gcoover

Geoff - what a fantastic bit of research, so much appreciated. Just wondering if anyone has contacted any descendants for additional family or company history? Who knows what some of them might have tucked away in an attic somewhere... Gary

A drum machine might feel more natural than a tick-tock metronome. Gary

I don't know the details about the device, but a harpist friend of mine uses a foot pedal switch to turn music pages on her iPad. Gary

Definitely a Jeffries Duet, home key of C. Probably first (and only) time in the movies! Gary

Hi Jack - I have the book but it is just a bunch of tunes with no instruction whatsoever - it could be for any instrument, but at least it does have an accompanying CD of him playing the tunes. Gary

And to add to the confusion, middle c is "C" in abc notation. Gary

I would think you could push in a new spring next to where the old one sheared off? A spring broke on me in the middle of a gig - a piece of scotch tape quickly placed over the hole allowed the show to go on. But it sure messed with the concentration to hit a dead button! Gary

It's different tools for different jobs. I've played both EC and AC for years, and can easily switch back and forth since the keyboards and handrests are so different, as is what I want to play and how I play it on each instrument. The really hard switch is between Anglo and Jeffries Duet, since 1/4 of the keyboard is identical, and the harmonic chord patterns are just close enough to really scramble things up in my little brain - definitely have to make sure to NOT try to play the same tune on both because the end result would be not being able to play it on either! Gary

With all the recent posts about bass concertina, I just now remembered this recording from mumble-something years ago featuring the wonderfully unlikely combination of double-action bass concertina and concert harp: https://soundcloud.com/user-906796422-441231868/king-of-the-fairies

This brings up one of the major stumbling blocks in trying to notate the Anglo in standard musical notation since middle C is in the middle of the left side. What to do about potentially excessive ledger lines (top and bottom) if notating both treble and bass clefs? Some use two treble clefs, some an octave low. I've made the conscious decision to only show the melody notes in real pitch, but Adrian makes an excellent point about being able to read an octave lower and being able to access a wide world of printed scores. For my limited cranial capacity I think I'll stick with numbers and overscore lines! Gary

To slightly reverse the drift... the tab notation I use was initially "pencil only", a quick way to mark up existing music by notating button numbers and simply drawing a line for drawing the bellows. I had probably done several hundred tunes that way before getting the PrintMusic program so I could write the first book. And I could have easily done a pencil version with Bonnie Kirkwall Bay if the music someone posted online had not been all hammajang (Hawaiian word). It's super quick for already printed music, but takes a little longer when using a notation program to tart it up to look purty for publication. Gary

FYI, the cheaper software called PrintMusic will do the same, I only upgraded to Finale because they offered a really good deal at one point. Gary

Old-school manual input! I use Finale and have to draw each individual line as a SmartShape, then set it to horizontal, then come back later and adjust each one for length and exact vertical placement. Same for the dashed lines I use to show length of bass notes. Yep, a huge pain, but it's the only way I know how to do it! Gary

Hi Haraald, if no one else is going to chime in I might as well take the bait - here's a simple version in C plus a harmonized one in G which needs a 30-button instrument and matches the key that Jim MacLeod plays in. This was made slightly more difficult since the one version of Bonnie Kirkwall Bay that has the dots on the internet has it in the wrong time signature (3/4?!?), plus every measure is off by one quarter note. In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill, "don't believe everything you see on the internet". I hope one of these versions gets the job done and that you win the game! Gary Bonnie-Kirkwall-Bay-G-ANGLO.pdf

Uploaded just a few hours ago, with Bernard in fine form as always. The bass concertina appears after 17:20 for "Fisherman's Friend".