Mikefule

there have been so many changes. I think most or all of the early ones were produced in bulk in concertina factories. They were made by skilled craftsmen but not in the same way as most of the modern ones which are often made by a single individual. Labour is more expensive these days. Customers have higher expectations all round. Concertinas are no longer a popular item, but a niche market for enthusiasts with very specific and refined tastes. From what I have seen, the best modern concertinas are cosmetically exquisite. The old ones were things of beauty, but in a more "standard issue" sort of way. Modern makers have a wider range of materials. This could go either way: choosing the very best of the new materials; or choosing cheaper options that are almost but not quite as good. Some of the traditional materials are harder to find. It would be very surprising if over 150 years of development, coupled with a market dominated by enthusiasts on both sides (production and purchase) had not resulted in the best modern instruments being better than the best Victorian specimens. However, it is very subjective. I have chosen my current fleet of 4 instruments on the basis of nebulous ideas of feel and soul. I was given the option of ones that were better "on paper" but I knew which ones I wanted. It takes a while to play a good instrument in. I'm sure that all instruments must peak when they reach a certain age, then gradually, er... gain character... at the expense of perfection. Perhaps most of the best modern ones are still in, or approaching, their peak, and most of the traditional ones are in that gradual decline.

Lovely playing. Those are two of the simpler Morris tunes and are often overlooked, but you extract every last nuance out of them. Good work, and all that delicacy of touch on a humble 20b too — we are not worthy, oh great one!

"... and the duet concertina, which plays duets..." Brilliant summary of a complex instrument. Great video. Your enthusiasm and humour are infectious.

To be honest, I very seldom play in front of other musicians, and play almost exclusively for my own enjoyment. In other contexts, such as Morris dancing, singing in pub sessions, and performing as Fool with my Morris side, it is more about entertaining someone else, but the Anglo is a very private joy. You probably won't remember me but I met you briefly at Poppy Folk Club, Nottingham. You sang and played other boxes for the entire first half. In the interval, I asked if you were going to play any Anglo and you very kindly tweaked your programme to include a couple of extra Anglo items. (Or, at least, allowed me to believe that you had changed your plan for me!) Thanks.

Haha! I can do something that Brian Peters struggles with! I feel so validated as a musician. Admittedly, I can use my concertina case as a footrest only because I am a shortarse, and you are tall, and willowy but I'll take the validation where I can get it.

Thanks for your kind words. It's strange. If you play an instrument and make a mistake, it feels "understandable", but if you sing "badly" then there's a feeling that it is something about yourself: that you have a "bad voice". Playing a bum note can sometimes be embarrassing, but singing a bum note is automatically ten times worse because it is so much more personal. I'm not a brilliant singer, but I can sing a few folk songs, and some of them well enough for a floor spot at a folk club, and a few more well enough for a session with Morris friends. I write comedy songs which have the advantage of carrying the audience with you even if the voice could be better. But of late, I've finished a few serious songs and thought to myself, "Not bad, Mike."

Good point well made. Never tell someone they "can't sing" or they "have a horrible voice". Encourage them instead to think of singing as a skill that can be learned developed like any other. The same with playing instruments. When I was 7, I played recorder at school. I doubt I was any good, but I practised, and enjoyed it. I was then moved from one parent to the other and my dad took one look at the recorder and said, "We're not having that bloody thing in this house!" and threw it away. 10 or so years later, I started to teach myself harmonica. I got good enough to do occasional floor spots at the local folk club. Then one day, after I had practised "Boys of Blue Hill" (hornpipe) well enough to feel confident, I foolishly allowed myself to be heard practising it at home. The comment after maybe 30 bars: "OK, we've had enough of the Irish jig now." It was then roughly 35 years until I felt confident enough to take an instrument seriously. As for the singing, at 56, I am finally starting to feel that I understand how it works. I sang a serious traditional song last Thursday and someone whose judgement I admire complimented me on it. I felt like I'd arrived!

