stuart estell

Excellent album Agreed - there's some absolutely inspiring playing on it.

I thought I'd recorded quite enough covers lately, so decided it was time to dig out something traditional. I plumped for Jack O' Diamonds, which I've been working up for a song session next week. I started out playing the whole arrangement of this on box, but it seemed to want a countryish guitar part... so the Maccann duet was relegated to pootling around on a melodic line in the background! The recording is on my website here.

Ah, maybe they're just selling off whatever old stock still exists then. I went round there last year as I was thinking of buying (a cheap old) one and they had one with a 55 number plate on it - that was what made me think they were still being manufactured.

In my experience it's usually a direction from the composer to think the note in both parts. There are times when it makes sense to take a key down with both fingers - if there's a need to hold it down in one hand while the other goes off and does something else, even if it's previously formed part of the melodic line. I'm not sure I've explained that very clearly. I know what I mean, anyway The other thing about the piano is that you can strike a note while it's still sounding because of the sustain pedal; it is, after all, just an overgrown hammered dulcimer. Beethoven famously called it "that most inadequate of instruments" or something similar. Certainly I think it involves greater use of smoke and mirrors to achieve musical effect than most other instruments

They're still being made too! You can get a brand new Reliant Robin for just shy of £7k from the Reliant dealer (yes, there are still such things) just down the road from me.

Quite the contrary. The piano has 100% overlap, since both hands can range over the entire keyboard. O.K., you got me on that one. Good point. However I would like to see you play the far treble side with your left and the far bass side with your right at the same time without turning backwards. Allthough I only studied piano briefly, for beginers at least there is a tendency for bass side with left hand and treble with right, at least thats how I was being taught. Actually there's a good deal of contemporary piano music that requires exactly that - playing of upper extremities of the keyboard with the left hand and vice versa. And lots of jumping around from end to end of the instrument. Webern's Variations (I'm only using this piece as an example as I know it well) feature such writing all the way through; it's a fiendish piece to play, but if you reassign the hands in an ostensibly more rational way, it really has an adverse effect on the end musical result.

Brilliant. How soon afterwards do we reckon the ostrich's head was buried firmly in the sand?

That's not fair, surely? It might not be of any use for whatever your normal style of playing might be, but you can do an awful lot with a completely diatonic one-key instrument. I'd never think of a one-row melodeon as a "novelty item" (an instrument of torture maybe ) *

That's a great resource - thanks for that Leo.

I suppose another question might be whether, like the Zulu players, any Chinese players have customised the layouts of the instrument to make it suit the requirements of their music. That'd be really interesting.

I think the really important thing when accompanying another musician or singer, regardless of what instrument you're doing it on, is to listen closely to the other person and be as sympathetic as you can to whatever they do. I'd definitely agree with what Mark has said about subtlety - the last thing you want to do as an accompanist is either to overwhelm the "soloist" or draw attention away from them by doing flashy overcomplicated things. Often a more elaborate accompaniment will sound great when you work through it as an idea but then strike you as horribly cluttered if you listen back to a recording of it. The concertina (regardless of the type) is a wonderfully flexible instrument for accompaniment

"Oh no" for you, maybe - sounds great from my Birmingham-orientated perspective

Is Andrew Norman near enough to you Trace? He's in Uckfield in Sussex.

I would think that at the very least some of the workers must have taken factory-second instruments home with them and messed about with them. I suppose the question is how on earth we would find out...

Well I drove over to see that nice Mr Norman yesterday and collected it. From first impressions I'm delighted with it. I'll write a separate post reviewing it when I get a chance and I'll include some photos, but I'd just like to thank everybody for their help guiding me through the decision making process. Excellent. I'm sure you'll enjoy it

I'd like to know who voted for "I have novelty keys but wish I didn't" Tell us more...

Blimey, thanks Allison.

Folks, I've had a go at recording "If I Could Read Your Mind" - inspired by Johnny Cash's version of it. It's recorded on my Wheatstone Maccann Duet. One of those songs that it's quite hard to keep slow without racing off at the more intense moments! If you'd like to have a listen, it's here on my website Edit.... of course, it's "If You Could Read My Mind" not the other way round, as I've titled the thread... I'm tired, that's my excuse

All I'll say is that it's a reference connected to the album's dedicatee (as most of the track titles are), and has nothing whatsoever to do with my own mother's bath. I assumed it had something to do with a choice of family holiday sites..."Mother's thinking Bath, Father's thinking Brighton, and I'm thinking I'm going to be sick!" Haha! That's great. It hadn't occurred to me that it could be read like that. The "bath" of the title is a real live bath. Well, not live - cast iron tends to be fairly inanimate.

Yes. What I don't understand is why it isn't full up yet. They have people to drain it the other end... Thanks for the link Jody - I'll give that a whirl tonight.

That rocks, as I believe the young people say! The energy in the group is really something, Jody. Marvellous stuff.

Another way round might be to have a go at some slower tunes - I don't know how keen a reggae/ska enthusiast you are, but if you spent a bit of time getting something like the rhythm parts for Marley's Exodus or Vivian Jackson's Conquering Lion feeling right then by that time the upside-down-ness of the rhythms will be natural to you and you'll probably then be able to translate that back to the ska idiom. He says, guessing wildly.

Ah, takes me back to a happy day at Concertinas at Witney last year, spent steering the Sunday band through various Jamaican styles - reggae, rocksteady and ska. Sadly we didn't have much time to spend on ska so it was all a bit of a scramble, great fun tho! As for me, yes, but what I've done in the past is play the walking bass in the left hand and the off-beat chords in the right while singing over the top. I've not tried any instrumental ska but it should be more than possible to cover walking bass plus the off-beats and a melody on a duet. The trick for getting it to feel right, I think, is in putting that slightly lop-sided swing into it so that the rhythm doesn't just sound like standard oom-pah. If you listen to old ska records the rhythm often isn't quite straight, although it's not far off. Sometimes it's proper triplety swing. Also, the other thing is that the off-beats are actually more important than the bass-line, so if you can get the feel right with melody plus rhythm you can always add chunks of bass-line into it afterwards, if that makes sense?

Sounds like a healthy outlook to me I'll look forward to hearing whatever you come up with!

Chris Algar had a 30 button wooden-ended C/G Wheatstone of similar vintage and style at Swaledale this year. It was my first encounter with one of these but I thought it very playable. I preferred it to the other boxes he had there that were in a similar price range - but then perhaps it was just a really good example of its kind?