inventor
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Once you have all the notes of 4 related keys, not much is left to add to make up the chromatic scale. Just a couple of D#s and a couple of Bbs are needed. These you will see are added with only one extra button, and using the spare pull notes on the G# buttons for the other two. All of the notes on the right hand side with only the exception of the highest (c#"'/d"') are repeated an octave lower on the left hand side. This is just like the way that the right hand notes are laid out an octave lower on the left hand side of a duet concertina; which I know to be extremely useful tool to have to hand. Inventor.
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See how something magically happens between the keys of G & A ! Without any extra buttons the key of D appears laid out solfaicly in the same manner. ( d"/e" ) (f#"/g" ) ( a"/b" ) (c#"'/d"') ( d'/e' ) (f#'/g' ) ( a'/b' ) (c#"/-- ) Now lay out an extra 3 buttons, together with buttons that you already have in the key of G; to repeat most of the same a tone lower for the key of C. The key of C is shown in square brackets [--/--]. [ c"/d" ] [ e"/f" ] [ g"/a" ] [ b"/c"' ] [ e'/f' ] [ g'/a' ] [ b'/-- ] ( d"/e" ) (f#"/g" ) ( a"/b" ) (c#"'/d"') ( d'/e' ) ( f#'/g' ) ( a'/b' ) (c#"/-- ) A button for [ c'/d' ] has not been included on the right hand side. However it is on the left hand side, which also includes a button to play the [ c / d ] an octave below. Inventor.
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Looking at the solfaric way I have written the above I have just noticed that it forms a "Double parallelogram". I remember from way back in the Australian "Concertina Magazine" a "double parallelogram dream system concertina" being mentioned several times, but no details of the system ever being given. Could it be that the author had already dreamed up the above layout ? It is only recently that I have learned that the "Cheeseman System" from Australia was similar to my duet but on a Maccann array. Well I have no intention of patenting the Anglien and so far as I am concerned it is now in the public domain. To continue with my explanation of the Anglien I will show the solfaric written notation translated to the keys of G & A placed adjacently on the Right Hand Side of the concertina. The key of G is shown in ordinary brackets (--/--) and the key of A in square brackets [--/--]. ( g"/a" ) ( b"/c"' ) ( g'/a' ) ( b'/c" ) ( d"/e" ) ( f#"/-- ) [ a"/b" ] [c#"'/d"'] ( d'/e' ) (f#'/-- ) [ a'/b' ] [c#"/d" ] [ e"/f#"] [g#"/--] [ e'/f#'] [g#'/--] More to follow, Inventor.
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Now for a little explanation of the system. The notes for each of the octaves for the diatonic scales of A, D, G, & C is as follows (Solfaicly). (Do/Re) (Mi/Fa) (So/La) (Ti/--) The notes of a higher octave in the same key repeat the same pattern placed diagonally back on a higher row of buttons; and diagonally forward on a lower row. (do/re) (mi/fa) (Do/Re) (Mi/Fa) (So/La) (Ti/--) (SO/LA) (TI/--) With 4 fingers you may play 14 notes with very little movement of the fingers. I will show how this all fits together for the four basic easy keys shortly, Inventor.
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First my apologies for spelling Nikolai incorrectly, and also note that my name is spelled Hayden. It is a long time since I had Nikolai's prototype in my hands, but I will describe the few faults as accurately as I can. 1) The Hand-rest was not in the quite the right place. The correct place is a little closer to the button arrays. This is shown in the diagram that I supplied to Samantha and you show above. The hand-rest is also a little high. I had to cut a little off the top of it diagonally, with the space which was under the forefingers about a half inch higher than the space under the little fingers. 2) One pair of reeds on the left hand side was placed on the reed-plate the wrong way round, so that the tips of the reeds were immediately under the sound hole. These reeds should have run the other way with the rivets closest to the sound hole; as did all the other reeds on the instrument. The sound from these reeds while absolutely awesome, was much too loud and did not match the much more mellow and warm sound of the other notes. 3) On one side of the instrument the links that connected the Abs & G#s and the Ebs & D#s connected to the opposite sound hole that they should have. I cannot now remember if this was the left or right hand side as it is now about 15 years since I had the instrument in my hands. 4) The wood in the fretwork of the ends was very thin and could easily have been broken, perhaps you have corrected this on your new instrument. On the acoustic problem: Nicolai himself mentioned that the lowest two notes ( F & G ) did not have enough air. I think he meant that the tone-chambers for these two notes was not large enough. On concertinas made in England it is usual for the reed-pans to run at a slight diagonal so that the tone-chambers of the lowest notes are somewhat deeper than the higher notes. I can see another solution to this problem but it would involve a little re routing of the action and making the whole instrument 0.25" (6.35mm) wider. I do hope that Samantha will come forward to supply an accurate Russian translation of my highly technical language that I have written above. Inventor.