I have a piccolo Lachenal, 20b in CG. It's 5 inches across the flats, a lovely little thing, but very piercing in the higher part of the register, and the left hand has to be played sparingly or it can drown out the melody.

It's very much a personal thing, and not at all rational. I started on harmonica, playing folk melodies in what we call "first position". That means playing mainly C major on a C harmonica, G major on a G harmonica (etc.) and no bending of notes. I got reasonably good at it, composed a few tunes of my own, and played regular floor spots at my local folk club. I still play harmonica when I'm teaching Morris dancing because I can play, watch, stop, talk, and quickly blow a few notes of the tune as and when required. However, I seldom play the harmonica for pure pleasure any more. I then moved on to melodeon. This was a sort of peer pressure thing. The DG melodeon ( 2 rows with 4 bass buttons and 4 pre-set chord buttons) is the default Morris instrument. It is essentially 2 harmonicas strapped together, with a bellows, so I found it fairly easy to translate much of my harmonic repertoire straight to melodeon. All I had to do was become proficient in the basic oom-pah accompaniment and the 3 chord trick and hey presto: Instant mediocre Morris musician. Again, I never really enjoyed it. Melodeon playing has improved in the Morris over recent years, with many players buying expensive boxes with fast light actions and responsive, nicely tuned reeds. People have learned to combine the few notes and chords available on the left hand with a more sophisticated across the row style on the right hand, and there is now some very sophisticated melodeon playing in many folk/Morris sessions. All that came after my time! When I was playing, I felt that the simple oom-pah left hand was rather mechanical, and the two (or more) reeds per button on the treble side made nuance and subtlety impossible. It was, to me, just a box for cranking out tunes so that there was music for the side (team) to dance to. I never made a proper effort with trumpet (my lip kept splitting), the piano (I only had an old electric keyboard to practise on), fife (I bought it because it was cheap, and never worked on the embouchure), guitar (I had a couple of lessons, but could never change from one chord to another as smoothly as I wanted to). And so on: a litany of failed attempts. I was "playing at music" rather than playing music. I have no idea what suddenly inspired me to look up concertinas on the internet one day. I can remember it happening, and where I was (Bratton Clovely, Devon) but not why I did it. I didn't even like concertinas, because most of what I had heard had been poorly played squeaky and unrhythmical playing. I knew one person who played accurately but without passion, so that it sounded like a cheap computer game beeping a tune. I could vaguely remember that one old friend whom I had not seen for many years had played a concertina brilliantly at the local folk club, but I had no idea if it was Anglo, English, or duet, or what the differences were. If you'd asked me the day before, I would have said that I did not particularly like the concertina! Part of my motivation may have been my natural eccentricity. I am the Fool of my Morris side; I ride unicycles cross country; I ride quirky motor bikes; I love 1950s rockabilly... if something is slightly unusual, and especially if it is no longer fashionable, it tends to appeal to me. In the Morris world at the time, melodeons were ten a penny, but the concertina was a bit of a fringe instrument. I did a lot of research, and began to understand the differences between the English and Anglo. I developed a fairly good idea what a duet is, although I never really learned the differences between the various duet systems. One aspect of harmonica, melodeon, trumpet (and even penny whistle, which I had once tried) was the lack of a direct link between the notes on the page and the instrument itself. If you want to play a harmonica in D, buy a D harmonica. There is no incentive to learn to sight read in one key when you can just pick up a different harmonica and play in a different key from the same dots. The same applies to some extent with melodeon: it gives you G and D to work with, so if the tune is on the page in A or E, it still comes out in D or G. The trumpet is even weirder because trumpet music is written transposed so that what a trumpeter calls a C is a B flat to non-brass players. So Morris tunes appear on the page in a wide range of keys, but almost everyone plays them in G or D, and the trumpet plays a tone lower than you think it is... madness! So what appealed to me about the English