Ken_Coles
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Posts posted by Ken_Coles
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Happy music and good health to you, Dirge!
Ken
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You know, I'll bet Michael throws really interesting, great parties. 😎 With a great music mix.
Ken
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19 hours ago, gcoover said:
I believe all the tunes are now completed, but I haven't seen them yet for a final proofreading. Dan is finishing up the historical portion, which will focus more on Kimber's early years and musical backgrounds. The current plan is to have an official launch sometime in September in Headington Quarry.
Of course, the Headington Quarry Morris will be there, and Andy Turner will be part of it since he is now the Headington Quarry Morris musician, and other players like John Kirkpatrick, John Watcham, and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne have also expressed interest in being part of the festivities, so it might end up being quite the event.
Gary
Do keep us posted! It happens I will be in Europe in September and would gladly make a detour to be present at such an event.
Ken
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Posted by @Paul Draper on 23rd of March 2024:
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From Facebook: Alex O Cealligh writes:My concertina went missing from Soho area of central London on 16th March. Make is a miniature Carroll concertina and it is in a hard black hexagonal case. Please contact me on here with any information and feel free to share! Thanks
See this thread.
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Jody,
Was this your inspiration to become a musician? 😎
Ken
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I have Morse number 036 which was also one of the first 40 (IIRC) that had porous material in part of the bellows. Rich and Co. went to the usual goatskin leather after that. I've had the gussets fixed by Bob Snope. It still plays great after 23 years of continuous use as my traveling box.
Ken
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4 hours ago, Leah Velleman said:
Also check out this page from a player who had numb fingertips (plus some other pains) and talks about things that helped, including adjusting his wrist rests with foam pads. I tried the foam pad trick when I was having elbow pain a while ago, and it wasn't a silver bullet solution, but it might have helped some, and your symptoms sound closer to his than mine were.
(The actual solution for mine was rest (ugh), stretching, and wearing wrist braces at night. It's better now, and when it flares back up I go back to the wrist braces for a bit.)
Leah sums up how I still handle it. But the medical attention and physical therapy were essential - self-diagnosis/treatment wasn't/isn't enough in many cases I know of.
I hadn't had issues for years and then we moved to a fancy new building where I work. The desk moves but can't be lowered a much as my old computer table, so I do spells on a stool instead of the silly fancy office chair the taxpayers bought for this building. It wasn't broke, and they fixed it. So using my wrist braces a bit.
Good luck but do talk to an expert.
Ken
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6 hours ago, March Hare said:
Hi Latzenpratz,
Here's a tip I got from con.net years ago that works for me.
(Personally, my middle fingers are long but my fifth fingers are not, so I slope my foam pieces to give the full thickness at the thumb end, and very little thickness at the little finger end. This foam is very easy to work with, and so cheap that you can try different styles. Surprisingly long-lasting, though.)
I don't split them in half; I use about 3/4 of the tube. I originally had them higher at the thumb end, but now use them other way, as that raises my short fifth finger and lets it reach the standard-spaced buttons on the concertinas I play now. Experiment and find what works for you.
Here's one version of how to do it (he says with false modesty). I did this for a rather different reason than too-long fingers. I now flip them from the way they are shown in the photos (wide end at bottom).
Ken
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Next year I will be retired and finally able to come! Have fun.
Ken
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The person who posted this ad, IIRC, asked to have their account removed, and Paul did so. My guess is they sold the instrument and had no further interest in discussing concertinas.
Ken
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It looks like you are playing an Italian concertina? Some of them (such as the last one I owned) have the buttons quite close to the wood handles. Have you tried any other makes of anglo concertina to see if they fit you better?
Welcome to concertina.net!
Ken
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Generally you let it go dormant. I see your one post is a for sale ad. We generally leave those up as a guide to the market for those who come after and wonder about recent asking prices.
Ken
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Time can be the hardest medicine. I lost all of 1999 to playing concertina when I got a fairly bad case of carpal tunnel inflammation. I did get back to playing and have done it ever since, with a lot of stretching to manage the condition. Good luck on your journey and juggling all the advice you'll get. People do come out the other side in many cases and get back to what they were doing.
Ken
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There was indeed another post in this thread, then the poster edited it to say "oops never mind, I misread but it looks like I can't delete this comment entirely." I didn't see the original question - it had been edited out. So I took the comment out, assuming it would make the thread easier to read. I was unaware so many are using the notifications. I would not remove a germane/relevant comment.
Ken
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So I clicked on DaveRo's link. I thought "I'm pretty sure I have this CD..." Then I saw who wrote the page! 😎 I used to be pretty useful around here (in the static page days).
Indeed, the CD-ROM is a set of files in html and fairly standard video format; you ought to be able to access the files if you go beyond waiting for it to load on its own. I published a CD-ROM of astronomy data in 1998. I made of point of using low-level html that followed all the then-standards. It still works, except the formatting of tables in html has changed and the videos don't play automatically - I have to find the files in the disk directory and manually open them.
