Jack Campin

Pentagonal concertinas? Did they ever exist?

As an example of what ABC can do - here is a PDF file (704K) of Finnish tunes I posted to melodeon.net, generated from an ABC file (44K) which this forum won't let me upload (you can find it via this article on melnet: http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php/topic,17067.msg209876.html). I have several thousand ABC tunes on my site, some of them much more complicated than this. FinnishTunes.pdf

Is there any particular reason not to use ABC? If you're doing keyboard music or complex band scores it won't really work, but it's fine for anything a solo concertina can do, and you can generate sound files or PDFs with several tunes on a page. You don't need to learn the more outré features (and for the sake of futureproofing, you shouldn't use them anyway).

Where did you get that? It's barely recognizable as the same tune as the one I know (always in D in Scotland).

PRS in the UK is not an agency of the state either - it has the same status as ASCAP does in the US, UK law works the same way as Jim's description of US law - composers can licence their work independently (though not many do).

OK, that worked.

Still nothing doing.

Is it just me or has melodeon.net gone phut?

The world definitely needs a concertina arrangement of the Gubaidulina bassoon concerto...

For a relatively straightforward instrument where the technical basics are not something that takes a lot of un-obvious groundwork, learning on your own has got a lot easier with the volume of free resources on the web. The whistle and drumkit are in that category. The violin and French horn aren't.

Wrong thread. oops.

That is indeed horse poo. I have a section in my modes tutorial on "misleading finals" of which this is a typical example. It seems a rather weak version of this tune, though. Here's Playford in 1651 (again from my modes tutorial, where I included it in a section on "multiple modes in the same tune" because of what a later adaptation did to it): X:0 T:Stingo F:http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Modes/ Z:Jack Campin: last edit 26/11/2016 G:dance song M:6/8 L:1/8 Q:3/8=108 K:GMin G2G d2B |cA2 F2F |G2G d2B|G3 B3:| B2B B2A/B/|c2c c2c |d2d g2g|d3 f3 | B2B B2A/B/|c2c c>de|dc>B cA2|G3 B3|] That one ends on the third (less common than the fifth in minor keys). For a highly repetitive dance, it's often better not to finish each repeat of the tune on the tonic, you want to push the dancers on and not give too strong an impression of finality.

What's the piece? It's common for tunes centred on A to end on the dominant (e.g. the mixolydian sword dance tune "Ghillie Callum"), and tunes in C sometimes end on the major third.

Charlie Hind used Dymondwood for ocarinas (up to about the size of your fist or foot), which is about as demanding an application as you could think of. Very high quality instruments at high prices.

The vast majority of Irish tunes fit in the effective range of a whistle - D below the treble staff to B above it. I make that 19 notes. Add 7 more at the bottom and you have the first position range of a fiddle (down to G). It's daft to incur more weight and expense to go beyond that.

OK, I was thinking this might be targeted at the Duet or EC. Agreed that's tougher.

You need to be able to tell your chord generator what is actually possible with the instrument you're writing for - you don't want impossible keyboard stretches, out-of-range notes or multiple simultaneous notes on the same string. There is an auto-harmonizer in Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis (1655), using sliding rods with chord pitches on them. Intended for voices, but the problem is that as you get lower the vocal lines have to leap around more and more to fit the rules of harmony. The bass has a really tough time with this one, though it sounds fine: X:8 T:Tristrophon hendecasyllabum Armenicum T:Melothesia Armenica secundi toni S:Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis (1650), lib.VIII p.136 N:If I understand the Latin correctly he got this from the N:Jesuits and harmonized it using his mechanical rules. N:The second G in voice 3 bar 1 is E natural in my notes; N:dunno if I transcribed it wrong or Kircher had a typo. M:8/2 % C| L:1/4 Q:1/2=60 % guess W: Garrachat parraz nuruche smidaz luhs W: Ansdieziet ariechagan luhs dzachia huchus W: Pirchieziet puguriz sesa puta pirchel. % W: Splendor gloriae renovat mentis lumen W: Increati itaque solis lux orire huic animae W: O Redemptor Universi hanc festina redimere. V:1 V:2 V:3 transpose -12 V:4 transpose -12 K:G dorian [V:1] d2 dd B2 d d2 cAG c2d2 |B2dc B2c B2A AB A2 A2|G2GG A2A B2B GG ^F2G2 || [V:2] G2^FG G2=F F2_EDG F2F2 |D2DE G2A G2F EG E2^F2|D2DD F2F G2F _ED D2D2 || [V:3] B2 AB G2 A D2 GFB A2B2 |d2Bc d2f d2d ^cd2 ^cd2|B2BB c2c _e2d cB A2G2 || [V:4] G,2DG _E2 D B,2CDE F2B,2|B2BA G2F G2D A,G, A,2D2|G2GG F2F _E2B, CG, D2G,2|| I nominate that as one of the first-ever pieces of "world music". Kircher got tunes from Jesuit missionaries and harmonized them himself. (There's another one using an Arabic Christian chant where Western-style harmonization was an even more improbable project). Terrific tune and I don't see any reason why it couldn't work for concertina band, though.

