Jump to content

gcoover

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,140

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by gcoover

  1. gcoover
    Lovely arrangements! You're selling yourself way too short. Your playing, much like Andy Turner's, is proof you don't always need fistfulls of chords to play beautifully. Simple can be quite effective, and your use of octaves helps keep the melody in the forefront. I sense a little hesitancy in your playing, so just keep after it with more and more confidence and expression - you've already got a great sense of accompaniment! Gary
  2. gcoover
    Octaves can really drive a melody with more volume, and don't conflict with any other instruments playing accompaniments. Having said that, I mostly play by myself in a full harmonic style, but it drives me crazy if a guitar player jumps in with "their" version of accompanying chords, usually totally oblivious to the chords already being played on the concertina. That sentiment probably belongs in a different post on pet peeves! Gary
  3. gcoover
    Be very careful who does any replating! The folks in Houston who replated the ends of my Jeffries Duet many years ago did a total hack job when removing the old plating, leaving huge comet-like tails gouged out to one side of every button hole. And that's not fixable. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Kill! Gary
  4. gcoover
    For octave playing it's good to study the old players like Scan Tester, and you should definitely check out Dan Worrall's recent digital CD book "House Dance" which is full of tunes and music and history about playing in the octave style. Gary
  5. gcoover
    until
    It's that time again, time to start thinking about bringing yourself and your concertina to the East Texas piney woods for the 9th annual Old Palestine Concertina Weekend. Held in conjunction with the 12th annual Palestine Old Time Music & Dulcimer Festival (www.oldpalmusic.com), this year it will be March 21-23, 2012, in Palestine, Texas. Jody Kruskal will once again be the guest headliner and teacher, and we will also have two days of volunteer-taught classes for those who play English, Anglo and Duet, plus plenty of time for jamming and comparing instruments and tunes. Last year we had over 20 concertina players from all over the US including Oregon, California and Maryland and New York. This year, Dan Worrall will present a workshop on the old octave style of Anglo playing based on his recent book and CD “House Dance”. Gary Coover will be teaching beginning and Third Row Anglo and will be premiering his new 100-page tutor “Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style”. There’s even rumor there will be a Boer music player attending. With luck concertina builder Harold Herrington might even be able to attend to talk about concertina construction and repair. All in all, a fun weekend with good music, good friends and good BBQ, plus you get to meet and hear some of the country's finest old time musicians. And if you’ve never heard Sacred Harp singing, it’s almost worth coming just for that. For more information watch this space at concertina.net or contact Gary Coover at gcoover(at)swbell.net.
  6. gcoover
    So Bernard Wrigley has named it well! The low F on mine is located where the low G# would normally be. A very sensible substitution, especially if used for band music. I got it from Lark in the Morning many years ago but don't know any history previous to that. Jim - we need to get together some time and work up a version of Spinal Tap's "Big Bottoms"! Gary
  7. gcoover
    If it's an emergency, and you don't need the G#, just put some tape across the hole until you have time to check it out in detail. Gary
  8. gcoover
    I've got 35-button double-action EC bass, #39216 and presumably a Lachenal, that starts at middle C and goes down two and a half octaves to a very low F - a "fartophone" if ever there was one. I'm guessing this would be a double-bass? I can't imagine getting reeds to go much lower in pitch. You feel the bottom notes more than you hear them! Gary
  9. gcoover
    If you have a single note melody input you can try Audacity to convert mp3 to midi, and use a different program to go from midi to notation, but it's a far from perfect process and only results in a melody line that usually needs a ton of cleaning up anyway. There's just way too much going on in your standard sound file for any program to magically convert it into notation, and there's no way at all if there are several instruments and sounds happening at once. So far, the human brain is the best computer for doing this! Gary
  10. gcoover
