inventor
-
Posts
358 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by inventor
-
-
I had been considering leaving a couple of the prototypes of my duets to the Horniman, but now I shall have to reconsider that.
A few years ago they wrote to me asking how I thought the whole collection of concertinas should be displayed to best advantage; suffice it to say that they took none of my suggestions. One of my suggestions was that they remove the Walrus, possibly use it as a garden ornament, then use the space created to display a lot more concertinas !
Inventor.
-
That sounds really interesting. Could you write out the layout in full ? I had heard of the Cheeseman system with Australian connections, but have never been able to get much information about it . I had heard that it had a Maccann like keyboard but with repeating octaves (rather like the Chidley system), and with the naturals as you have described; but had assumed it to be a Chidley system with just the Ds & Es reversed.
Is it a metal or wooden ended instrument ?
If it is virtually the same as the Hayden system it might be simpler to slightly modify the action to bring it to the Hayden keyboard standard. This would be fairly easy if it is wooden ended, but a little more dificult on a metal ended instrument. I would definitely not recomend disturbing the reeds from their present placement.
Many years ago Neville Crabb converted a Maccann duet for me to the Hayden layout, and Dana Williams also showed me one that he had converted for himself.
Inventor.
-
I strongly recomend getting both hands on the concertina at once, right from the very beginning. If you look in the other concertina (Maccann) website, you will find a set of very beginer lessons that I wrote a number of years ago. It starts with only one finger on each side, then two and three on each side and so on. I used to teach absolute beginners (all systems) duet concertina at the West Country Concertina Players weekends. In a weekend I usually managed to get all my pupils to the stage of 5 or 6 buttons in each hand by the end of the weekend.
Inventor.
-
For the player who wishes to play some sort of mean-tone scale I would have thought that you might simply just ignore the Ab & D# buttons. After all if it was set up on a Crane or Jeffries Duet layout you would not have these options anyway. If you wished to play a meantone scale sharper than A or flatter than Bb this can be done by software transposition up or down a tone or two.
For a Just scale there are real problems with the supertonic notes; but I explained how this might be overcome on a bisonoric instrument in "melodeon.net" a short while back. The same principle could be applied to an Anglo-like concertina, to play in 4 or maybe 5 related keys, giving every major and minor chord in the selected keys perfectly in tune.Then Midi transpose to any other set of related keys.
Inventor.
-
This 65 button Hayden layout fitted perfectly well on the 7" Russian concertina. The eb/f on the thumb button was a quirk of this particular instrument; for a Midi instrument I suggest this be just eb.
Although it has 65 buttons there are 4 repeats, which can simply be done on the printed circuit board. It then has just 61 notes that need to be different, giving 3 in hand if you restrict the number to 64. I will give suggestions as to what these 3 might be, and where they might be put later.
The reasons I suggest the 7" size are as follows:-
1) Anything smaller will restrict the number of buttons you could put on the instrument. 6.25" instruments are nice; but the advantages of having 5 rows on the left, and notes below middle C on the right without having to move the compass up and down whilst playing will be quickly apreciated once you start playing the instrument.
2) At 8" the instrument starts to become cumbersome, and as I have pointed out 65 buttons goes on comfortably onto a 7" instrument anyway.
3) If I was going to set up manufacture of Midi concertinas I would obtain a batch of "blanks" from the Chinese firm that makes them for Wim Ws Elise. and other cheaper Chinese concertinas. Just the ends with the handles and the bellows. No need for the ugly F holes, or reeds and actions which are the expensive bits. Why set up a manufacture for the non electronic bits when they might be obtained almost off the shelf ?
Inventor.
-
I would strongly advise a 65 button instrument in a 7" Hexagon. Anything that is not chromatic in the keyboard would make playing totally chromatic tunes like "The Flight of the Bumble Bee", or "The Entry of the Gladiators"; or chromatic decorations and Harmonic and Melodic minors virtually impossible.
Inventor.
-
To answer Matthew's original question: yes I am interested in an electronic concertina "now or in the next few years".
Well congratulations to Lukasz for getting so far with his solution.
Personally I think that the only future of all Keyboard instruments (including pianos, church organs, accordions and concertinas), is Electronic !
For the Hayden concertina: I think that if you can make an entirely self contained instrument (i.e. with all the electronics, mini loudspeakers & batterys inside, and no heavier or larger than the equivalent concertina); it could be a commercial success in the much wider field.
Best of luck to both of you.
Inventor.
