Ken_Coles

Derek, I yes, have several concertinas. Most of them are clunkers or are models readily available today from makers (e.g. Morse, Wakker). These would not arouse great envy if I were to put them up for sale to help with my house down payment (which I may be doing soon); I suspect they would be a challenge to sell for what they are supposedly worth. Only two of my boxes are really gems or highly desirable, and both were built for me by modern makers. IMO that makes me a patron of the concertina building revival (while the rest of you save up _your_ money) rather than a hoarder. The old heirlooms (Jeffries, Aeolas) went out of my rational price range long ago. Those who feel these are the only choice can have them, at those prices. There was a time when everyone wanted a 1920s-30s Martin or Gibson guitar. Well, they all got "hoarded." My guit-playing friends never aspire to these today; they buy a modern Taylor or a Collings or a new Martin, or (you name it). We may be headed the same way. Sure life ain't fair. I can't afford a Picasso either, but I have several nice Navajo rugs from my time living among those people. One was made by a woman I worked with teaching children - that means a lot. Also, collecting is one of the few advantages of being single. Your mental health, etc. are probably lower, but it is too easy to indulge your nutty taste in hobbies by spending money. But I guess the grass is always greener over the fence...

If you are referring to Paul's introductory essay, written in 1996, IIRC he is talking about anglo concertinas, not English concertinas. The considerations are rather different; this has been discussed at length before, or the experienced can comment on this if it is of interest.

Let me add something I perhaps should have said first. I am amazed at the new ways to communicate and the young people who first master them (I am in my forties). My students use their cell phones for conversations; as long as they don't do it during class or otherwise violate simple etiquette it is fine by me. We used to meet in person to talk, now a conversation lasts an extended time no matter where you are. Maybe when I'm richer (or sell some concertinas!) I will try it myself. Likewise, we may have a chatroom here someday, who knows. Life is full of surprises, and some of the features of C.net that you see people defending here met with a mixed reception when they first appeared. And of course a lot of them need revision or improvement - we're always aware of that. Maybe this is another case of change to come. Ken (who is the Web lackey, please, not the master!)

I don't think so (actually, I know so. I'm a mac head, so it would be some other method than right click!), but I know I have a printout of it at my other house. If someone remembers to ask around the second week of May I'll check for it and add it to the article. If I reread my article and think about it, I may even be able to recall from context what the layout was. I may even have it on the CD backup of my old hard drive; I'll look. Ken

Let me add to what Helen says. It is more a matter of telling you why we don't have such an interesting, modern feature; there aren't very many of us, appearances notwithstanding. Do stick around and participate, to the extent that concertinas are part of your life you may find a lot of interest, however slow! Here are some faces to make the message clearer! Ken, Associate Administrator

I started 7 years ago with a black Hohner in C (model 114). At that time the Chinese-made Ariettes were leaky and hard to use. They have gotten better and I have tried some that were pretty good. Be aware that they don't age well in some cases. Rich Morse can chime in here, he sells Cajun boxes. My comments assume that you aren't ready to spend around $1000 for a custom box from Louisiana, which is the ideal for me. Cajun accordions are cheaper and much easier to get than concertinas, even at the custom-built level! Of course if you can get to Louisiana or a festival where you can try them yourself before buying that will help.

Real time chat? Without going into the technical issues (which are not my focus here), I think the biggest issue is that this community is not large enough (and in a way, thank goodness for that). Before the glitch during the software upgrade early this year that made the board think it had 439 members logged on at once (or whatever the number is; certainly not the case!), the number of members online at once varied from a few up to a couple of dozen. I believe the posts show that there are many interests here that overlap only partially; only a few people (and administrators) read every post and every thread (you know who you are!). Very few people prepared to correspond with you may be on-line at the same time as you. So the argument that this would get you answers that you seek sooner doesn't convince me. Music will teach you patience in many ways if you stay with it, and patience is something we could all use a bit more of in this frenzied world. The final advantage to the present system is that the time delay means you lose nothing by comtemplating and composing your answer with some extra thought and care for your audience. I think the posts here (and the humor) show that many people indeed do this. One opinion.

