the instrument over some years. A caveat is that you run out of air in phrases that are all draw for example, but I can usually manage a single push note on the left with the air release to restore the closed position. B. At a Noel Hill workshop recently I was introduced to his method. Given Noel's influence on the concertina scene in Eire, this method may be widespread there. G and D tunes are played where possible in the middle of the scale range on few buttons near the index fingers on both sides. The middle G octave is played on just 5 buttons, and by index and second fingers only, and requires frequent bellows reversals. Other buttons are for the highs and lows of the scales, for ornaments, and to avoid jumps. Use of buttons outside a prescribed scale is discouraged or disallowed in this method. Noel's response to playing in the style of A is that the legato runs evoke an English concertina and are therefore undesirable. With style B, you don't run out of air. Some thoughts and questions: 1. I'm glad for the exposure to B but don't think I can adopt it as my preferred style. However I will try to learn some new tunes within the limitations of style B to see if it becomes more automatic and eventually satisfying to play that way. 2. How widespread is Noel's style in Ireland? How common among the young who have learned in recent decades? 3. Other workshops I have attended in the US do not seem to emphasize or prescribe required patterns; you just play the notes comfortably. 4. I'm interested to hear how others have approached this instrument.