David Barnert

I saw the film when it first came out. He makes some noise with it, but never really plays.

You made the same mistake. This is not G. It’s D. The first 2 measures outline a D chord and it ends on a long D. The key signature looks like G because it only has one sharp, but all the C’s in the piece are sharped, so there’s really two sharps. Finally, the key signature is correct. This one’s in C and the key signature agrees. The B’s in the tune don’t have to be individually marked as natural.

Actually, it’s in E (even worse for the anglo). I don’t know why they notated it without the D# in the key signature (making it look like A), when all the D’s in the tune are individually sharped. And I wouldn’t go overboard trying to play the bass line as written. It’s an awful, unimaginative accompaniment. Full of parallelisms and missed opportunities, with no attention to harmonic rhythm. You’d do better to make up your own accompaniment.

I have given up on JamKazam and am now using Jamulus. Two things soured me on JK: One, they’ve instituted a fee schedule as of the new year, and although there’s a free level, it’s very limited. Two, I’ve got a DSL internet connection. Fiberoptic isn’t available here (they’ve been promising it for 10 years) and cable would be too much of a disruption. The people I was playing with heard a lot of distortion from my system and we decided it must be the decreased capacity of the DSL. That doesn’t seem to be a problem on Jamulus. I have not done any recording with the new mic

Hmmm... Fascinating, but I’m having trouble with the timeline. If he was born in 1879, then he was 26 in 1905. So how old was his daughter, Elsie, his accompanist? That could well be him at age 41 in the foreground of the picture labeled “1920,” but the young lady next to him looks too young to have been accompanying anybody 15 years earlier. Must not be Elsie. And where would you have to be traveling from for Hawaii to be on the way to London?

A Lachenal will have real concertina reeds, and the guy at the store may not have any more experience with them than you do. What part of the world are you in? Or: Do you know who restored it?

I think it’s going to have to come apart. Would you be comfortable taking it apart to have a look inside? If not, take it to someone who is. If you’re up to it, my guess is that air is finding its way around the reed rather than passing through it. How to fix it will depend on what kind of reed it is. If it’s a real concertina reed (a single reed mounted on a metal frame: The reed that sounds on the pull will be on the side that faces the buttons, not the bellows. You can often solve the problem by pressing it tighter into its wooden joint with your thumb.

Four years later, and I finally have come up with a picture of the Steve Howe that Jody and I know here in the USA, that the guy I learned “Ganivelle” from in Bradford (Brian?) might look a little like. Screen shot from a Zoom session.

Everything I’ve ever posted on YouTube or SoundCloud was recorded using the internal microphone on my MacBook. It may not be professional quality, but it’s perfectly adequate for recordings that are generally going to be heard through a computer speaker. Since the left side (lower notes, bigger reeds) of my Hayden Duet concertina plays louder than the right (higher notes, smaller reeds), I tried to position myself with the right side closer to the computer when doing audio-only, but for the videos I didn’t concern myself with that and it didn’t seem to be a problem. Since the pand

Warning: Thread drift (sorry).* As far as I know, the very first youtube video ever of a single person playing a concertina was Danny Chapman’s performance of the same tune from 14 years ago. * (He’s sitting down.)

I was wondering a related question that this suggests an answer to, but let me ask it to see what shakes loose: If (when travel is a thing again) I travel from New York to London on vacation and bring my concertina (no paid gigs), am I subject to any trouble or expense at the customs & immigration desk?

As posted recently in another thread, this is me playing a 46-key Hayden Duet for Morris Dancing (in 1989). Thirty years later (until the pandemic shut us down), you could see me doing the same thing (albeit with a better concertina: this was a Bastari, I got my Wheatstone in 1994). Some trickier numbers (requiring the use of 4 fingers) are best played sitting with an end of the instrument on a knee, but Morris tunes aren’t generally that tricky. Notice I’m basically playing with three fingers, using my little finger to help stabilize the instrument (on both sides).

Odor Eaters are activated charcoal. As we’re off topic, I’ll respond with a PM.

I think we’re pretty much saying the same thing: Glass half full/glass half empty.

Be careful. I ordered something from Canada a month ago and it was shipped the same day (Canada Post: I have seen an image of the mailing label). A little over half a kilogram. I haven’t got it yet. A college chemistry department might be able to steer you to ozone.