gcoover

One suggestion on the handle - I initially used nice brass drawer pulls for the first cases I built that looked great, but I quickly discovered they really hurt my fingers when carrying the cases for any length of time. A switch to a nice big fat padded leather handle made all the difference. Gary

Robin would be very impressed with this - excellent arrangement and playing! Gary

Red Cow should be getting more books in the next few days - good to see they are selling quickly. Doing my best to keep him stocked up! Gary

With the recent interest in bass concertinas here on CNET, I thought some might appreciate these photos of Lachenal Contrabass EC #39216. It is double action, the top note is middle C, and the bottom note is 2-1/2 octaves below that going down to a wonderfully and almost ominously super-low F. The ends are 12" long and 9" high, and it's 8" across when closed. It weighs about 8.5 pounds. I recently visited with Bernard Wrigley and as you may know he plays a single-action Wheatstone Bass with 29 buttons, but his is much larger and much heavier, yet has fewer reeds overall. A mystery! Gary

Yes, it's for the Wheatstone/Lachenal layout since that is by far the most common 30-button Anglo available. The lefthand notes will be exactly the same, but for the accidentals on the right you will need to "adapt and overcome". Which is something most Anglo players should be very used to doing! I think Jeffries players will still be able to get a lot of use out of Cohen's tutor, especially on the accompaniment side, but would love to hear how Jeffries players fare with the righthand side. Gary

Just now published - a new tutor for the 30-button C/G Anglo concertina by the amazing virtuoso Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne: Anglo Concertina from Beginner to Master, published by Rollston Press. Cohen teaches how to play different keys, modes, ornamentations, and a variety of styles of accompaniment in the harmonic style. Multiple exercises teach simple tunes in the home keys all the way up to complex baroque arrangements by Westhoff and Telemann. All 72 tunes and exercises are shown with the same simple easy-to-use tablature system with standard musical notation that's used in all the Rollston Press books, and each selection includes a Button Map showing which buttons are required to play the tune. The book is divided into chapters with each chapter based around a different theme or style of concertina playing. Each tune has been assigned an ability level from one to seven. AND.... every tune includes a QR code link to a video of Cohen playing the tune. The list price is 20 GBP, 25 USD, 24 Euros. Available from Cohen and through Amazon, and very likely through other retailers like Red Cow Music in the UK. The Table of Contents is attached, along with a sample page. This is the most thorough and exciting tutor for the Anglo to be published in years. Working through all these tunes will not be easy, but thanks to the expert teaching of Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne it will quickly develop and elevate your playing skills (I know I've learned a lot from it already). Gary Cotillon-CBK-EXCERPT.pdf CBK-TOC.pdf

Hey Owen, thanks for the reminder! A facsimile edition should be live momentarily. I'm off to England in a couple of days for two weeks, but afterwards can probably create a linkable Table of Contents. Gary

Sorry, my friend, but this is a note-for-note transcription of Phil's playing and I don't put in the chords unless I know what all of them are. I can tell you it starts out with C, Am, and G, and the B-part starts with D7 and then has a G and some C's. But with luck you might come up with something totally different! Gary

Here's a sneak preview of a lovely harmonic-style Anglo tune from the upcoming book, The Anglo Concertina Music of Phil Ham. Although Phil is known mostly for Morris tunes, especially from little-known traditions like Ascot-under-Wychwood, he has also worked up classical, sea songs, Geordie songs, and madrigals like this one by Thomas Ford (1580-1648) titled "Since First I Saw Your Face", first published in 1607. He's 92-years-old and still going strong, and I'm really looking forward to meeting up with him next week to preview a preliminary test print of the book. It will be a high point of a 2-week 1000-mile concertinistic mad dash across the length and breadth of the English countryside, powered no doubt by good tunes and pints of best! Gary Since-First-I-Saw-Your-Face-PH-ANGLO.pdf

With John's permission, from the ceremony, here is a photo with his MBE award. I don't think the house was included with the medal. Gary

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." - Andrew S. Tanenbaum Tru dat!