-
Why don't you pop along to Colin Dipper's ? He always seems to have several second hand cases knocking about.
Inventor.
-
cocoa111 on eBay is Chris Algar. I thought that this had been established long ago.
Inventor.
-
Goran Rahm who lives in Sweden is the man you should contact. He plays the English Concertina, and has written extensively in the I.C.A, Publications. I have met him on several occasions at Concertina Weekends in England, and I am sure there is not much he doesn't know about concertinas in Sweden.
Inventor.
-
Wheatstone Crank & Hook action:
The first batch of 46 button Hayden duets were made just after Steve Dickenson had taken on an aprentice to work with him, and he was looking for extra work for him to do. I arrived at just the right moment with an order for ten to be made. Wheatstones had a set of tools to make the crank & hook action, which could be operated by anyone with only a minimum amount of instruction. This first batch of ten were all made using this action. It took in the end two years for the whole batch to be completed, by which time his aprentice had left. During this time Steve also made one or two 46 button Haydens for other buyers who may have specified rivetted action, and subsequent instruments would have been made with rivetted action anyway.
Bastari 46 button Concertinas:
There were actually two batches of ten made, plus the prototype sample making 21, I have no idea how many of these still survive.
Inventor.
-
I was very sad to hear of the passing of Lou Killen. I first met him in 1961 at a folk event run by Tony Foxworthy as part of the University Arts Week in Newcastle upon Tyne. Tony told me about this wonderful new singer he had discovered. We (the King's College Morrismen) were performing Rapper, and later Lou came on and sung accompaning himself on the Banjo! He was truly a stunning singer.
Later that week there was a Film evening showing films made by the "Goons". We spotted each other in the queue and sat together. The films were absolutely appallingly awful, mostly out of focus; we agreed that the instrument they called a *Muckineese Battle Horn" was in fact a Serpent, (the instrument now played so ably by Colin Dipper). Afterwards we went out for a drink together, and that is when I started to get to know Lou.
He later introduced me to Jonny Handle another local singer, who played guitar and piano, and they were both starting to look at more traditional "English" instruments to explore for song accompaniment, such as concertinas and melodeons.
I left Newcastle around a year later but we ran into one another on infrequent occasions. At one event, by which time he had become a very compitent English concertina player I particularly remember him playing "The Lament for Auchrim" a tune quite unlike any other with long sustained but pulsed notes which I can only describe as the wailing of of women for their lost menfolk: in my mind I can hear him playing those notes now. Perhaps that is the slow air mentioned above.
Brian.
-
I was not refering to a 62 button Jeffries Duett, but a 44/45 button instrument of the 6"/6.25" size. The one that I saw on eBay, I am fairly certain was the same instrument that I had spotted on Chris's stall at Sidmouth about 6 months earlier.
Note that Gavin Atkin has been superbly playing a Jeffries Duet of this size for many years.
Inventor.
-
The lack of an air button (with mechanism) suggests that it is probably a Jeffries Duett concertina. Testing the buttons as suggested above should confirm this.
I note that the last similar Jeffries Duet that was sold (on eBay), about a couple of years ago from a highly respected UK concertina dealer, went for £1800.
If it is an Anglo Concertina it should fetch more than that even in an unrestored state.
Inventor.
-
Tom Jukes was the Musical Director of the West Country Concertina Players from it's very beginning over 30 years ago, until his death. I remember him bringing his Accordiophone along to a meeting on one occasion and playing it.
So far as I know the instrument went to another member of the WCCP who used to bring Tom from Basingstoke to the meetings. (I do know his name but will not put it on the website for security reasons)
Inventor.
-
The 9mm between the rows is measured at a right angle to the lines through the centres of the buttons. If the rows have the slant that I reccomend then obviously measured at right angles to the hand rest this will be a little more. No doubt Mr Pythagoras will work it out for you if you really want to know.
The distance between buttons on English, Crane and Maccann above each other is usually 10mm, which makes it dificult to make the buttons any larger than 4mm dia.
With the distance of 12mm between the buttons you can make the buttons somewhat more comfortable size - 6mm or 6.35mm in the case of the Beaumont. This is a big advantage when you wish to play two adjacent buttons with one finger. Every (or almost every on the smaller instruments) Fourth and Fifth available on the instrument may be played with one finger.
So far as I know all Hayden Duets, with the exception of Stagi's, are made to the 16mm, 9mm, 12(+)mm standard.
