Henrik Müller

Good man - all respect to the fact that certain sets sometimes become "standard" in one town/county/country, but putting tunes together that "blend well" is very enjoyable. Which leads me to another thing I noted in Ennis a few weeks ago: There seem to be an accepted, widely used practice that one player will "sketch" (play maybe half a bar or so) of a tune, look around, see acceptance, then play another sketch: "Yeah? - fine..." and then maybe do this a third time. After which he or she starts the first tune. It then seems to be the responsibility of this person to signal when the change to the next tune comes: if he or she is looking firmly at the floor, the tune continues. A glance or two to the nearest neighbors signals: This time...". This allows a tune to be played "till enough" or, say, once more as a courtesy to a player who has just "landed" in the session. This works very well, one is forced to focus at "the bridge" between the tunes, and it still allows players to not play at all, play some of the tunes or all of them. So if you do a "sketch" of a tune and find that the players around you immediately bang away, you know they are tourists . (No, I did not consider myself a tourist ) /Henrik Ses vi på söndag, Gusten?

On a personal note, I'd say that hornpipes are very, very healthy They can be maltreated and rushed and they can be played meditatively and thoughtfully. Sometimes a player can make you rediscover a tune - as happened to me last year, at Mrs. Crotty, when Ernestine Healy played "The Boys of Blue Hill". I am compiling all the short videos from the event into one (I had less GBytes last year, so they are short) and will place it on YouTube soon. /Henrik

Is that really possible today? There have been occations when in a shop looking for a particular atricle of clothing for my Goth and post-Goth children, I have been so assulted by the bone crushing music blasting forth that panic overwhelmed me. Confessing this panic and my very real need to get the hell outta there brings on the most evil grin from my daughter. My progeny are now given the required cash and I wait outside on a bench where my poor unhinged mind is tourtured by horrible easy listening do-dah dripping out of the Mall sound system.... Beware....Music....is everywhere. Ah, Mark - you sure have a way with words - "surgical precision" comes to my mind. I am still giggling! :D /Henrik

My thoughts exactly -/Henrik

- not sure /Henrik

IF: you are sitting down, holding concertina on your knee and not using pinkey rests, you can use each finger on it's row pretty much all the time. No need to jump rows with the same finger. IF: you are standing and holding instrument, using pinkey rests - it's entirely different picture and I have no clue how people do it. IF: you are standing up, sit down Basically meant as a joke, but there is no reason to make it too difficult in the beginning - /Henrik

Feels a bit uncool to start a whole topic, just to say: I am on my way to Clare now, for the Ennis Trad Festival. See some of you there, maybe? /Henrik

Agree - they are indeed! /Henrik

Yes, and I am getting one, but with an "O" instead ;-) /Henrik

Oh, yes - here's the other: http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltas..._breda_shannon/ - and here she is joined by her brother, Aidan: http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltas..._aidan_shannon/ No unnecessary movements there! She plays the whistle, too: http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltas...non_on_whistle/ "S"? Shannon or Super Girl? /Henrik

Glad to hear it and good to have something to focus on as things are. See you soon, I hope /Henrik

Commenting my own comment - on a serious note: I agree 100% with Wally's comments (in the beginning of this thread) about the "direct line to the ear" missing in concertina playing. Worst case being, IMHO, when the location is a lounge, i.e., has soft carpeting. When I say "I love volume", I am thinking about recent sessions, where I may join at high volume, "locate" myself in the chaos and then drop the volume so I just about can hear myself blending in. It is something that can be developed with time - in the beginning I panicked when I couldn't hear. (Feel free to think "Now others panic, when they can ) /Henrik

Obsession with both speed and volume does Concertina music no favours at all and destroys much of the pleasure... to my ear. Speed can easily outstrip talent and excess volume is simply distasteful. Hear, hear - though I loooove volume... when I produce it ;-) /Henrik

Give me a couple of days. Here you go: ... (Photos removed to save loading time) ... Many thanks - now I've got no more excuses! David Hi, David - I am finally waking up here: I have a 56 button like that. Since I am taking the thing apart anyway, do you want a couple of scans (i.e., not photos) of the sides? Can do it early next week - /Henrik

Aye, thanks Henrik, Christian, Leo & SteveS. .... but Hey, don't forget the 30 odd years I've been playing an Anglo! .... that's bound to help my button & bellows control! Cheers Dick "the 30 odd years I've been playing an Anglo" - I had my suspicions /Henrik

Four weeks?! Well done indeed! /Henrik

Hi, Dick - let me be a little more exact: On a "traditional" English concertina, I will definitely place the end of my thumbs in the straps, not all the way through. But since that was one of the things that started hurting the joints (because of my need to pull a lot), the straps on the new design were made maybe less than half the width of normal straps - to allow for the end of the thumbs to bend comfortably. To compensate for the reduced access to the low notes, I placed the button cluster upwards bit - roughly 1xthe vertical distance between buttons. The careful reader should - now - say: "Why did he put thumbstraps on, only to remove them later?!" That has to do with the proof-of-concept instrument, a modified Stagi Miniature. Wood were added to simulate a standard 61/4" across the flats. Because of that and the very small bellows, the instrument would "collapse" on the pull. Thumbstraps prevented this. On the "real" instrument, the bellows width basically equals the instrument's width and the problem disappears. But I didn't think that far - /Henrik

You can modulate the pitch without significantly changing the volume? Huh, huh - the old "vibrato/tremolo" can of worms coming up? /Henrik

My little contribution (confusion? ) to the subject: My original design: no pinkie rests, some sort of hand straps (angled) and narrow thumbstraps. Narrow to accomodate the thumbs going all the way, minimizing stress in the thumb joint. The whole cluster of buttons were moved up one step to still make it possible to reach bottom notes. Somebody sneaked up real close here: Then I started to think (no cheering, please) and said: "Why not try and loosen the thumb straps and be without them for a while? See how it feels?": You can see the straps flappin' away... Ha! I didn't need them - so off they went: Never looked back - but I did make a new set of handstraps (photo will follow) /Henrik Ups - had the promised photo handy - here it is: (In Crottys, august 2008) Edited to add the photo above -

Allright, now I see it - I missed it the first time. Good man - but hasn't he the thumb on the wrong side of the strap? /Henrik

Well, Stephen - what should we do about my own English thingie? - since it has what I definitely will call handstraps... (ach - don't mention the "h"-word...) To be revealed: For further enlightenment, I will post a couple of photos that will show how they strayed away even further from the original design - terrible, terrible :o /Henrik

Here's the scientific observation : At Éigse Mrs. Crotty this year, there were 13 teachers - 3 were male... /Henrik

Ah, Jim - I couldn't agree more - And there is something about playing in acoustically "live" surroundings, in rooms like that (probably a hallway in a school) isn't there? Personally, I am very fond of playing in places like that (but that is another thread). /Henrik

Larry, I have been intrigued by this record as well - this is where today's technique comes from, where Noel Hill was started - and in an interview from 1997 with Frank Ferrel, he says: "I was very influenced by the concertina player closest to me, and that was a player called Paddy Murphy. I was influenced by him. And like any young eight or nine year old you just try and play what you hear as innocently as you can, as you would do by pure nature." Etc, etc... /Henrik

It is, Mark - and there is one more magic thing about it: in the YouTube processing, the was cut, thank you very much. In the original clip, on "Come West Along the Road", someone at RTE hadn't really understood that trad muscians will tap their feet, in this case very close to the microphone stand on the floor /Henrik