Here's the keyboard and tab. Anglo-Keyboard-Tab-WATCHAM.pdf

Hi John, here's Drowsy Maggie in a completely different numbering system! From 75 Irish Session Tunes for Anglo Concertina. Gary DrowsieMaggie-Em-ANGLO.pdf

I totally understand the need/desire for more buttons, but I've noticed a huge difference in playability in Jeffries Duets depending on instrument size. My 50-button JD is quite nimble and a quick play, but the larger 60+ button instruments are surprisingly much heavier and much more stately in feel, like the difference between a motorboat and an ocean liner. I'll be trying a 77-button gigantor JD in a couple of weeks and by comparison it might almost seem immovable! And then there is also the issue of extra buttons being harder to reach. The handrests are a constraint, fingers are only so long, and in the case of larger JD's one's fingers don't bend well laterally at all. So my question is, for Crane and Maccann (and Hayden), is there a sweet spot for number of buttons that provides maximum utility without being too unwieldy? Gary

And a weird instrument as well, scam or not. It's basically a 1-row concertina with four different keys stacked like pancakes. Gary

Early on I struggled with all the different staff variations and ultimately decided on simplicity for a variety of reasons. I wanted the notation in real pitch, so that made showing accompaniment problematical and potentially very cluttered. And as a side effect it made the music too bulky to easily fit on the page. I didn't want the melody to get lost amongst all the other notes, especially for those not used to reading music, and I didn't want to scare off any beginners with a daunting or frightening pile of notes. That's why I also include a Button Map with every arrangement showing which buttons are needed, so no need to panic or worry about all 30 buttons at once. If someone sees that a tune only requires a handful of buttons then they are more likely to attempt learning it. Most of the professional Anglo players I know don't write down their left hand arrangements, they just play and think more in patterns, which often vary from verse to verse anyway. I like the fact that the tab can be easily applied with a pencil to printed melodies in tunebooks with no need to draw in additional staves or write in a bunch of dots. I see the tab as a suggestion and a crutch that should never be treated as gospel! I want players to use it initially as a guide but to feel free to experiment, be adventurous, leave out notes, add notes, make mistakes, and discover their own accompaniment. And, true confession time - although I'm a keyboard player from way back I've pretty much forgotten how to read bass clef! I guess it's from too many years playing EC and not needing to know that other clef. So, I'd rather think in terms of buttons instead of having to also add the additional step of relearning bass clef. As for trying to learn someone else's previously printed multi-staff polyphonic scores, that's just way too much work! Gary

Ignoring for the moment the unresolved discussions of octave-low-bass-clef-treble-clef vs real-pitch-double-treble-clef vs real-pitch-with-bass-ledger-lines, I think there is a question of what is the market for a "grand staff" book specifically catering to larger instruments like 38-button Jeffries and 40-button Wheatstone Anglos, and maybe duets? There are lots and lots and lots of 30-button Anglos out there, but relatively very few plus-sized versions. Adrian and I had a lot of discussions about even doing dual Wheatstone/Lachenal and Jeffries notations, admittedly adapted for the much-more-common 30-button instruments. I'd be curious how many Jeffries players have taken advantage of this? I'm also curious as to how many players of larger Anglos are "paper-trained" to read standard notation? And in what clefs? It's already a tiny micro sub-niche musical market! But if there is enough interest to make such a book worth the effort... Gary

Try to find a copy of Tommy Williams' "Springtime in Battersea", all Maccann, and any Percy Honri recordings. But these are very different from the Bertram Levy style of Anglo playing. For more like that, look for recordings with John Watcham, John Kirkpatrick, Brian Peters, Andy Turner, Jody Kruskal, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, and Adrian Brown. Gary

With duets (and Anglos) it's too easy to play full chords on the left against a single melody note, which makes it instantly outgunned three (or four) to one. The key is in the arrangement and in the micro-phrasing (I think that's what Jody Kruskal calls it). You seldom need to play full chords for their entire length, and sometimes just adjusting the timing of the accompaniment can let the melody shine through. A few notes can suggest a chord, notes can be played staccato against a legato melody, single harmony notes can arpeggiate (if that's a word?). Open fifths are also good. When playing, really concentrate on hearing the melody, and let the left hand fill in as needed. Easier said than done, but let your ears tell you when you are nicely accompanying the melody as opposed to drowning it out. You'll also find you will have a lot more air if you're not playing big lefthand chords that are eating up most of the air. Listen to how folks like Michael Hebbert (Jeffries Duet) or John Watcham (Anglo) make great accompaniments without overbearing lefthand chords. I'd try this, which admittedly comes easier with time, rather than trying to make physical modifications to your instrument which could potentially lead to bigger problems. Gary

I have seen and played this instrument and it is as wonderful and delightful as Richard describes. If I didn't play harmonic style and needed all the extra buttons, it would have never made it to this cnet post! Gary

What a great tune! Sounds like it might be for a northern clog or garland Morris?

Or you can also briefly play octaves along with the melody, or maybe thirds, just a little interlude that sounds planned but is often due to not having the right notes in the right direction.

Would love to see the insides of this one, why the ends are so elongated. Gary

Looks like it will be Portland on the 22nd if anyone wants to meet up for a low-key master class, tunes, and/or drinks! Gary

And a lovely version of Old Woman Tossed Up: