Jody Kruskal

Russell, What a lovely story. I've noticed the same thing. Timbre or tone is such a subtle and wonderful thing. Our surroundings certainly change the sound of an instrument in strange and interesting ways. The Leslie rotating speakers for example, make use of that effect to great affect. On another note, try standing in a room and play a single long pitch while swinging your box around in a big, wide circle. Vary the speed and enjoy the sensation. Swedish walking tunes might suit you well as you amble along. Jody

Sorry Larry, I won't be up until Campers week. Have fun in paradise. Jody

Sorry Larry, I won't be up until Campers week. Have fun in paradise. Jody

Hi Juliette, It's great to hear what you are up to. Good equipment and higher fidelity is nice, but your 10 cent mic works well enough to get the music across. I'm curious to hear more. Keep it up. Jody

My buddy Bob Godfried alerted me to this and wrote. "What do you call ten accordions at the bottom of the ocean? A good start." June is National Accordion Awareness Month http://www.ladyofspain.com/NAAM.html On the NAAM site they claim to promote just about all free reeders and write: "When people think of an accordion, they usually envision that large, black monstrosity with piano keys on one side and about a thousand buttons on the other side. However, the accordion family also includes Cajun button boxes, chromatic and diatonic button accordions, the concertina, the bayan, and the bandoneon." Anyone here a member? Jody

In the thread: John Mock - Cd "the Day At Sea", two solo concertina tunes + one with orchestration RobKitt says: "If you've not heard what John Mock does with the concertina, this CD is worth checking out. John is an extremely talented, multi-instrumental recording session musician here in Nashville, but grew up in New England. He has two solo concertina tunes on this CD, viz. "An Evening at the Inn" & "The Day at Sea". Another, "Roundstone Bay" has orchestration, but with concertina as the lead instrument. I had a chance to meet John in July 05 and he was kind enough to give my new C/G a hands-on try. I was impressed; his musicality on any instrument speaks for itself. Links to his website and CD Baby are below. http://www.johnmock.net/ http://cdbaby.com/cd/mockjohn I gave John's site a listen and certainly enjoyed it. He has an interesting technique on one of the cuts you mentioned: John holds a high drone note while playing a single line melody underneath. I tried it and it works fine for that high and lonely Nashville sound. It's not exactly a chord but very cool. Jody

Frank, As an American, let me take this opportunity to apologize for your difficulties. Although it is no fault of mine personally, I deeply regret any inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of our mysterious bureaucracies. Jody

Hilary Sometimes after a few I’m walking on the ceiling and I have that exact same problem. I believe that Simon Thoumire plays English concertina upside down even when he's sober. Jody

Thanks Rob for the John Mock tip. I gave his site a listen and certainly enjoyed it. He has an interesting technique on one of the cuts you mentioned: John holds a high drone note while playing a single line melody underneath. I tried it and it works fine for that high and lonely nashville sound.

Interesting discussion. I also don’t look at the buttons when playing. Where I do look seems to make a big difference in how I sound. I love to close my eyes and get into that personal sound world where it seems like I’m visualizing the music in some weird way. It’s a heightened tactile sensation, a peculiar and pleasant state. On the other hand, if I’m playing with my band, the results are much better if I keep my eyes open and look at the faces of the other musicians. Just last week I was recording with a fiddler for my next CD of old time concertina tunes. When I closed my eyes I was audibly disconnected with the rhythm he was playing, and when I looked at him we locked in.

Hi Tug, Great idea.. concertina and boats, it's a natural. My advice is, if you are serious, then get the best instrument you can afford. The Tedrow would be the one out of your list. Also, ask about brass reeds. Many folks swear by them and love the sound over steel. Steel is louder but you want to avoid any rust issues with the salty air.

