Jake Middleton-Metcalfe

I believe Gary Coover plays a C/G 30 key with Wheatstone layout. Personally I would recommend it if you want to play in the harmonic or English style, the A/G reversal on the top row is quite useful for combining chords with the melody sometimes both in terms of cross row playing to smooth out a sequence of notes or also giving depth to certain chords. I believe the Jeffries layout is generally preferred for Irish music as you get a C# in both directions on the right hand side.

or try adding some bass notes in between the block chords for a sort of oom-pah oom-pah effect, it helps the flow with some tunes.

Nice to hear a baritone, very rich sound and nicely played. I would love to have a go at making these at some point.

well he certainly has something to teach people about being a performer! Lively chap!

I never saw that one lying about at your place! Would probably make a good starter instrument for someone. Best of luck I hope to see you soon!

Now found, all is well.

Good idea. I have also sent a letter to his neighbours either side, I hope he is ok.

I am trying to locate Mr Robert Hogben, a customer of mine and I am having trouble. Does anyone on here know him? He isn't answering calls or emails. Nice fellow. Keeps bees. If anyone has any news please could they let me know. Jake Middleton-Metcalfe

Wolverton Concertinas have some merchandise to give away totally free. Your chance to acquire a beautiful hand pulled linocut by Karen Carter and a limited edition mug. We have two of each to give away so two people will be selected randomly to win both a mug and a linocut print. All entrants will receive a complimentary Wolverton Concertinas sticker. To enter simply send your name and postal address to chloe.e.metcalfe@gmail.com subject:prize draw. Contact info will only be used to facilitate the draw. The two winners will be chosen at random. Date of draw 10th of January 2021. Best wishes to you all

Thank you for posting the video, I really enjoyed hearing that. I was not really able to get much of a tune out of it - being an anglo player.

I used to do this when learning the melodeon years ago. At some point the need to breathe at the same time went away. Its a hilarious idea really.

aha a crabb!

Ok I am actually quite curious now, what is this concertina?

what model of concertina was it off? Was it one of the mahogany ended ones? I have heard it suggested that on those instruments they just pressed out the frames and didn't bother fettling, flattening or squaring up the slots at all on the more basic mahogany instruments. You do have to flat them off on the bottom at least when they are pressed out, its done that way in the Wheatstone workshop to this very day.

That is Highly cool theo.

keep it up, the key is just to keep practising, then maybe find somewhere you can play with others like a session or just with some friends. learning and getting better at music is something that can continue to be rewarding probably for your entire life ...!

First came the isolation, then came the depravity, then came THE Grand Northern. A lot of the music me and chloe learn is geared towards being able to play with others. This is a tune we learned just because we liked it - it is from the slip jigs and waltzes fiddlers tune book. We hope you enjoy it too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2KEtUM32WA&fbclid=IwAR3AVdchdsrM4ZrxCsFZEkj1L-pn1aRDn8FRCCQ0WiM-AkT2kCQqMytOrm0

awesome

Thank you for sharing this experience. This is quite interesting that you did not get as much extra air as you expected. I have played instruments with loads of folds and it seemed as if the bellows move faster somehow when played, so that you ran out of air faster somehow despite having more length. I believed the problem was that the reeds were not very efficient or something like that, though maybe there is something else going on here (perhaps relating to the volume of air and the resulting pressure? I am no physicist and have no way of working out why this would be). I never tried playing say a 7 fold bellows then the same instrument having been converted to 11. I was told by a very well respected maker that there is no point going above 7, though I have made eight fold sets and found that quite good, but not totally essential (with anglo anyway) as you can always find another way of playing a piece of music to get around any problem of running out of air. But this is all relating to playing an anglo and specifically in the English style. I have never learned the duet and am quite fascinated by it. Given your experiences, what do you think would be the optimum number of folds for your duet playing? Best wishes Jake

loved the orange in bloom video by the way, that 1/5th comma sounds great. Good luck with the sale.

Thank you for this Daniel, I knew two of the parts were another tune but I did not know what tune. I did actually first hear the "set" as I think we will have to call it from Anahata, in a session and then learned it from the youtube video. I have saved the sheet music you posted for reference. What a set! Always loved it.

Today I uploaded a couple of videos of a few of my favourite tunes. They are played on one of my own instruments, a G/D wolverton. Just recorded on my laptop so the sound quality is not great but I hope to further popularise these tunes as few people seem to know the train of artillery and the dukes, the waterloo dance being more common generally. The Dukes hornpipe in D and the Waterloo dance also in D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qLxwDJdyb4 Train of artillery in G: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6bmIs-HJn4

In this case I did make the bolts but that is not my normal practice. Honestly I did once put socket head screws on an earlier instrument but found that visually they just looked a bit out of place. Though they are indeed easier to use, I like using them on the reed frames.

Very happy to see this book, it would be nice to hear some more jeffries duets, a guy turned up to one of my local sessions once and played some very developed, beautiful and complex music on one which very much impressed me. Great to see the book.

yes, this one plays Bb3 push A3 pull, though C4 push and C4 pull on that button is probably more common historically, this is just what that particular customer wanted.