concertina intellectually was the direct 1:1 relationship between notes on the stave and notes on the instrument. Play in C, modulate to F by flattening the B, or modulate to G by sharpening the F. Every note and every key available with no transposing or pretending. Brilliant! What appealed to me about the English concertina musically was the impression I always had that an EC player presses the buttons gently to release the music that's in there waiting to come out. I sort of felt that an EC player "released" the music, where the Anglo player "pumped it out". I even posted something to that effect in this forum around that time and one or two people agreed with me. So I borrowed a very nice EC from a friend, and practised for a few minutes every day for a month. At the end of that month, I could confidently play a single octave of the C major scale, and a single octave of the G major scale. However, as soon as I tried to play a tune, even one I knew well, and could play on harmonica or melodeon from memory, I just couldn't get it to work. All that left hand/right hand thing felt strange, and I got in a real tangle if the tune had a series of notes on the same hand, especially if they were on the same "row". Should I use the same finger 3 times on 2 different buttons, or should I twist and contort my hand? It just didn't suit me and I became dispirited. With hindsight, perhaps I should have sought advice, maybe some lessons, perhaps searched YouTube (I was unaware of YouTube at that time, if indeed it existed at all) and I should have tried different tunes, practised arpeggios, different scales, and trusted that it would come in time. However, I just felt dispirited. Then there was a fortunate coincidence. On consecutive nights, I got to hear excellent players of both systems: Keith Kendrick on Anglo, and Dave Ledsam on English. I chatted to both, and Keith let me have a quick squeeze of his Anglo. Hearing both instruments played well on consecutive nights, I suddenly knew that Anglo was the sound I wanted. I may to some extent have been influenced by the superficial similarity to melodeon and harmonica, but really it was the sound that grabbed me. Following advice from this forum, I bought a Rochelle — ironically, from Dave Ledsam, who was the EC player mentioned above — and I managed to wangle some lessons from Keith Kendrick. I remember turning up at Keith's for my first lesson, able to play Waltzing Matilda as a single line of melody. I was proud but he was dismissive: if I wanted to play proper English style, I would need to learn chords. I could have been put off by his brusque tone, but I took it as a challenge. I learned a few simple accompaniment tricks from Keith over the next few months, and it was Keith who encouraged (persuaded) me to invest in a Marcus GD Anglo. He had trained me to believe that the Anglo is "the thinking man's piano" and that "it's all in there if only you know where to find it." By now, I was playing every evening, and, living in a tiny modern terrace, I was usually to secluded spots to practise in the car. However, I found it difficult to put it down, so I would get home at 9:30 p.m. from practising in a secluded spot, and then play for a few minutes in my living room until the neighbours banged on the wall! The logistics of travelling to Keith's house for lessons made it impractical, and I found a new teacher nearer to home: Alan Davies. He was the old friend I'd heard play concertina so brilliantly all those years before (25 years) at the local folk club. (Alan now runs the Midlands Concertina Group.) I had lessons with Alan, who was an inspirational teacher who allowed me the freedom to develop my own style, but would never let me cheat by avoiding the difficult bits, or fudging the melody. Through Alan, I got my first vintage concertina. So, what caused me to fall in love with the Anglo, but not with the English despite my "considered decision" that EC was the one for me? Who can say? I've put 1,000 times more work into the Anglo than I ever did with the EC, and it has been a long story of slow progress to my present state of reasonable competence, but I have never doubted that I would stay the course. Was it the fact that I had 2 inspirational (but very different) teachers? No, because in both cases, I had to persuade them to give me lessons. Neither of them was keen to take on a student but I nagged and begged and pleaded. I love to hear EC played well. I envy the skill with which that marvellous instrument can be wielded, but I don't want one. I can barely be in a room with an Anglo without picking it up and playing a few bars. That's not really an answer, but it's the best I can give you.

