Jody Kruskal

I just had a great time jamming with Paolo on Jam Kazam. Never met him before, but we hooked up nicely and played together for over an hour tonight. He lives in Rome, Italy and plays guitar for dancers at clubs there that enjoy Brazilian Bossa Nova... so already he was a soul mate. Musicians that play for dancers... they have a certain bond, a certain shared understanding. He played and sang with authority and I joined him for a wild ride of busking along to popular Bossa songs from the 50's that I had never heard before. Such fun! Aside from perfect English and Italian, he claims to speak Portuguese and some Spanish. It was so refreshing to play with Paolo. What a nice guy, The cultural triangle of Brazil, Rome and NYC was quite stimulating, to say the least! Earlier this evening I had joined and then un-joined several random JK sessions. They were playing Pop and Rock and while I can enjoy playing in those genres, the music that was going down was not really happening for me on concertina. So many difficulties like: wrong key, modulations, never heard that song before, weird stuff, folks trying to play songs they really did not know, technical problems etc... On JK, if you surf the sessions, you take what you get... and I ended up getting a great duo session with my new friend Paolo, Brazilian musician in Rome. So worth it.

Is this the tune? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96fA19JimOU

It's been an interesting experiment. What I found out... Zoom does not work for music, but there are a few sites that might do. I've been having lots of fun on JamKazam. Perhaps later I'll try also SoundJack. or also Jamulous. I spent the past three hours on JamKazam tonight playing live music with a random bunch of folks from all over the world and had fun. It was sort of like a festival where new musicians would join unexpectedly and new influences would occur. Very cool! To do this, I downloaded the JamKazam software and struggled to make it work with finally some success. First off is the hardware, you need headphones, a fast internet connection, a mic on a stand plugged into an audio interface and then on to your computer. These are all off the shelf items that are generally available where you buy your music supplies. Then also, the best way to make this work is to be plugged directly with an ethernet cable from your router into your computer. I was not, and relied on wifi to make the connection. Wifi worked ok, but was glitchy. My new JamKazam friends assured me that a cable connection was superior, was the way to go and would solve my problems. So I'll get that hooked up for my next session. Until I do, my take on internet playing was that it holds great promise for enjoyment. My friend Cindy and I set up our JamKazam session to test this thing out. We encountered and overcame many difficulties as we figured out how to get good sound quality with both of our various set ups. Our session progressed. Along the way, various random folks joined us to jam because I had set it up as an open jam. Perhaps I should have kept it private, but who knew? In the end, Cindy and I got a good sound and met a number of folks from all over the globe who were eager to join us to play. The social networking bit was very interesting, folks joined and left the session continuously and this was a big part of the JamKazam pleasure of this, our first JamKazam experience. For example: Oh yeah, here comes Jake on bass... "Hi Jake, where are you from?" ... like that. Along the way, I actually played the blues in A with a few folks for a bit... and it sounded almost plausible. Not quite, but almost. Exactly where the beat sits is open to interpretation but if you think of that as a feature then it stops being annoying. Perhaps using that cable instead of wifi will help me with the inevitable time delay inherent in this platform. Until my 50 foot eathernet cable comes in the mail, I'm still enthused and have enjoyed many JamKazam sessions and keep coming back for more... because it's so much fun! Stay well, Jody

Ok folks, here is what I found out. Zoom does not work for music, but there are two sites that might do. Try SoundJack or better yet, JamKazam. I spent the past three hours on JamKazam tonight playing live music with a random bunch of folks and had fun. It was sort of like a festival where new musicians would join unexpectedly and new influences would occur. Very cool! To do this, I downloaded the JamKazam software and struggled to make it work with finally some success. First off is the hardware, you need a fast internet connection, a mic on a stand plugged into an audio interface and then on to your computer. The mic, stand and interface are off the shelf items that are generally available. Then also, the best way to make this work is to be plugged directly with a cable from your modem into your computer. I was not, and relied on wifi to make the connection. Wifi worked ok, but was glitchy. My new JamKazam friends assured me that a cable connection was superior, was the way to go and would solve my problems. So I'll get that hooked up for my next session. Until I do, my take on internet playing was that it holds some promise for enjoyment. My friend Cindy and I set up our JamKazam session to test this thing out. We encountered and overcame many difficulties as we figured out how to get good sound quality with both of our various set ups. Our session progressed. Along the way, various random folks joined us to jam because I had set it up as an open jam. Perhaps I should have kept it private, but who knew? In the end, Cindy and I got a good sound and met a number of folks from all over the globe who were eager to join us to play. The social networking bit was very interesting, folks joined and left the session continuously and this was a big part of the JamKazam pleasure of this, our first JamKazam experience. For example: Oh yeah, here comes Jake on bass... "Hi Jake, where are you from?" ... like that. Along the way, I actually played the blues in A with a few folks for a bit... and it sounded almost plausible. Not quite, but almost. Perhaps using that cable instead of wifi will help me with the inevitable time delay inherent in this system. In the meantime, I'm enthused and want to try JamKazam again!