Yes, that one made the rounds of us professional astronomers today, along with a very funny press release about the Shuttle Program (the space station will be up for sale on ebay soon).

Actually, I've played a couple of these and they're no more laughable than any other Italian concertina, and have a lot of duplicate notes (like any 36-key anglo). Double reeds, if I recall. And remember, many more concertinists than will readily admit it started out on Italian concertinas!

Yes, a great album. They did a second one, and I featured both at various times on my radio show a few years back (I'm now in radio retirement).

If Jim Swope is still active up in Long Beach, he used to know a lot of players around So. Calif. I even met half a dozen at his house once. If you search on his name here on the forum and in the "old" part of concertina.net you may be able to email him. I expect some other Calif players will chime in here.

Rich sums it up...maybe we'll put it up in lights for the new visitors, who every week ask where to find a first instrument! The Ace is just a neighborhood bar, not a fancy venue or place that does music most nights. That is the kind of place where the musics of the sorts played by many concertinists here on C.net once thrived, in the US, the UK, and in Ireland at least. The way you learn about these things is to hang around musicians. For example, the Indy Folk Music and Mountain Dulcimer society (or whatever it is called; meetings are listed in the Sunday Star newspaper Arts section). Many musos if not concertinists there, and when I did a concertina workshop for them a few years ago they were interested and attentive. Sorry to bore all the rest of you with so much local talk; point is, there is always somebody or someplace nearby. It may take some digging, but I've never come up totally dry. In Lafayette, Indiana I helped get it started, editing the folk newsletter, doing the folk radio show, and even helping to organize some of the dances. Play it and they will come. I'm still learning Pittsburgh; tonight I stayed after the Calliope student showcase talking to my fiddle teacher for an hour. He told me of more venues, festivals, and groups than I can count. Time for some private lessons with him I think! (I was in a group class) If you've been to see Hogeye Navvy you've heard a concertina. Mac Bellner's husband (can't think of his name right now) plays a very nice vintage C/G anglo, though mostly accompaniment rather than melody, as I recall.

Well, until 2 years ago, when the session-for-show at the Irish fest in September got going, I was always there. There is an Irish session every Tuesday at the Golden Ace on the 2500 block of East Washington. It gets going by 8 PM. Say hi to Jim and Kate Smith and Jenny Thompson for me. Matt Williamson often comes from Bloomington. He plays a G/D Lachenal, in addition to fiddle. Grey Larsen, down in Bloomington, is a superb player on a D/A Wheatstone anglo and if you hang around down there you'll see him in concert or at the biweekly public session he regularly hosts (I don't know where it meets these days, at the Runcible Spoon maybe?). Ed Delaney lives in Richmond, is extremely good on English concertina, and plays many of the contra dances over there (he never seems to get to Indy however). I know of two players up near South Bend (both on English). Hmmm...I was maybe the only C/G anglo player around there when I was around full-time. I lived in Indiana for the last 15 years and while it is not at the center of things, that has advantages. Once you do play, you get more invitations and opportunities. I met superb musicians in Massachusetts (far better than me) who have never weaseled their way into a $25 gig or been on a stage because that state is so overrun with talented players of all instruments. Some perspective, the only Irish piper I know of in the whole state is Jim Smith, so they are even scarcer (and pipes are more expensive) than we are. At least you don't have that itch (do you?). I know we are all taught instant gratification in America, but music over the last 30 years for me has been more like slow gratification. Both getting an instrument, and learning to play it (this is slow too!). There are millions of cars and motorcycles out there, but not so many concertinas. Good guitars were scarce in the 1950s and then makers appeared to meet the demand. I think we are starting to see something similar but smaller with concertinas. Don't worry, you'll get there and we can help you hang on until then! Ken (wondering why the concertina renaissance only started after he left Indianapolis!)

My double-reed Stagi has reed blocks like a button accordion, but shorter. I expect these are uncommon and I don't know where you'd find a C/G set, unless you just find another instrument, which is what you ought to do anyway. They go pretty cheap.