Neither am I. I was using the example given by the earlier poster, Accordian, as "an algebraic X" in my more general argument about practice styles. I interpreted Accordian as writing about playing accordion at that point in his post. I know roughly how the left hand works on an accordion, although I don't play one myself. My general point is that any particular skill (which would include bass jumps on an accordion, or chord changes on a guitar, or tricky left hand fingering patterns on an Anglo (etc.) needs to be absorbed in small doses as part of each of a series of reasonably short (20 min) practices. An hour spent on exactly one skill is unlikely to be an efficient or effective way of learning and may even be counterproductive. Apart from that, with any musical skill, find several examples of tunes that require the technique, to give it context. If you learn and practise a technique in isolation, it does not flow nicely when introduced into an actual tune.

1) A solid hour of practising one skill may not be the best way to get it into your muscle memory. 3 x 20 minutes of practice is better because it gives the skill time to "soak in". A lot of muscle memory learning occurs in the down time between practices. It's like putting the brandy into a Christmas cake: add a bit and give it time to soak in. If you pour a lot in in one go, you spoil the cake. In those (approx.) 20 minute sessions, play some stuff you're confident with, and try something completely new, as well as trying the one skill that you're really working on. Also, try to find 2 or 3 tunes that use the same bass jump. 2) An amateur practises until he can get it right. A professional practises until he can't get it wrong. When you can play a tune with 100% confidence, the character will start to come out all on its own. Character or expression in a tune comes from subtle changes of volume, attack and slight changes of rhythm and speed. I don't think the best musicians actively put expression in; they let the expression come out. It's like playing along to the tune you can hear in your head: the version you hum to yourself in the shower. There's a famous saying that compares "old time" and "bluegrass" music which sort of parallels this: "Bluegrass musicians use the tune to show how well they can play their instrument; old time musicians use their instruments to show how good the tune is." (I have no particular views on whether this is true of these two styles, or in all cases, but the idea behind the saying is worth thinking about for any musician in any style.)

There is no single answer. The first possible answer is very negative, and is certainly not universal, or aimed at any individual concertinist: I used to do fencing (foil and epee) and we had a category of people whom I called "winner beginners". They had done judo, or kendo, or karate, and therefore knew the basics of things like distance and timing, and they were not afraid to hit or be hit. These people were usually the best in the beginner's group. Then, as those who applied themselves to their fencing lessons started to overtake them, they started to make excuses, then became interested in kung fu, or aikido, or archery, and we never saw them again. There is a type of musician who fits this pattern: they learn to knock out a tune on one instrument and this helps them to make rapid progress in the early stages of learning a new instrument. They seem keen and talented, but once they get beyond those first few tunes and exercises and have to knuckle down to learning the instrument, they move on. They get a lot of admiration for being "multi instrumentalists" because they can play the same few standard tunes on several instruments. The second possible answer fits me, until I discovered Anglo. I sort of half heartedly wanted to be able to play music. I had no musical background, but was surrounded by folk singers and musicians. I taught myself harmonica to a reasonable standard because it was cheap to buy and easy to learn, but I stalled at expanding my repertoire. I then tried, in roughly this order, trumpet, piano, fife, melodeon, guitar, and English concertina. I reached the stage of being able to knock a tune out of the trumpet, and being able to play melodeon for Morris dancing, but I never really enjoyed it, and certainly never practised in any meaningful sense. Then one day, almost on a whim, I became interested in concertina. I read up on it, decided that English made most sense, and tried that but got nowhere beyond the C and G major scales, and I gave up. Then I tried Anglo and immediately fell in love with it. I started regular lessons, and practised every day. Within 6 months, I had gone from wanting to buy one, to buying a Rochelle, to buying a Marcus. Following a series of opportunities and trades, I now have 4 Anglos and play as near to every day as life allows. I love it. So, my second answer to your question arising from my own example, is that perhaps some people simply do not fall in love with the concertina. If so, I hope that they each fall in love with another instrument, whether it be oboe, saxophone, melodeon or whatever. You can only make progress with an instrument when you have to resit the urge to pick it up or force yourself to put it down. When daily practice is a boring duty, it is no fun. A third possible answer is simply where someone is in their life and in their appreciation of music at any given time. Until recently, I had lessons with a chap who started playing in about 1980. As a result of his head start, he is immeasurably better than I can ever aspire to be. However, if I had started in 1980, or even 1990, I would almost certainly have lapsed, because I was not ready to make the commitment that properly learning an instrument requires. Who knows, if 15 or so years ago, on a whim, I had looked up saxophones, I might now be playing sax every day — or I might simply have a saxophone in the loft with my trumpet, fife, bodhran...