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Please note that the prototype 65 button Hayden system system concertina made by Nicoli of Moscow had a few accidental faults and an acoustic fault. It was however overall a very good instrument. I doubt if an instrument at "piccolo" pitch would find a very large audience. But I am sure that a 65 button 7" concertina at the usual register, should find a market worldwide Please feel free to contact me with anything that you wish to know about Hayden system concertinas. Brian Hayden Inventor.
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Further notes on the "Anglien" concertina. I chose to restrict the system to 20 buttons on each side of the concertina so that it could be easily fitted on to a standard size 6.25" concertina. Anything larger than that can give problems on a bisonoric instrument. For an accordion reeded instrument, the reedplates are to be laid out 8 up, 8 down and 4 in the middle. Look inside any accordion reeded 30 button Anglo and you will see that there is sufficient space on the reedblock to do this. A similar scheme may be adopted on a concertina laid out in the Crabb/Jeffries manner. On a concertina with the reeds laid out radially; as on Wheatstone and better quality Lachenal concertinas: it might be possible to include more notes, but here weight problems would have to be considered. In my further writings about the system I shall refer to the 3 main rows of buttons as Upper (the one farthest from the handrest), Middle and Lower rows, (U, M & L); and the extra two buttons (near the handrest) as X. The first button on the L row of the left hand side (c/d) is to be thought of musically as the first of the M row, and the left hand thumb button (g#'/a#') as musically the last button of the L row. The reason I have placed these buttons in those places is: (1). to reduce the width of the button array so that no button comes too close to the edge of the concertina; (2) to make the buttons correspond with well established Jeffries concertina patterns: and (3) for the (c/d) to be close to the (d/e) button, as this will give an easy movement for the little finger if you wished to play a slow air or lament in D with a tonic drone, or in G with a dominant drone. Inventor.
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Note : c' is middle C, and so on up to b', c" is the octave above middle C, c"' is two octaves above middle C and c without any suffix is tenor C the octave below middle C. The note written first for each button is the press note, and the note written after the "/" is the draw note. I will come back and explain how the system works shortly. Inventor.
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40 Button Anglien Concertina Left Hand Side ( d#/a# ) ( c'/d' ) ( e'/f' ) ( g'/a' ) ( b'/c" ) ( e / f ) ( g / a ) ( b / c') ( d'/e' ) ( f#'/g') ( a'/b' ) ( c / d ) ( d / e ) ( f#/ g ) ( a / b ) (c#'/d') ( e'/f#') ( e /f#) (g#/d#') (g#'/a#') thumb Brian Hayden Inventor. .
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40 Button Anglien Concertina, Right Hand Side. (d#'/a#') ( c"/d" ) ( e"/f" ) ( g"/a" ) ( b"/c"' ) ( e'/f' ) ( g'/a' ) ( b'/c" ) ( d"/e" ) ( f#"/g") ( a"/b" ) (c#"'/d"') ( d'/e' ) ( f#'/g') ( a'/b' ) (c#"/d") ( e"/f#") (g#"/a#") ( e'/f#') (g#'/d#") (AIR) Brian Hayden Inventor.
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As I don't know any young solicitors willing to hold a description of my idea for an improved bisonoric concertina for 50 years I have decided to write this down now anyway. The reason for my hesitation was remembering how devestated I felt when Maria Dunkel showed me a book she had written (in German) about concertinas; which included a diagram of what I thought that I had originated for the duet concertina, and included the date 1896. As I couldn't read any of the German I concluded that that the date was a misprint for 1986, the year of my Patent. Then she dropped the bombshell, pointing out that the idea had already been discovered by a Swiss gentleman in 1896 - Kaspar Wicki ! My idea is based on the following ideas :- (1) 4 related keys (in my example I have chosen C,G,D & A) are arranged in the same manner. (2) The individual octaves of these keys repeat. (3) the right hand side does not have squeaky notes which are never used, but does include a few more lower notes that are frequently used when playing melodies. (4) The left hand side adds several lower notes including the missing (from a C/G Anglo) tenor ds..(5) The remaining notes to make up the chromatic scale are also included. I have for simplicity shown the buttons in straight rows. but it is intended that these should follow a similar spacing and curves found on Jeffries Anglos & Duetts or Wheatstone Anglos. I shall show my idea in short sections as the rather old computer that I am using frequently locks up and also for the moment seems to refuse to let me alter or correct the text without loosing everything that follows so that I have to rewrite it all from that point. Inventor,
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If you wished to limit yourself to only a few keys a bisonoric concertina could be set up to a "double just" temperament. That is to say the supertonic note of the scale could play on one button in one direction. a comma apart from the pitch of another button played in the other direction. For instance in the key of "C" the pull d' on the (c'/d') button and the push d' on the (d'/e') button could be tuned a comma apart, so that both the D minor chord and the G major chords would be perfectly in tune. I have described exactly how this could be done for a 25 button Melodeon in JAN 2013 on "melodeon.net" (under the title "temperaments and things", page 4) for 4 related keys, (A/D/G/C) in that case. But this could be reduced to a shorter compass, and less or different keys if you wanted it to have less buttons. Inventor.
