Jody Kruskal

Hi Mathhag, I do remember you, and our several conversations well. So glad to hear that now you are blessed with both a Morse and a Dipper!

Hey Gary, I'm in! To get us started here is your tab for a very simple Haughton House.

Does it look like this? https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=images+Percy+Honri&fr=yhs-iba-1&hspart=iba&hsimp=yhs-1&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.vam.ac.uk%2Fmedia%2Fthira%2Fcollection_images%2F2006AK%2F2006AK9378_jpg_ds.jpg#id=9&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.vam.ac.uk%2Fmedia%2Fthira%2Fcollection_images%2F2006AK%2F2006AK9378_jpg_ds.jpg&action=click

I’ll throw my two cents into this conversation. I have Jefferies made vintage Anglos and a Morse hybrid and I like them both and play them both. As for OPs question... “how important is it really is to pay the piper for concertina/handmade reeds”? The short answer IMO is, for a beginner, get a hybrid because it matters not. At a third of the cost, a good hybrid gives you everything you need. I learned on an Italian Stagi and that was sufficient until it fell apart. Modern hybrids by all these fine makers mentioned are all much much better than that old Stagi of mine. Until you know which buttons to press, how long to keep ‘em down and the required bellows direction and pressure (3 to 10 years of daily practice I recon) it hardly matters which instrument you play. There is no doubt in my mind that true concertina reeds are superior in the hands of an experienced player but the advantages are subtle. Practically nothing compared to player ability and musicality which is easily heard. A beginner will still sound like a beginner regardless of concertina vs accordion reeds in the box. Like Jim, in listening back to my own C/G recordings, I'm hard pressed to hear any difference.

I have a new skype student who wants Christian hymns and Carols. Try this "Away in a Manger" Christmas carol arrangement I made for him in Gary Cover's tab… not so fancy and good for a beginner in the harmonic style… Good luck. Remember… how you practice is key. We all have busy lives. Here’s what I do for learning with maximum improvement vs. minimum time investment. 30 minutes of dedicated and focused practice every day works wonders. If you have time for a full hour every day, well, that’s even better. Learning this concertina stuff is not easy and it takes time. It’s like a body building regimen for that special connection between your fingers, arm and brain muscles. You are slowly building the connections between muscle groups that are not used to working together. You have to learn to pat your stomach and rub your head at a steady tempo. You must be persistent and consistent in you practice schedule to make progress as you work out in the concertina gym. Chip away at it, learning tiny chunks and repeating and looping the bits you know in time. Only then can you connect the pieces into actual music. Practice makes perfect… and if it’s not perfect, you’re probably playing it too fast. Slow it way, way down until you can play just one phrase or measure or even two notes right. Your first goal is to learn to play in time, giving each note its full rhythmic value. The slower the better. In practice, you are free to turn your little bit of a loop into a whole song and own it. Explore the groove. Get into the rhythm. Get up and dance around! Keep a background beat by tapping your foot. Better yet, learn to use a metronome. Be sure to have one handy at our first lesson because it’s a great tool for practice and I can show you how to use it effectively. Free metronome downloads are available on all devices. When you are confident that you have your selected bit correct… repeat the measure or phrase over and over to teach your fingers and indeed your whole body how to play it. The only way to learn this stuff is by repetition at a strict tempo. Next, move on to another bit and then do the same. Bit by bit, you can teach your body to do this seemingly impossible concertina task. I’ve been there myself, and it’s really so hard and also such fun to observe myself dramatically improving day by day! Once the bellows direction and fingers have learned what to to do… only then can we start to make real music… Music which lies in the mysterious and detailed nuance of the bellows action. I'm so excited that you are taking lessons with me on your C/G concertina.

Thanks Simon, very instructive. I use a wee bit of an artful bellows shake too, when needed esp. on slow airs. Thanks for drawing my attention to this musical effect... but what you are doing would be more like what I would call tremolo,... correct? I've always understood true vibrato to mean a slow oscillation in pitch that centers in on a frequency ( not really possible on a concertina, but often employed on the fiddle). On the other hand, the concertina bellows delicately controls amplitude. Not pitch (so much). As such, it can mimic a violin's vibrato with your effect. What I'm hearing you do is loud/soft variations in your sweet way with this tune... it's not vibrato at all, but rather a subltle tremolo (volume) that you are employing. Still, I love your playing and thanks for sharing your cool vid. I certainly enjoyed listening.

A few weeks ago I was at a small Manhattan Irish session with two flutes, me on Anglo and Bob on English. At the end of a jig set, Bob launched into Popeye the Sailor Man... just for laughs. Yes, it does have a B part. A drunk suit came over to us gushing. Finally, a tune he recognized! “Can you sing the song? I’ll buy you a beer if you can”. We tried and failed to get very far, except for the part about how he lives in a garbage can. The punter was not satisfied. He pulled out his phone and dialed it up on the web and I gave it my best shot. Stupid song. Good beer.

Or you could take lessons with me and I'll show you how to learn new songs. http://jodykruskal.com/concertina_lessons.html

Lovely! So I wonder who played concertina on the Sea of Thieves sound track?

Hi Clair, Lovely to see you at Winfield last year. I've noticed this too, and even posted about it back a few years ago. Can't remember the upshot of that discussion. Can anyone find the old thread?

That's good news, Steve. What do they cost? I learned on a Bastari (the precursor to Stagi) way way back when. It was fine as a starter, but after two years of steady play the bellows gave out and imploded. Perhaps this new tweak has improved the bellows segment angles and depth of the folds?

Just a simple fee... and several excellent meals.

The actual Jefferies 38 that I was playing in the recording session had plain bellows with no bellows papers or gold tooling. The animators certainly did their homework and Pearson is playing a very fancy English made Anglo with all the trimmings.

I really like this one with the instrumental at the end. Catch that morris jig feel with the delayed third beat to promote dancer loft? And how about the gold tooling reflecting the firelight?

Hi Timv, Yes, the movements of my head, arms, shoulders, fingers and the concertina itself are reflected in the performance. The concertina audio is all me, no phony accordions here. When Pearson sings, that audio is the actor only, Jim by name. Jim and I would sit around a marker on the floor (the “camp fire”) with our velcro mocap suits on and perform the song a few times. We had almost no rehearsal. Jim had a fake concertina prop, two wooden boards with a foam rubber bellows and rope hand straps. He would mimic my movements while he sang. I was told that the animators would merge our mocap data later in the studio along with the audio. Amazing studio magic creates a lifelike performance. If you can find any other Pearson clips, I would love to see them.