Another one I forgot to include although it is one of my favourite short cuts. Playing G major, use all the notes on the G row EXCEPT the F# which is available as a push on button 2 on the D row. A nice way back down is G on the G row, F# on the D row, then E push on the accidental row, then D back onto the G row. That's the top 4 notes of the scale all as push notes.

I started on harmonica too. Strangely, I can still translate between harmonica and concertina, possibly because I play more harmonica tunes in the top octave. A couple of simple exercises in crossing the rows on a GD. Try these on the right hand: 1) Play G A B C on the G row, then repeat the exact same fingering and bellows pattern on the D row and you will get the rest of the scale, D E F# G.. That gives you a scale that is push pull push pull all the way up. 2) Now, a slight variant: play G A B C D on the D row, then E F# G on the D row. That gives you a scale that is push pull all the way up. 3) Now try both of those, but finishing on the usual push G on the G row at the top of the scale. 4) Now try going up the G scale with both of these options (3), and back down in the "normal way" along the G row. 5) Now try (1) and (2) above, but then go back down the scale starting with that pull G on the G row, then going to the pull F# on the G row, and continuing down the G row along the row. With slight adaptation, all of these exercises can be transferred to the left hand. The bellow directions will be the same, but of course the pull notes will be offset one button to the right, and some of the variants will cross tot he right hand for one or two notes. These are some of the most common approaches to crossing the rows playing in G major on a GD box. Now, starting on the D row, do a normal scale up and down on the right hand along the row. When you've got back down to the D, continue: pull C# on the same button, then B A G F# on the G row right hand, then E pull on the left hand on the G row, then D PULL on the left hand, 4th button on the accidental row. Then work back up the same scale starting on the D pull 4th button accidental row. This should get you started with the idea of crossing the rows in the 2 main major keys. You can build on this as you develop your confidence. When you're confident with the above, the first "accidentals" to find and incorporate are the D and E which are on the accidental rows and in the opposite direction to the equivalent notes on the standard rows.

I don't play Irish style, although I play a few Irish tunes. I used to play melodeon and gave up soon after I took up Anglo. The melodeon and Anglo have important differences as well as superficial similarities. You can think of a single row of an Anglo, across both hands, as a single row of a melodeon, cut in half and shared between the two hands. If you play most of your melody on the right hand on an Anglo, you are in effect playing in what would be the higher octave on a melodeon. The pull note is lower than the push note on each button. Most melodeonists play most of the time on the lower octave where the pull note is higher than the push note. The other big difference is that the two rows of a DG melodeon are a 4th apart (D is lower than G) whereas a GD Anglo is a 5th apart (D is higher than G). These differences, combined, make the melodeon fee; "inside out" for an Anglo player. Yes, of course, it is possible to play both, and English and duet too, if you are so minded, but you need to remember that the apparent similarities between melodeon and Anglo can be misleading. Or, to put it another way, I would not try to learn Anglo using a melodeon-based resource. The other big difference, as others have pointed out above, is that most (but not all) melodeon players play a DG melodeon mainly in G and D and the related minors/modes. Irish style Anglo players (by which I mean mainly single note melodies emulating a fiddle) tend to use the 3rd row a lot so that they can explore further round the circle of 5ths. Because of the limited bass/chord options, especially for minor chords, melodeonists are sometimes forced into one particular key by their instrument. This may not be the ideal key to play the same tune on an Anglo. I started playing Anglo with a definite plan to learn "across the rows" and I'm glad I did. However, I have concentrated almost exclusively on the harmonic style and therefore tend to stay in the two home keys of the instrument (and the related minors/modes). What I do know is that moving away from "along the row" will expand your horizons, whichever style(s) you play.