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Hayden system is not ideal on straight columns at right angles to the hand-rest., although this was done on the "Cheeseman" system. I have been to too many general concertina workshops and "all duet" workshops, where the main discussion centred on fingering consecutive notes directly above or below each other, which seems to be a perpetual problem on Maccann and Crane Duets and the English Concertina. This problem does not arise on Hayden and Jeffries Duets or Anglos. It would seem a pity to alter a one off unique instrument, which really should be preserved in a Concertina Museum like the Horniman. There seems to be something slightly odd about the register of the Left hand side of the instrument. The next to highest note is clearly labelled "Middle C4" which would give no overlap between the left and right hand sides. If this had been been labelled. C5 which I believe is an octave above middle C, as is the C#5 next to it, this would give the quite expected full octave overlap. Inventor.
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I believed that I have discovered the solution to the system that this concertina was meant to be, although it is not any system that I had previously come across before. Firstly I drew out the columns so that they were at right angles to the hand rest and the curves went from left to right. It didn't make any sense to me; however I noticed that the columns mostly went upwards in rising fifths. Then I saw that columns 2, 3, 4, & 5 were mostly sharps and columns 1 & 6 had most of the natural notes - most odd. Then taking into account that this instrument was made in 1911 when standard pitch was almost a semitone higher than modern concert pitch, the instrument might be in old pitch. So I rewrote the system one semitone down. To my surprise it suddenly made sense ! I am not very good at modern electric organ octave number notation and in order to understand a system I have to write it out in old fashioned organ builders notation (c' is middle C, - c" is an octave above middle C, - c is tenor C and C is bass C; the lowest note of a cello.). The result of the right hand side is written below in the octave that makes sense. (f#"') ( e"' ) ( f"' ) ( g"' ) (c#"') (d#"') (a#") ( a" ) ( b" ) ( c"' ) ( d"' ) (g#") (d#") ( d" ) ( e" ) ( f" ) ( g" ) (gb") (g#' ) ( g' ) ( a' ) ( b' ) ( c" ) (c#") (c#' ) ( c' ) ( d' ) ( e' ) ( f' ) (bb'} (d#') ( f#') Inventor.
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A note chart would settle exactly what system it is. 25156 was made in 1911 so it couldn't possibly be a Crabb Victor system, which was invented around 1945. Could be one of Dr Pitt-Taylor's ideas or an unknown special. Inventor.
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What Stories Might The 1950S Wheatstone Serial Numbers Tell?
inventor replied to Mark Rosenthal's topic in Concertina History
"It depends on your reference point" Theo. Stagi or their predecessor Bastari and all other hybrids were not around in those days. My reference point was Father Kenneth Loveless and his Jeffries Anglo ! Inventor. -
What Stories Might The 1950S Wheatstone Serial Numbers Tell?
inventor replied to Mark Rosenthal's topic in Concertina History
In 1964 I bought a C Jeffries 38 button Anglo from an antique shop in Portobello Road London, for just £6. I was offered a choice of 2 ! I didn't know anything about haggling in antique shops at that time and could probably bought both for £10 or less. Around that time John Kirkpatric, Peter Bellamy, Toni Arthur and Tony Rose also started playing concertinas. These together with Louis Killen (who had started playing English Concertina 2 or 3 years earlier) were leading lights in the Folk Song scene, and sparked an interest in using a concertina rather than a guitar for English folk song accompaniment. Inventor. -
What Stories Might The 1950S Wheatstone Serial Numbers Tell?
inventor replied to Mark Rosenthal's topic in Concertina History
That was also the period of the "Mayfair" concertinas, which I believe are un-numbered, I remember Wheatstone "Mayfair" English concertinas were heavily promoted in "English Dance & Song" during that period. So far as I remember these cost £3 - 10 shillings. I met a number of ladies who played them at EFDSS music courses, but was not impressed with the sound that they produced. It was around 1963 that the Folk Song Scene took off, and everybody was wanting to play concertinas. Inventor. -
Lachenal With Anglo Hand Rests But English Reeds.
