RatFace

I think if you listen to T&M expecting to agree with everything you hear, you're making a far bigger error of judgement than Milligan!

The last time I met Henk was up on Arran for the concertina gathering in 2012. We stayed on for a bit afterwards, and so did Henk and his friends, so we met up once or twice to play music: https://goo.gl/photos/xmHgj5p71NMKZPxB6 Sad to not be able to do that again, but happy to have the good memories.

Thanks for the prompt to dust off my concertina again! https://soundcloud.com/mrrowl/the-new-anything

It's unclear whether you mean they want you to play in a different room to the one in which you normally play, or in a different room to the one in which they're trying to occupy. Actually - your family might be offering the most sensible solution - why don't you just practise in another room?! Or place - e.g. garden shed, or even the car. I used to use the apartment's storage basement when I was living in Germany - no neighbours on any side, and empty offices on the ground floor out of work hours. The external baffles I made (see Myrtle's cook post) primarily change the tone than reduce the volume (reducing higher frequencies), but might be worth trying. Unfortunately, I think that making them thick enough to have a substantial effect will involve so much weight that it would affect the playability a lot. Another option is to play silently when other people are around. So long as you're above a certain level, you can get your fingers working and learning techniques and tunes without moving the bellows enough to make any sound at all. I used to do this when living in student accommodation, for example. You can also continue this practise technique when in the same room as other people, and even when they're talking to you, especially is the conversation is of the type where only an occasional nod is required Obviously such practice should be backed up with some proper bellows work too!

Oh and also - if you record close and add reverb, you'll end up with more clicking sound than if you record slightly further away and add less reverb. This is because the clicking sound comes from a very small/localised source, but the "concertina" sound comes from the whole instrument/end vibrating. Sound from small sources will decay with distance faster than from bigger ones.

By the way - you should always have mics well away from walls. And if they have to be by a wall, put some padding on the wall. The reason is to reduce reflections, where a sound wave going directly to the microphone will interfere with a sound wave that has gone via a reflection off the wall. These will constructively or destructively interfere with each other, depending on the frequency (it's called comb filtering), resulting in some notes "booming" more than others. Even if you don't change anything else - just moving your chair/stand/mics back away from the wall is a good and simple thing to do.

The silver box is a DMP3 pre-amp, used to provide power to the mics and to combine the two signals to a single stereo signal. The smaller black box is a Tascam DR-07 recorder. When using the internal mics it's not great quality, but when recording using the line input the quality is (I think) as good as anything significantly more expensive. I can't comment on whether the quality of the pre-amps in the Zoom H4n is as good as the quality of an external pre-amp like the DMP3...

With regard to mic placement, have a look here: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=13357&hl=

Thanks for pointing that out. Yes - it seems like my hosts let it expire (like they did last year!) in error. Hopefully it should be up very soon.

And as I thought I remembered (but didn't say, because I wasn't sure), the concertina isn't even metal-ended. Danny, do you have any recordings showing the difference in sound between baffled and un-baffled? I don't have any controlled experiments, unfortunately! These are definitely without the baffles: http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/music/GanivelleImprov.mp3 http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/music/Beveridge.mp3 This is definitely with: http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/music/ACoyToy.mp3 I don't use them any more, having "gone off" the sound a bit.

See here: http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/pictures/index.html

Very nice! It's on Mairtin's "Chatterbox" album (written by him) - the CD notes say "The tranquility of the pier, late one summer's evening (when the weather was good!), suggested this air to me".

I liked this!

Yes you have - though the extra beats are quite well disguised! You actually start the B part one beat early, but add an extra beat in the descending phrase that follows, so this bit comes out "in the wash". However, just after this (in the second "answering" descending phrase, starting on F) you add an extra beat (about 3 eighths of the way through the B part), You might want to try playing along to some of the other recordings here to figure it out - or listen to your own recording counting one-gap-three, one-gap-three etc (I tend to sway like a lopo-sided metronome, if that helps!). Nice playing otherwise, though.

Here's my effort (though by "effort" I mean a few snatched minutes between other things...), warts and all: https://soundcloud.com/mrrowl/trollspolska

I know this is a ancient thread, but I had reason to look into where I'd got a copy of "Round the Samovar" which is in the list above (many thanks!), since I made a rough recording of it many years ago. So I thought I'd post that here, in case it had slipped under the radar... It's a very nice arrangement, I think. http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/music/samovar.mp3

Hi, very nice but the second tune played as a schottische is not Rosline Castle with a faster tempo or did I miss something?... Cheers It is! There are a few little changes - in particular the second crotchet beat in the first bar, and also a slightly different distribution of accidentals, but it's basically the same tune.

Rosline (however you spell it) Castle is a lovely slow tune that also works really well as a schottische. Apologies for the "here's one I made earlier" recordings: http://rowlhouse.co.uk/concertina/music/Rosline.mp3

Thanks for the post - I just bought the CD (it comes with a download option too) and it's great - inspiring, exciting playing from both (as one would expect).

The bit about the space in the reed chamber having a resonant frequency being comparable with that of the reed is completely wrong. For example, the wavelength in air of middle-C is about 130cm - about 50 times more than the size of a reed chamber. Obviously the size of the chamber has an effect on the reed/sound produced, but not as described here (and the statement that there are no overtones is wrong too, fortunately).

Another tune that does exactly the same thing is "Spirit of the Dance": http://youtu.be/Ct-oGOAQAzk?t=3m6s

A while ago I thought about how to record concertina with a reasonably wide sound, but none of the left/right "bounce" which drives me nuts (especially when listening with headphones). I posted previously about this: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=13357 and I think it could work quite well (taking more care to avoid reflections etc).

Also late to the party - when listening to the recording (low notes) I started thinking "wood then metal" (but not much in it), but at the end (high notes) thought "metal then wood", mainly influenced by which of the notes seemed most muffled. It would have been interesting to have heard some lower notes, as maybe they would have demonstrated the transition more clearly. In the past I've had the impression that metal ended instruments tend to have a rather loud bass end (and the treble/bass balance is never good with concertinas) - my opinion of concertinas is dominated more by the bass/mid than the mid/high balance.

This is just stunning!

That's how I play, as does Rob Harbron. It's by far the best way to retain complete control over the bellows, in my opinion - it means you need to make more bellow direction changes, but if they're under total control, that doesn't matter. I used to do this by controlling the direction of pressure when closing the bellows - if you press your thumbs down as well as together, then the bottom of the bellows will stay closed (aided slightly by friction of the ends, not the bellows, on the legs), even without any pressure from the fingers on the buttons, or even the little finger on the rest. This prevents the "flap" that you get if you don't do this - which is really audible with pretty much anybody I've heard who plays standing up (including Alistair Anderson, and those who try to demonstrate how much control they have when playing standing up ). This is what Rob does, I think. However, I realised a long time ago that strapping the bottom of the bellows together allows you to do this more securely and with less pressure, so that's what I do now all the time - e.g. http://youtu.be/b1VW2HEZzbs I use sticky-backed velcro on the concertina and the strap is the other half of the sticky backed velcro, with the stickiness taken off it by about 15 years of use! For people that worry about wearing the bellows playing like this - after 20 years or so of (probably) more than average playing, I have a little wear on the leather, that is very much still in the cosmetic category. I reckon it would take at least another two or three times as much to start to cause problems - and bellows are, at the end of the day, going to have to be replaced at some point anyway.