I play Anglo, but in this respect the principles must be similar. There are 5 chords that together will provide a reasonably varied accompaniment to a tune in a major key: I, !V and V (all major) (Matter of taste, but V7 is also an option. Some people say "no sevenths in folk".) II minor and VI minor So playing in G, they would be G C D, and Am and Em. Occasional use of III minor (B minor if playing in G) adds colour. Every note of the scale will fit at least one of those chords and most will fit 2 or even 3 of them. The trick is then to learn which chord is preferable. A simple tune will tend to start and finish on the major chord based on the tonic. G, playing in G. The V chord (D, playing in G) will be your second most common chord, often occurring at the end of a phrase that ends on either the 5th or 2nd note of the scale. The II min chord (A minor, playing in G) will often substitute for the V, especially if it is followed immediately by the V. The VI minor chord will often substitute for the I major. So the question is what to do with those chords to make a nice accompaniment. I agree that the "oom pah" is often overdone. By "oom pah", I mean playing a bass note followed by 2 or more notes of the chord, approximately an octave higher. The oom pah can be varied by changing the bass note. For example, playing the G major chord, you may play: | G bass, B&D | D bass, B&D | and alternate, or: | G bass, B&D | B bass, B&D | D bass, B&D | Another simple effect is to play the 1st and 5th notes of the chord together (an "open 5th") then fill in the 3rd. Another simple effect is to play arpeggios: the notes of the chord, one after the other, in a pattern. Examples for G major: G B D g G D B D Another simple effect is to find "pedal points". These are the notes that are shared between consecutive chords. For example: G major is G B D C major is C E G The G bass note will fit either chord, but performing a different function in each case: the root in one, the 5th in the other. Or G major is G B D D major is D F#A The D bass note will fit either chord, but performing a different function in each case. By holding or repeating a note that is the pedal point, you use simple fingering to achieve a dynamic effect. A good exercise is to take 4 chords and play them in sequence, and experiment with different ways of sounding them, without a melody to distract you. Find what works for you.

There are two things going on. On an Anglo, the right hand is playing what would be the top octave of the same row of a melodeon. That means that the pull note is one lower than the push note. Most melodeonists play in the bottom octave, at least at first. On an Anglo, the row nearer to your wrist (inside row) is a 5th higher than the outside row. On a melodeon, it is lower. That means that all cross row fingering is different. If an anglo is GD, the melodeon is DG.

So the G row is higher than the D row? Tuned a 4th apart rather than a 5th. I wonder if that was made for a melodeonist. Most melodeons in England are DG. I used to play melodeon but soon after I started to work hard on the Anglo, I let the melodeon go because the two keyboards are "inside out" compared to each other. I know some people can do it, but it just dd my head in.

I have mine just loose enough that I can reposition my hands to reach the more distant buttons. I can then adjust the tension in two ways: By arching my hands slightly so that the strap is braced by the pressure on the palm rest, and the pressure of the back of my hand against the strap. By gripping the strap between my thumb and the side of my forefinger. I always play with my instrument resting on my lap or, if standing up, on one thigh. If you want to play standing up, then I think you need slightly tighter straps, and you may also need to brace the bass end of the box with your left pinky finger. That is a problem for me with some of my favourite "go to" accompaniments.