I want to try playing improvisational music on Zoom this Sunday at 3-4:30 pm US EST that's 7 pm UK time. Hopefully, four musicians plus myself for this jam, any instrument welcome. If you play tunes and also improvise and have a broad internet connection and a broad curiosity of what it would be like to play together in this novel setting, then join me for an experiment. Don't expect it to be like a regular tune session. We will all be playing out of time with each other and listening to the effect and reacting to make a new kind of music that crafts something strange and new out of traditional tune playing. This is expedient art for exceptional times. If you want to join me, PM me your email address.

Thanks Chris! That is just the info I was looking for. Sure, crisp playing and session tunes would be impossible, but there is lots of other music that could be accomplished by musically working with the latency delay to make some interesting things happen. I like complex poly-rhythmic music with a swirly echo thing going on. I think it might be interesting for multiple musicians to play that sort of thing. They would all hear it differently in their own local time but still be interactive. That could work well on Zoom. I remember a few years back at the Clifftop Old-Time festival, I met two nice young folks on the road by my camp site. I asked if they would like to play. I was interested in what instrument would come out of the funny looking case... it was a baritone horn. That's like a little tuba. So we had a trio session with horn, fiddle and concertina. We sat down at my place and I asked what kind of tunes they liked to play. Surprisingly, they didn't want to play tunes at all, they wanted to blow free. OK with me, so that's what we did. A few snatches of tunes crept in anyway and there were some fun rhythm grooves. We played for 45 min. straight and had a lot of fun. I have long been interested in trying this sort of thing on-line, but being short on time, I always chose to play music face to face. The current crisis with its demand for social isolation might be a good excuse to give this idea a go. This would be an opportunity for improvising musicians on any instrument who know and appreciate traditional music to experiment with employing that knowledge to create something new. Who would like to join me for a free jam on Zoom? I think that my first session should only have five players or less. If you want to join us it's best if you have a decent mic/audio interface, but an onboard computer mic and camera could work too. How about Sunday afternoon at 3 pm US EST, that's 7 in the UK?

Good question. I'm pretty sure that tunes are impossible to play together on the web even with fibre lines attached. Latency is at about 1/2 second in my experience. That's about your average quarter note. In conversation, you hardly notice it, but for music, it makes playing tunes impossible. You run up against the speed of light limit, which is insurmountable given our current technology or any tech fix in the foreseeable future. However, if you were to step outside the world of tunes, you could certainly play together as long as you take the latency delay into account for what it is. Spacey textural non-rhythmic music could work. Grooves could work too but bear in mind that if two people play together over the net, they will each hear the result differently. Interesting prospect. I've got to give it a try. I give lessons over Skype. For the most part, I can hear what my students are playing, but the quality is pretty bad. Intelligible, but distorted. I wonder if there is a higher bandwidth platform that would sound better? Any ideas? As for grooves and rhythmic playing... if multiple musicians were web playing together at the right tempo, something could be achieved I'm sure. If the latency were 1/2 second that would mean a tempo of 120 bps. That's a nice speed to play at.

Wait a minute, could the cut-aways be merely to align the holes better to the chambers? My thought is, to squeeze in everything on 38+ button instruments, the holes, buttons pads and levers have an ideal spacing which does not quite match the ideal reed and chamber spacing, more easily achieved on 30- button instruments. The hole extentions could be just to make these two systems achieve a better fit by slanting the holes to better match thier corresponding chambers. Just conjecture on my part, but it could make sense of this conundrumn. Your thoughts? Testing my hypothisis would not be too hard using rubbings and/or photos of the internal workings of the instruments and laying them on top of each other with photoshop or some such app to see how they align.

I'm sure there was a recent thread about this, but I can't remember the conclusion. Here is the internal photo of a Jefferies. Notice the holes have been camfored/extended. Why? Was it to make room for mechanical action or to effect tone or pitch? Or all three? I'm just a player, but still curious about the mysteries of concertina construction.

I just heard that Margaret cancelled the whole of Old Pal. Interesting times.

I'm not a concertina historian, but my impression is that Jefferies made 30 button instruments as well as 38 and 44 button models. This looks to be one of the latter. My 44 button has identical ends to this one. Mike... how can you sell this gem? Too many buttons for you?

Where are the springs hiding on the McNeela Anglo concertina? It's one of their better models, perhaps a Curlew. My student and I thought to fix a busted spring, took the end off and there were no visible springs on the levers or action board. Disassembly stopped there because everything else was waxed in. They must be underneath the buttons, I guess, but there does not seem to be much room in there... and what would such a spring look like? https://mcneelamusic.com/the-curlew-concertina/

John, yes, I sent you the email contact for the Faversham house concert. To be clear, my house concerts are all private affairs that require an invitation from the presenter. If you want to attend you can apply, but it's up to the house. I've just added another to my growing list of gigs.

Thanks Leonard. Yes, my tour is up to eleven confirmed venues now that I've just added Faversham on the 16th. Hey Bob! Will I be seeing you on Thursday Nov. 5 at the Bideford Folk Club? Hope so.

Hi John, My friends in Faversham have kindly agreed to present this concert. One of them has a good sized house that will seat 25. How those seats will be reserved has not yet been determined, but I'm pretty sure that early application will be able to secure some seats for you and your friends once the logistics get figured out.