Clive Thorne

And when that film was made it probaly cost them a fiver from the junk shop!

And good for your playing as well!

I am also having lessons with John Kirkpatrick, and finding them great. John's playing was my first exposure to anglo concertina so to my mind that is what an anglo concertina should sound like, and going to him for lessons was the natural thing to do. He goes at your pace, very happy to repaeat stuff, and so far has been very tolerant of my making slower progress than I should be (lack of practice time), and understands that sometimes you have to move lessons around due to life getting in the way. The zoom works better than I thought it would, and actually has the advantage that you can record it (with his permission) and refer back to it. So it's a thumbs up from me.

Annd hopefully the concertina does'n sound like a penguin mating call!

Note my style of playing at all, but I'm sure it's all good stuff. However the thing that stands out to me is how far they all seem to lift their fingers off the buttons. Is this an Irish style 'thing'? - it looks like hard work to me, but obviously works!. When I'm playing (English style) my fingers generally only just come clear of the buttons - possibly to do with having started on a melodeon.

You can simplify this by simply using P for push and P for pull !!🙂

I've never been one for tablature (concertina or bass guitar).To me it always seems easier just to learn where the notes are in your head/fingers. Learn the basic scale pattern then some chord shapes, and then, when ready, alternative position and directions. Start with simple tunes and then slowly push the boundaries.

Jake, Thanks for the heads up. I'm an english style player rather than irish, so i'll probably skip the Swan & Helmet sessions (I've been to a few rockier gigs in that pub though). Is the Amtphill session a general folk session, or concertina specific? - my first instrument is really a melodeon. Also how open minded is it?. Would it object to a saxophone (my wife's instrument). PS I am having lessons with John Kirkpatrick at the moment and he was very complimentary about your concertinas.

Thanks jake, A fascinating read.

I know that quite a lot of early C.Jeffies concertinas were actually built by Crabb, but beyond that I am unclear. Did Mr Jeffries re-temper and fettle the reeds etc., or did he simply stamp his name on the end, or what? I have an interest in this because when I had Colin Dipper do some work on my "C. Jeffries" aorund 15 years ago,he said that it was probably built by Crabb, and that it looked like it might originally have had wooden ends. To honest I'm not too bothered whether it's a Crabb or a Jeffries as it is a lovely instrument either way.

I'm not sure that this should be refered to as a "Faux" Jeffries. Others would know much better than me, but if it had the final reed work done by Jeffries, then I would have thought it qualified as a Jeffries. Even if not, then it will still be a top class instrument. I'd be interested to know what the reality of these "Crabb built Jeffries" is? Did he fettle them, or simply stamp his name on them?

My early C. Jeffries anglo has bon button which I would describe as somewhere between a dome head and an pan head. ie the central area has a gentle dome, with edges being rounded off. Many od these would appear to have worn a bit over the years. I find these very comfortable. I also have an old starter model 20 key lachenal with plastic/bone buttons, shaped much like the OP's metal ones. I don't mind these too much, but they are nowhere near as comfortable as the above.

There is piece of sotware called "scantailor" which I use to clean up and de-skew scans of electrical drawings (sometimes prior to converting to CAD files). It is not perfect but still quite useful, particulary for batch processing a set of drawings. In terms of scan/pdf to a Music file the only one Ive tried is something called 'Omer' (optical music recognition) from Myriad software. The only piece of music I've tried it on was an original arrangemet of 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square', and to be honest it did reasonably well in terms of percentage, but the remaining errors take ages to correct. Seems to get confused by slur lines etc, which that peice of music has lots of. I've not tried it on a single note melody at all. Caveat here - I've just checked on-line and there is a new version out, so I might try that at home. It's quite likely that a modern Phone App more successful, and certianly easier as it combines many steps into one.

Reading this thread it occurs to me that there is a big difference between "Pimping up" and" Pimping out"!

So low that only elephants can hear it!