I've fixed my link (the forum's text entry box did something strange). I meant the same auction as Patrick McMahon found. Odd that they went to so much trouble with the appearance, fit, and making it sound, but got the button layout all wrong.

This is bizarre... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201663663152 Price looks a little high, for a tin, but they must be pretty rare.

They shouldn't be that technical. The points I made come down to - what notes are there in the tune? - which ones matter? - why do they matter? A useful modal theory gives you answers to those.

Lloyd just recycles the scheme introduced by Lucy Broadwood in the 19th century. It doesn't do very much, compared with more modern schemes informed by a wider range of cultures. I have a much larger account of modes which is intended to be rather more realistic on my website: http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Modes/ Lots of examples which are intended to show that modal theory really is an aid to understanding and practical performance, not just a pointless exercise in taxonomy for the sake of it. I have quite a few ideas for expanding it, but the most interesting and useful one needs programming skills I haven't got and don't have the time or resources to acquire. BTW all the examples in PGH's modes handout have something wrong with them. - Amazing Grace is not in the major, it's pentatonic. - the sixth in Childgrove occurs in an unaccented position and might as well be either dorian or minor. Nobody's going to notice which way you do it. But the sharpened seventh at the end IS noticeable and suggests the minor. This is definitely not a dorian tune. (Like the other examples, it could do with some chords preceding the final - the final cadence is definitely Emaj-Am or E7-Am) - the version of Campbell's Farewell to Redcastle is not the usual Scottish one (which is in Amix, using the notes of the pipe scale). "Trad" from somewhere, sure, but I think that's an American version. - The Bear Dance doesn't use the sixth, it's a narrow-range tune built around a minor pentachord and it's neither dorian nor minor. If you want to reinforce its primitive effect it helps to notice that and refrain from including a C or C# in the harmony.

Can this actually be done? Are the bars really all the same? Or can you specify a multi-bar sequence?

Try this: put "R:hornpipe" in a tune header. Then use that header to play a hornpipe written out in two versions, one written straight and the other dotted. Do they come out sounding the same? It's quite common for Highland pipe reels to be written with explicit dotting. Try one like that with a "reel" rhythm specified and you will probably get a bizarre mess.

The syntax is described in the ABC 1.6 spec. The middle field can also be used. Here is an example of using it perversely: strathspeys are normally played with the dotted-note ratios larger than 3:1. ABC can notate that, and BarFly can play it, but staff notation converters choke on it: X:1 T:The Earl of Angus and Arran M:C L:1/8 Q:1/4=108 K:Eb B,|(6:2:2EE5 B2 {A}(6:2:4G5FE5G|(6:2:4AC5F5E (6:2:4DB,5C5D|\ (6:2:2EE5~B2 {A}(6:2:4G5FE5G|(5:2:4AC5F5D E2E :| B|G<BE>A G<BE>d|e<EG>E D<FF>A|G<BE>B GBE>g |f>ed>c ~B2BG | A<cF>A G<BE>G|F>~GA>G FEDB, |E<GF<A G<BA>c|B<ed>f e2e2|] I only munged the first half of the tune that way. If you pass it to a MIDI converter it'll play just fine.

This should work: X:1 T:triplet test M:2/2 L:1/4 Q:1/2=80 K:C c/ed/ (3::5c/d/ef/g|d/fe/ (3::5(d/e/fg/a/)| I put it in a tango-like context since that seemed the most likely place you'd want it... TripletTest.pdf