    I made this one many years ago out of birch plywood, covered outside with bookbinder black leatherette cloth, with velvet-covered thick cardboard in the interior. Yes it was heavy, but very handy for sitting on at crowded sessions, with easy access to all three. A friend called it my "concertina condo"! But..... I made it to fit three specific instruments and subsequent purchases don't necessarily fit, so make sure you design it with some flexibility in the interior. Gary
  11. gcoover
    Thanks for your excellent advice. I noticed that the paragraph in question in the contract is the only one that has a very limited right click MS Word menu, and no access to the "font" command for strikeouts, etc. But the select and delete function works just fine! Gary
  12. gcoover
    It's that time again, time to start thinking about bringing yourself and your concertina to the East Texas piney woods for the 9th annual Old Palestine Concertina Weekend. Held in conjunction with the 12th annual Palestine Old Time Music & Dulcimer Festival (www.oldpalmusic.com), this year it will be March 21-23, 2012, in Palestine, Texas. Jody Kruskal will once again be the guest headliner and teacher, and we will also have two days of volunteer-taught classes for those who play English, Anglo and Duet, plus plenty of time for jamming and comparing instruments and tunes. Last year we had over 20 concertina players from all over the US including Oregon, California and Maryland and New York. This year, Dan Worrall will present a workshop on the old octave style of Anglo playing based on his recent book and CD “House Dance”. Gary Coover will be teaching beginning and Third Row Anglo and will be premiering his new 100-page tutor “Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style”. There’s even rumor there will be a Boer music player attending. With luck concertina builder Harold Herrington might even be able to attend to talk about concertina construction and repair. All in all, a fun weekend with good music, good friends and good BBQ, plus you get to meet and hear some of the country's finest old time musicians. And if you’ve never heard Sacred Harp singing, it’s almost worth coming just for that. For more information watch this space at concertina.net or contact Gary Coover at gcoover(at)swbell.net.
  13. gcoover
    In getting permission for a previously published tune from Alfred Music Publishing for the upcoming "Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style" tutor, I noticed this clause in their "Sub-Out License Agreement": "our signature below, together with yours, shall assign to us all of our rights in the arrangement and the copyright in the arrangement, together with the sole right of registering the copyright as a work made for hire in our name or the name of our designee" Is this normal, to claim someone's arrangement as belonging to the original publisher? Or am I missing something? Not that there's a huge market for concertina arrangements (yet!), but it seems the arranger would have some rights. Gary
  14. gcoover
    Just now turned in the $0.99 Jeffries. This is getting to be almost a daily occurrence with these spammers. If eBay's not more careful, they're going to lose all credibility.
  15. gcoover
    So, do they think concertina players are more gullible than the average person, or are there scams like this on millions of other products??? Here's hoping we're not just being singled out!
  16. gcoover
    Amen! Instead of tutors we should call them "concertina codebreakers"...
  17. gcoover
    That's it for your amateur status, you're now a professional! Gary
  18. gcoover
    The internal baffle is very unusual - does it make it any louder perchance? Screw threads would make the button height easily adjustable, but that sure is a lot of extra machining to accomplish that. Any other interesting pecularities? Gary
  19. gcoover
    I'd recommend an Anglo with 30-buttons at the very least.
  20. gcoover
    Charlie, If you'll send me a PM with your email, I'll be happy to send you a few excerpts of "Anglo Concertina - in the Harmonic Style" which will be published shortly. It's a tutor for playing in the "English" style on the 30-button Anglo, and also features transcriptions of many recorded tunes by various artists. I'm currently wrangling the last two copyright permissions out of the big publishing houses and then it should be good to go. Gary
  21. gcoover
    Well said!
  22. gcoover
    To be technical, it's called "The Twin Sisters", collected by Maud Karpeles in Vermont sometime before 1933. However, she decided it went well with the Upton-on-Severn stick dance and the melody has "stuck" ever since. Gary
  23. gcoover
    Love the counterpoint on the cello, very nice combination - more please! Gary
  24. gcoover
    OMG, I've been to that session....many times....many places!
  25. gcoover
    "The difference between a fiddle and a violin? About $500." (overheard at a festival awhile back)
×
×
  • Create New...