Rob and Chris, Here is my Jefferies 38 button layout. As for I must say that I don’t use that button much. You can see that mine produces the pitches c#/E. The one way I do use it is to play a two note pickup or sort of a slide into push B,d middle row, like this: c#,A# then B,d. This is very effective in blues of rags or old time fiddle tunes because it sounds very fiddle like. If that c# were a D it very well could be more useful though. My chart includes the oct. of the pitches. The convention here is that the lowest note is a ,,G The C above that is a ,C The next higher C is a C The next higher C is a c The next higher C is a c' I hope you find this useful. Jody

Greg, Interesting topic. The pleasure of playing music with other people is a big motivating force for me. What a great feeling, where everyone is listening and responding to the ever changing group creation. It’s more complex and unexpected than what any one person could do on their own. When everyone agrees on the rules and boundaries of the musical game and all are communicating and playing freely... that is one of the most profound joys of life. I practice alone so that I’m better able to play with others.

I've never thought about it quite that way before, but perhaps that explains why there are so few female basses and baritones in the choir.

Richard, While Chris’ maxim ”you play the system you want to play and work out how to play the music you want to play on it” sounds reasonable, you may find it a long row to hoe. I just sat down and tried to play a bunch of well known English dance, session and morris tunes in their standard keys on my C/G Anglo. You should note that I’m playing them in what might be termed the “English” style with full chords and harmony. Some of the G tunes worked pretty well but most required alteration. The D tunes were very hard to do and required surgery. The A tunes were beyond me totally. As Peter pointed out, these alterations mean jumping octaves, playing melody in the left hand (along with the chords) and also creative rewriting or simplification of the melody. Not impossible to do, but somewhat limiting. If you only play melody with a chord note here and there and are willing to play melody in both hands then your C/G box will take you far. In my experience, fully chorded tunes are much more likely to work when played on a G/D Anglo. My G/D preference for English tunes also holds for American, Canadian, Breton, Swedish, Scottish, Irish etc. I think that it has to do with the range of the fiddle or more globally, with the range of pleasing melody pitches in general. This is about from A below middle C to the A two oct. above that. Anything much higher starts to require fiddlers to play up the neck in higher positions, not may folk musicians do. Also those higher notes sound pretty squeaky in a melody. Lower than A below middle C and the notes start sounding soft or muddy when used in a melody. I think that this is just the physics of the human ear and our perception of sound. Most melodies tend to center themselves in this range, just like the right hand of the G/D Anglo. There are a few great tunes that I would not like to play on the G/D. Some (not all) tunes in A major and tunes in C, Bb, F, E, Dm, Gm. These tunes account for about 2% of what I’ve come across, on both sides of the Atlantic.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In performance, time always trumps chords. Better to be more simple and keep the pulse even. In practice as well, if you are not able to play in time then you are playing too fast. If you keep doing that, you end up practicing and reinforcing your mistakes. What I do is to work out tricky fingerings and such at an extremely slow pace, and just a measure at a time at first. Then working up to whole phrases only after the little pieces have become achievable. As far as the chord suggestions... I agree with the two note idea most of the time. Often though, in an Um Chuck accompaniment pattern, I'm playing: 1 - 5, 1 Rarely 1 - 3, 5 in the same octave. It sounds better to spread the notes of the chords beyond the octave like low 1 - high 1, 3 or low 1 - high 3, 5. If I can find a chord solution that leaves the 3 out of the left hand entirely then I often like the sound better. Low range intervals of a third tend to sound messy and thick to my ear, perhaps because they are badly out of tune in equal temperament. Keep up the hard work of figuring this all out.

Hi Jeff, You are on the right path. Controlling the duration of your notes has everything to do with making your playing more musical. Aside from that, you have only two other methods, note choice (including chords) and dynamics. Those three make up the sound world of the concertina. The artistry of playing is about using those three elements to make the music sing or stomp or cry or whatever it is you are after. In practice, I suggest isolating one element at a time. Working on legato playing is extremely valuable. So is working on staccato playing. Taking both, in turn, to their limits will deepen your playing and give you a wider pallet of expression. What I suggest is to practice the tune with your notes as short as posable. Then play it with the notes as connected (legato) as possible. Then play the tune as quietly as posable. Then as strongly as you can. Each time make it music, like you mean it. Not just an exercise, but really playing the music from the heart/breath/bellows. For the legato/connected idea, try thinking of each note as a pearl on a string. They are all connected by the string. No breaks but rather a series of events that come out of you attached and whole. A phrase of music should have the notes sounding attached, even if there are small spaces in between the notes. The reality is that to make a phrase more legato you delay the release of your finger by a little. Try slowing the tempo down, that might help in getting the feel for it. Listen to your playing. As m3838 points out, recording and listening are valuable tools to improvement. When you play you can’t really hear in the same way as when you are in the audience. Performance and evaluation are two separate activities that are more powerful when separated by a few minutes. I hope you find these ideas helpful. Good luck with your playing. Jody