inventor replied to Hoges's topic in Instrument Construction & Repair
Going back 55 to 60 years i went to a Morris Ring meeting at Abingdon. The musician for the Abingdon Morrismen played a Duet concertina. I'm pretty certain it was a Maccann Duet but I didn't know much about duet concertinas at that time. The name "Francis" springs to mind but I could easily be wrong. So a playing duet concertina for the Abingdon Morris Men would be continuing an old Abingdon tradition. Inventor. -
It occurs to me that organ builders refer to the pitches of the various "C"s as - 1 foot., 2' (middle c'), 4' (tenor c), 8' (bass C), and so on; corresponding to open organ pipes of that length. Is it possible that the original reference was not a tuning fork but a pitch pipe, one foot long. This could not only be easily carried around, and sounded loud enough for a choir to hear; but could be reproduced to approximately the same pitch, without any direct reference to someone else's one foot pitch pipe. Inventor.
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I looked in the obituary section of the local paper last Friday but did not see my name listed, so I expect that I am still alive. I no longer drive long distances. Even going a few miles to the nearest town and back to shop, involves no less than ten changes of speed limit, and a silly chicane through my village. Driving in the countryside used to be a pleasure, but no longer. I have been by no means inactive in the musical instrument field. Some sixty years ago I started to look at ways of arranging the notes on the buttons of the melodeon in a better more useful fashion. I came up with 3 not entirely satisfactory solutions; but along the way hit on an excellent way to arrange the notes on a duet concertina, and changed to that instrument instead. The melodeon problem stayed on the back burner for many years but recently I cracked that problem, to my satisfaction. I believe that the same solution could be applied to an anglo-type concertina, As I now I am much to old to pursue that, I would rather someone else discovered it as their own invention. Inventor.
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I've just reread the original question (you should always listen to the question carefully) and it is the "Ching" or Chinese organ. though perhaps "Mund-harmonica" which Wheatstone mentions in the 1829 patent is equally correct. Interestingly the mund-harmonica appears to have been known as an AEolina, not a mouth-organ in England at that time; drop a couple of letters and what do you get ? Inventor.
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The correct answer to the question is the "Symphonium" ! I bet the BBC got the answer wrong. The "C" word is not mentioned in the 1829 patent. In fact reading the patent and the accompanying drawing;it would seem that substituting a bellows for the wind chest of the symphonium was very much an afterthought, and he does not give a separate name to the instrument thus created. Wheatstone did not anyway claim to have invented any sort of musical instrument at all, but just the arrangement of the buttons, which is fairly similar to the arrangement on standard English Concertinas. Inventor.
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Jeffries System Instruments By Other Makers
inventor replied to StuartEstell's topic in General Concertina Discussion
I regret that I never had the serial number of that Jeffries system Wheatstone, that was offered for sale by Hobgoblin. It is possible that Hobgoblin just might have it somewhere in their records.. I do have somewhere notes on two larger than 60 button Jeffries Duets by Jeffries. One was a C instrument and the other an Ab one which just might have gone down to a g# at least. I shall have to get out my archeological trowel and see if I can dig them out. As you say down to the g below middle c' on the right hand side is the Holy Grail for a larger Duet. When I designed the 65 button Hayden Duet that was the note that the right hand side went down to at the expense of a few very high notes. Concertina Connection now make a 65 button Hayden Duet going down to that g on the RHS as a standard catalogue item. You might be able to persuade Wim Wakker to make you a similar larger duet but in a Jeffries layout within a sensible time scale. Inventor.. -
Jeffries System Instruments By Other Makers
inventor replied to StuartEstell's topic in General Concertina Discussion
Some thirty or so years ago (it may have been longer) "Hobgoblin" had a Wheatstone Jeffries System Duet for sale. Nigel Chipendale the then manager of the Crawley branch of Hobgoblin, knowing that I was interested in Duetts phoned me about it. He described it to me down the phone and the details he gave me were as follows ;- The instrument was in Bb and the very high notes on the right hand side did not continue further to the right on the four rows in an ad hoc manner as on a standard large Jeffries Duets, but were on an extra (fifth) row, but only the notes in the scale of Bb. Details that I am more hazy about - an Aeola with around the 60 button mark. By the time I next visited Hobgoblin the instrument had been sold so I never actually saw it in the flesh. Nigel tragicaly died at a young age, around a year or so later; I don't know if Hobgoblin might still have records of this instrument and it's serial number. Inventor.