davidevr

No doctor here so take this with a grain of salt. If MRI and other exams rule out other obvious physical reasons, numbness might be caused by nerve compression, which is more related to back/ postural habits than the use of your fingers. Most problems in the hand and wrist are ultimately caused by a bad use of the back (your arms are attached to it after all), or by the neck/back balance. When I started playing the concertina I got some numbness on my right thumb; I consulted a physiotherapist which suggested I paid attention to my back and try not play in a hunched position. The numbness went way by itself in a matter of weeks.

Playing in octaves was super scary at first but I guess it’s ultimately a very mechanic skill, you learn to play two scales at once. For my learning style the best exercise is just learning many tunes with octaves. If you play ITM there are many tunes gravitating around the G who are perfect for octaves: Na Ceannabhain Bhana, Jimmy Wards, Out on the Ocean and so on.

As Michael said you really need patience. It’s really a long long game. The more tunes you know, the easier it gets to learn new ones; so I suggest you try to add a new tune every week, or something like that. At one point things will just click and you’ll suddenly realize you can learn tunes much faster. Another thing, if you have a chance, join a local session. You don’t need to play at first, just show up and listen to the tunes, that’s the best way to commit them to memory. I’ve been playing the fiddle for years and had no session pals at first, so my repertoire was around 80-100 tunes and it stayed like that for 10 years or more; when I started joining local sessions the number of my tunes tripled in 2 years time, with much less effort. Now, after years of practice, it takes a few minutes to learn the basics of a tune on the fiddle; probably 20-30 minutes on the concertina but I am really a beginner here. Final advice, play very slow. Everyone says that, and it made little sense at first but now I can tell you it’s the only way to get a good rhythm. Again, patience, and enjoy the ride.

I started with the guitar many years ago, then I picked up the fiddle which is still my main instrument. I also dabble a bit with the mandolin and the tin whistle. I got an anglo concertina last summer, and so fari am really loving it!

My impression is that some Irish tunes are very much on the pull because their melodies are all arpeggios on the D chord. Rolling on the ryegrass, the burnt old man etc. Since the D chord, on C/G is on the pull, there you go, pull pull and pull. All this pulling proved very difficult at first, because slower playing requires more air, and I often ended up using the whole bellow capacity. I guess the solution is just practicing and learning to produce notes with less air.

Thanks for your feedback!

Yesterday I opened my concertina to see if could fix a "button stuck" problem. I incidentally found that on right hand-side panel there are 7 valves missing. I am no expert, maybe it's normal (it's all the higher pitched reeds), but I had always thought that each reed should have its own valve. Is this normal?