It is nice to see Becky finally post this story. She wrote nearly a year ago asking if it would be of interest. I strongly encouraged her to post it here, so I am glad she has done so. Happy birthday, all.

Hi Henk, I know HTML too, I just meant a way to use it while posting here. When I tried some href tags they didn't work, so I used the bulletin board code instead. No big deal. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> We do not enable HTML here on C.net; it is potentially a serious security risk so long as membership is open to all comers, which is the way we want to keep it. The BBCode will let you do many of the basic tricks. Ken

If you are playing for Irish dancers and they are not all beginners, they will tell you what they need. In other cases I have concluded there is no consistent standard. I know, the venerable among you will come in with metronome estimates etc. based on your local experience, but in sessions and jams from Calif. to Mass. to Eire I have experienced all sorts of tempos for slip jigs, well beyond ranges of tempos quoted by the more temperate, experience musicians I have known or read. Some folks do like to go very fast (fiddlers seem especially prone to this). That's fine for many reels and some other forms. Slip jigs in particular can be great if played more moderately (e.g. the "Butterfly"), an idea I got from listening to Grey Larsen play. Just one opinion.

I like them because they give me time to think about my response before logging onto c.net, where time may be less under my control (I feel pressure to read—or decide not to read—all the new posts in one sitting, otherwise it's difficult to keep track of what's new). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh, of course. I meant just to say why I don't use this feature; I'm sure it's useful to many of you. We all spend too long customizing our computers. It was my excuse why I hadn't tried to fix it before...researching this took close to an hour. Now you all know why we never catch up here, and I now know why Paul never gets to play his concertina! "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Well if either of your wives have any sisters available you may please introduce me!

Arggh, I just wrote a long funny post and my computer ate it. Short version is I found all sorts of interesting stuff (a button labelled "empty forum") and the email log (which I didn't read, I'm a gentleman!). If you go to My Controls you can use Subscriptions/View Topics to see what you are subscribed to. You must also go to Options/Email Settings to set it to email you...subscriptions don't email you for new posts unless it's set here. That's what the documentation says; I don't know why settings changed. If this doesn't do it we need to bring in Paul. Enough and back to work; no Guinness for me tonight. My head already hurts from a cold and I'm catching up on work I didn't do last week!

I think I have gotten them since the upgrade. My account was set to a new default to get them, I guess. I manually turned some threads off, then they all stopped. While I found this a bit curious, I didn't personally investigate, as these notices drove me crazy anyway. I've learned from sad experience that I need to review _every_ post in _every_ thread anyway (I read a lot I would otherwise skip), preferably twice a day, to be sure all is well everywhere on the site. This is one reason I'm averaging 5 more hours a week on C.net than on any of my concertinas. Of course this notification feature might well be useful to others, but I waited to hear that. Dr. B. has now spoken for you, so let me see what I can find out. The Kitchen Help

You give no indication of where you are based. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Mike is the same Mike I visited in east central Massachusetts last week; he continues to advance through the concertina-holic stages at 20 times normal speed. I just suggested he go to the Button Box and ask Doug C. for suggestions. He has a bunch of opened CDs behind the counter, maybe you can listen to them.

I know it can get to you'all, but at present I'm more willing to keep dinging them manually than to move to options like moderation (your posts have to be reviewed before they appear; not enough hours in the day for me or Paul to do that) or making it hard to join or post. We think what all you write is funny, wise, and amusing. My online presence is limited so I don't have the email headaches Paul does. And when they do spam us, don't let it get you. Just ignore it, and we will get to it. We still outnumber them. Maybe you should have to play a tune on a concertina before we let you post an ad!

When I did a survey (limited to the accidental row) I did find a consistent Jeffries layout out. Take it for what you think it is worth...I was deciding what to order, not doing a comprehensive history. http://www.concertina.net/kc_key_layouts.html

Well, John Nixon sent in some nice figures of a standard treble English. He was anxious that I post them where folks could cite them in discussion (as always, it took me several months to do so). He would probably be tickled to have you use them; try asking him. Here they are at http://www.concertina.net/images/jn_eng_left.jpg and http://www.concertina.net/images/jn_eng_right.jpg