I've made a point of keeping external CD drives on my computers (including purchasing one for the computer that belongs to my employer) - it's too useful a format for what I do and I have lots of stuff archived that way. My life is not on the cloud, which I guess makes me a Luddite.
To get off the thread drift, when I have time I'll get out my Vallely disk and see what I can do.
Ken
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As I recall, Pete Seeger called Stan Rogers "the Woody Guthrie of Canada." I knew of him 40 years ago, right at the end of his life - he got airplay on WNYC when I lived in New York. I wore out some of his recordings playing them on my radio show at Purdue University in the 1990s.
Ken
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And I don't want to go off topic, but there is the famous reference to Leadbelly (in a nearby part of Texas) playing the "concertina" but the only photo(s) appear to show something that looks like a one-row accordion.
Ken
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I have no idea if it is true in this case, but some musicians and others I've met in Louisiana use the term "concertina" to refer to (typically 1-row) melodeon/button accordion. Not common or widespread but I have encountered it. A usage that I've also encountered in the Canadian maritimes. Again, I don't know about this particular case; there may be more details out there about the Hank Williams Jr. recording.
Ken
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I have several of his albums and used to play them on a radio show ("Acoustic Blend" on Purdue University radio; my spell was 1995-2004). He had a couple of hits years ago that still get played. Great singer too.
Ken
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Michael's experience going between layouts mirrors mine.
Ken
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Like some others here, I was already playing music as a kid - trumpet then (so-called French) horn (both of which I still play). I also taught myself soprano recorder. In about 1980 I came across a friend's catalog from Elderly Instruments (guitar dealer in Michigan USA) that had Bastari concertinas in it. I was a starving graduate student in New York City and couldn't afford to order one (or one of each system) to try them out. So I stored it away as a future project. This was long before the internet, so how to pursue an uncommon interest was a matter of luck, and I had no idea where to learn about concertinas or find one to try. No music store I checked could tell me anything about concertinas. If I had talked to the folks around me when I went to hear music at the Eagle Tavern on 14th street, I might have met C'netter Jim Lucas and seen a concertina years before I did.
In 1992 at the Indiana Fiddler's Gathering (at Tippecanoe Battlefield) a local guitar repairman, Bruce Cunningham, had a red mother-of-toilet-seat 20-button Italian C/G anglo for sale (40 dollars IIRC) so I bought it (by then I was out of school and had a real job) and figured out several scales and lots of open fifth partial chords that I could use for back up at the local folk music sessions. In 1996 I bought a slightly better Stagi 20 at Lark in the Morning on a trip to Nothern California. About then concertinas appeared on the Web in the form of this site (at the time Cnet was one, then several, static pages by Paul S.) and spotted Noel Hill school listed in Sing Out! magazine, so I went. You know the next part: the sticker shock for all the instruments you are shown, the learning curve, deciding what kind of music you want to play. I did all that subsequently and up until now. In 1998 I bought a well-worn Lachenal; but at the local jam they still assumed for years after I couldn't do keys like D and A, though I assured them I now had those accidentals! 😎
In the years since I've played anglo mostly, a little EC, and have an Elise duet. They are all good systems with their own strengths; wish I were younger so I could master them all.
Ken
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It can take more than a day or two (during a holiday observed in a number of countries represented here) for a response - we are not a huge community (read: small market).
I visited the late Mr. Evans at his home in 2006 and enjoyed seeing his workshop and how he approached building his instruments - clearly a lot of experience. There was a lot of wildlife around the house also!
Ken
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In the old listings I used to see (e.g. the way Hobgoblin did it), RE was Rosewood ends, while WE meant wood ends (generally taken to be Mahogany, the lowest-end wood choice in Lachenals long ago).
BB Bone buttons, MB metal buttons, BR brass reeds
If you find listings with pictures you figure it out pretty quick. It's part of the overall madness of concertina addiction...Why be logical, when you are already playing an instrument designed to the ideal of Victorian complexity? 😎
Ken
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8 hours ago, Don Taylor said:
This stuff is much cheaper in your local hardware store where it is sold as foam water pipe insulation.
Like this.
Ken
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Bicycle riding and concertina playing re: Pain
in General Concertina Discussion
Posted
My own experience is I have no use for the straight across handlebars that are so fashionable that they are all you can get on many models of bikes. They cock my wrist and bring back the inflammation in my carpal tunnels (originally aggravated by concertina playing). They were designed for kids mountain biking up and down staircases, not the rest of us. I'm not interested in leaning way over to use racing handlebars. For me best are the sort that were common 50 or 60 years ago - they bend toward the rear of the bike and can be adjusted so my wrists and forearms are in a fairly neutral position.
Ever since losing concertina playing during all of 1999 (which included my only trip to Ireland to date) to carpal tunnel inflammation, I have no patience with non-ergonomic equipment and refuse to use it. Ask my employer, who has provided one new desk and one new desk chair so far.
Ken