Well, yes, it is possible to play a tune in different ways. For example, there are some 4/4 or 2/4 tunes that can easily be converted to 6/8. One of my Morris friends delights in taking simple 4/4 tunes and converting them to waltzes and even to 5/4. Thing is, if I want a particular tune, written in straight 4/4 or 2/4 to come out like either a polka or a hornpipe, I need to feel clear in my mind what a polka or hornpipe should sound like. The furthest I've got by observation and inference is that hornpipes should make me want to do a heavy footed one-hop two-hop step and polkas should make me want to do a lighter 123-hop. The "tiddle-iddle om pom pom" hornpipe ending is apparently less diagnostic than I had thought. I am reassured by the Mudcat thread that shows I'm not the only one who has struggled with this question. These rhythms are no longer part of the wider culture around me, but merely something within the community of folk enthusiasts, so I haven't grown up knowing the difference. (Indeed, some would say that I haven't grown up.) For those who think it should be obvious, put yourself in the position of defining the differences between rockabilly and rock 'n' roll. The song Blue Suede shoes can be rock and roll (Elvis) or rockabilly (Carl) but the two styles, although similar, are different things.

That's exactly my problem. I hear these tunes played in a pub session environment where speed is often prioritised over accuracy and nuance. When a hornpipe is played slowly, I know it can be identified by how readily you can decorate it with occasional triplets (Tum tum-ty | Tum tum | tumty tiddly | tumpty tum...) When they're all played fast and smooth, with very little dotting or emphasis, I really struggle to know which is which.

Hi folks. I described a tune as a "hornpipe" to someone yesterday and he was most insistent that it was a polka. As he was a far more experienced musician and more knowledgeably folky than myself, I assume he was right. I had identified the tune as a hornpipe, apparently incorrectly, because it is in a fairly heavily accented 4/4 time, with a heavy stress on the 3rd beat, has one short sequence of notes that reminds me of a well known hornpipe, and ends with 3 crotchets, tum - tee - tum! I'm familiar with normal music theory in terms of bars, beats, time signatures and note lengths well enough to write a tune down, or to learn a simple tune reasonably quickly from the dots alone. However, my background in music, pre-concertina, is listening to rock and roll and dancing the Morris, so the exact distinctions between some of the folk dance rhythms is not ingrained in me. Where I get lost is those folk tunes that seem to me to stray somewhere between a 1 2 3 4 count and a 1 & 2 & count, and which are played differently according to whether it is a solo musician or the dreaded "Hohner wall of sound". So, I am completely happy with what a jig is, or a waltz. I understand what 2/2, 2/4, 4/4, 6/8, 3/4, and even 9/8 mean, and could describe 5/4 in theory if not play it in practice, but my problem is understanding those nuances that make one tune a polka, another a hornpipe, and another a reel, when those last 3 types could all be written with the same time signature. Who can elucidate? Thanks.

A great afternoon. I think there where were 19 people present, including one who was knitting, one who was taking notes, and one who played flute rather than concertina. In fact, we had two flutes in the room. Concertinas included 5 baritones, numerous trebles and one (my) piccolo Anglo. There were English, Anglo and duet boxes, with at least two people present who played on two different systems during the afternoon. Music played included the usual selection of English Morris, Northumbrian pipe tunes, Scottish and Irish tunes, one Israeli tune, novelty songs (Teddy Bear's Picnic), music hall, WW1 songs — and a short piece of tango music played on 5 concertinas and one flute. Our resident trio, "Behind the Times" (who called them "Out of Time"? Go on, own up!) played, then we had anEnglish/Anglo duo, an English/flute duo and a duet/flute duo. Various people played well known tunes and people joined in, singing, humming, or playing, as took their fancy. Once again, an inspiring afternoon with a range of people showing what these incredibly versatile instruments can do if you practise hard. I think we had a total of 4 first timers, which is pretty amazing. The turnout would have been over 20 but for two or three of the regulars having to make their apologies at the last minute due to a range of illnesses. Next meeting, approximately 6 months' time. Details to follow in approximately 5 months' time!

Hopefully we'll see some of you there this afternoon. I'll provide a short write up after the event, and possibly some video.

It's not often I stray into anything remotely resembling political correctness but, much as I'd find it satisfying to see the inventor of the concertina on a bank note, I think "for the greater good" the Treasury should look at other options than white males. British female scientists: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dorothy-hodgkin-and-the-most-inspirational-british-women-scientists-9353921.html