Hi there Greenfairy and all, I'll be in the playing with Half Moon Sword on Saturday, 1:00pm in the Courtyard. Plus jamming in the halls. See you there.

Ooooooh, that's pretty. Break open the champagne. How long did you have to wait?

The Fender® Passport P-250 Portable PA Sound System might be just what you are looking for. Check it out at: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Liv...16&src=3SOSWXXA A great all purpose instrument mic is the Shure SM57. How many mic inputs do you need? Passport gives you 4.

If you do that, could you do some quick and dirty recordings and post them -- Theodore, I'll second that. Do work a few up and let us/me hear what you make of them. It's hard for me to imagine playing without the articulation of changing bellows direction. As I have said in the past, my model for Anglo playing is the fiddle. Fiddle is king in the contra dance world. All other instruments are expendable but you could play a dance with fiddle alone. The bow gives the rhythm and that's what the bellows does on the Anglo. Jody

Thank you Henk and all. My guess is that this symphonetta was made around 1930. The range is 5 1/2 octaves from Bb” to f#” Below is a photo of the key layout. This is the left hand (the bass side), but the position and number of buttons is the same for both the right and left sides. There is just over one octave overlap in pitches between the right and left sides. Though very worn, you can sort of see the buttons are numbered and lettered. This system has the same note pull and draw, and like the Hayden and others, the intervalic fingerings are transposable to any key. Of the five rows, the middle three are the basic pattern with the outside upper and lower rows being linked buttons to aid fingerings. So just consider those three middle rows to see the pattern. You are looking at three octaves here. You can see the silver inlay at a slant, visually dividing the octaves. The octave pattern repeats for each of the three octaves pictured here. Each octave is made up of the three rows we are talking about and four slanted columns. Starting on the top left and moving down the columns, you get half steps. Across the rows you get minor thirds. The left most top row (main pattern row) yellow button is clearly marked 1/C and that is the lowest C on the instrument. A quick search on cnet and related links did not turn up a fingering system like this. I don’t play this beauty, but playing around with it I can get the idea. Just under the buttons is a bar that the thumb curls around and the palm rests on. The four fingers can span two octaves with a stretch. The two bellows can maintain constant pressure with practice. It’s a bit too leaky to hear about articulation. The sound is rich and loud with (I think) two reeds in octaves for every button. The instrument is lovely to look at, but I think it’s very unlikely I’ll ever learn to play it.

I have a beautiful Symphonetta that I am curious about. It is quite old and a faded label says: Left: Richt? Schell?? Symphonetta ????????? Right: Alleintget Fabrikant Ernst L. Arnold Carlsleld???? It seems that Ernest Louis Arnold (1828-1910) was the manufacturer of the ELA bandoneons which were imported to Argentina as well as the Symphonetta. My instrument is in very good condition and plays with a lovely tone. A few leaks of course. It fits in a box and has a folding stand. It seems to have been used by a working musician long ago. Numbers and letters on the colored buttons are worn with use. I can’t find them now, but it came with printed music, parts for Symphonetta for band arrangements of tunes and hand stamped with what I remember to be a Berlin concertina club. Mr. Flake is the author of a web site in German that Goggle refuses to translate, great pictures though. http://users.interstroom.nl/~veldhuis/-symphonetta/ I tried to email Leo Flake but the emails were returned. Does anyone know how to contact him? Does anyone play these now?

This post can be viewed at the 3/18 topic of the same name.