Inventor
-
I don't know if there may be any connection, but you might be interested to know that the Folk Song club mentioned above was started by (?Peter) Abnett who was a teacher at Maidstone Art College; where Peter Bellamy was an Art Student. Mr Abnett played a long-neck 5 string banjo and sung Bob Dylan songs (Hard Rain, Times Changing era). I am trying to remember, I think he also played a neck mounted harmonica like Bob Dylan, or perhaps that is false memory syndrome.
He brought along Peter Bellamy with him who sang a couple of songs, accompaniming himself on a guitar. One was Kosher Bailly, a typical student song of that time, and about the only student song that was just about respectable enough to be sung in a gathering of non-male students; together with another (I think) American folk song. The songs were nothing to write home about, but that distinctive voice you could never forget.
Inventor.
-
I can and do read music from the tonic-solfa on a Hayden Duet, however I have never pushed this as it is not universally used. In addition (unlike the standard music notation), by itself it only gives the (relative) pitches of the notes and not the individual length of each note. For this you need in addition the "Tafetefe" notation which I was also taught along with the tonic-solfa at Primary School, but have never found in any music book which also gave the tune in tonic-solfa.
Inventor.
-
In reply to Anglo-Irishmans earlier enquiry about doing something similar for the Crane Duet. You will find a diagram of just this in my "Duet Concertina Workshop Tutor", where the button pattern for the Crane duet has to be slightly distorted (less distorted if you have a Crabb Crane); and also (undistorted) for the Hayden Duet. It is not possible to do something similar for either the Maccann or Jeffries duets.
Inventor.
-
I knew Peter Bellamy from the early Sixties, and was at his first public performance at the opening night of the Rochester Folk Song Club.
A few years later he got an Anglo-concertina in London. His first attempts at playing the Anglo consisted pressing several adjacent buttons and simply waggleing it in and out. Although his later accompniments became a little more sophisticated it always retained this waggle quality. He was such a fine folk singer that any accompaniment was always secondary to that distinctive voice.
I have no idea how this might be done on an English Concertina; I couldn't do it on my Duet. If you really want to emulate the "Bellamy" style the best solution is to buy a cheap 20 button Anglo and experiment on the lines that I have described above.
Inventor.
-
P.S the "GermanNameIForgot" - I like that idear as he never seems to have produced any!
Inventor
-
The LINTON system is not strictly a duet system, but a split octave system (like the English concertina) A row of six buttons on the left hand side and a corresponding row of six buttons on the right hand play between them all the notes of a chromatic octave but they are not in semitone order.
Inventor.
-
Regards Concertina FAQ i think it is about time they updated their information about the Number of Hayden Duets in existance. It must be at least 30 years since I may have said there were about 60 Hayden Duets in existance. Each batch of Wim Wakkers "Elise" is 50 instruments and he produces several batches every year.
It is well worth looking at Wim Wakkers beginner instruments - the JACKIE (English system) ROCHELLE (Anglo system) and ELISE (Hayden duet system). Not only are these inexpensive and very good value for the money but he offers an upgrade path for better quality instruments at no loss on your original perchase.
Inventor.
-
I am very pleased to see that Judy is getting notes on both hands as soon as possible. This is why I wrote this into my little Duet tutor right from the first page, even inventing and modyfying tunes to get only 1, 2, 3, & 4 notes on both hands at once. Wim Wakker also naturally does this in his Tutor for the Elise.
On another matter I tryed very hard to keep the instruments as standard as possible, however as I am not a manufacturer or maker this has been very dificult.
Inventor.
Horniman Museum
in General Concertina Discussion
Posted
This is quite a time back now, not long after the Museum had acquired the Neil Wayne collection.
My other suggestions were:-
1) That they had recordings of the different types of concertina that they had on display. I strongly emphasized the need to hear the sort of sound that the instruments made. At that time the V & A (Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London) had a small display of Musical Instruments together with a Juke-box type of device which played samples of the instruments displayed; and suggested that might do similar.
2) That they display an instrument taken apart and laid out so that it was possible to see what was going on inside the instrument. Or had made an instrument with perspex casework to show exactly what was happening inside. Since I wrote that, believe it or not I have seen pictures of a Melodeon with perspex casework so you could see the mechanical action and the reeds vibrating inside.
3) With regard to the Walrus: the lady at the Museum who wrote to me said in reply that they had recently had a substantial grant from the National Lottery and were going to build a massive extension to the Horniman, with plenty of extra space to display many more concertinas; so there would be no need to remove the Walrus.
Inventor. .