Anglo-Irishman

I've found this to work for me. One aspect of it is that if you write one syllable per note, then when you've "recited" your lyric in your head, you've played all the notes in the tune. Another aspect is expression. if you build up your fake lyrics with statements, questions, emphatic replies, explanations and exclamations, you can let the phrasing, dynamics and tempo follow them. I suppose, when you folks talk about ITM you mean Irish jigs, reels, etc. Not much room for dynamics or tempo there! However, my idea of Irish instrumental music is Carolan compositions and the often beautiful tunes to well-known songs. When I play an instrumental version of a song, of course the lyrics are already there, making my playing tender, boisterous, sad or happy, as the case may be. With one Carolan piece, I experimented with a "fake" lyric. It's for "Eleanor Plunkett" - it's not great poetry, but it keeps me from just playing one note after the other: It's a lovely day today! (Positive assertion by voice 1) Do you think so? (Critical question from voice 2) Yes, I think so; it's a really lovely day. (Emphatic re-assertion by voice 1) If it weren't such a lovely day, there'd be clouds in the sky, (Long argument from voice 1 ...) And the little raindrops would keep on falling, (... argument continued ...) And I'd be so sad. (... culmination of argument) It's a really lovely day! (Final re-statementof positive assertion by voice 1) Works for me! As I said, not great poetry - but hey, some of the trad. lyrics to beautiful tunes are not that great either!😎 Cheers, John

I've been cycling since my primary-school days, and playing the concertina since my student days. I've never had pains anywhere from the concertina, and the only pains I get from cycling are in the ... part of my anatomy that has nothing to do with music. (I haven't found the perfect saddle yet!) In short, I've never found cycling to affect concertina (or banjo or mandolin) playing, or vice versa. But hey, I'm only 77 - maybe I'll get problems in my old age!😎 Cheers, John

We might be onto something here ... 😉 John

I suppose something like a set of small pipes - the ones with a bag and a bellows ..

As I see it, the concertina is a German one. The handstraps are parallel to the adjacent sides of the hexagon, not perpendicular to them, as in English-made Anglos. Cheers, John

Just a piece of info that might help you to get the Anglo into perspective with other instruments: Before I got my first Anglo, I'd had childhood piano lessons, and had been taught to play the mouth organ (AKA harmonica) by my Dad. When I bought the Anglo, together with the Tutor, which called it the "Anglo-Chromatic Concertina", I decided to relearn all that piano stuff with the sequence of sharps and flats in the various keys. But when I'd had the concertina for a couple of days, I realised that this was nonsense. All I had to do was think of the mouth organ, and equate bellows press and draw with harmonica blow and suck - and I was playing familiar tunes on the Anglo in no time at all! If you come to think about it, standard staff notation is specifically tabulature for the piano/organ keyboard. Cheers, John

Hmm ... I don't know how easy it would have been in those days to reverse the image on a celluloid film. And anyway, although the mirror image of a right-handed violinist and a right-handed violin would look as if both were left-handed, the mirror image of the grand piano would look distinctly odd! Cheers, John

"... gone are the friends from the cotton fields away; gone from the Earth to a better land I know; I hear theit gentle voices calling ..." Kurt , through this forum, helped me to get enjoyment out of my Crane. He will be missed. May he rest in peace. John

I totally agree! My procedure for working up an arrangement (on any of my instruments) is to reach the point where I can play the melody and the accompaniment together. When I start singing, I simplify the instrumental part - for example by leaving out the melody, which is now taken by my voice. In short: the accompaniment to a song should be a simplified version of your full instrumental version. ... unless, of course, you're accompanying someone else's singing, in which case you can play the "difficult" version. But try not to up-stage the singer! Cheers, John

Or, to follow James Thurber's wine connoisseur: "It's a naive Italian hybrid without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption." 😁 Cheers, John

My experience is complementary to Geoff's. I ordered a replacemant bellows with Concertina Connection when they were still in the Netherlands, and was requested to specify whether it was for an Anglo or an English. I specified Anglo. The bellows they made for me were stout and wonderfully crisp - no "slop" between push and pull. Just what you need to make the forced bellows changes of the Anglo so quick that they don't interrupt the flow of the music. Cheers, John

There's a theory that, if you're musical, it doesn't really matter what instrument you play. A good start is an instrument that your Mum or Dad plays, because it's available, and there's someone in the house who can tell you how to "operate" it. Or an instrument that some deceased relative bequeaths to you. Or one you find in a pawn shop, or get very cheap online, etc. etc. That's how I started - my Dad played fiddle and mandolin; the fiddle was sacrosanct; so he showed me how to play the mandolin. How does an Irishman come into possession of a wonderful Stridente Neapolitan mandolin? My Dad found it in a Dublin pawn shop, where he had gone to sell his melodion because his then fiancee had said "Either that melodion or me!" Dad saw the mandolin and swapped instead of selling. He always enjoyed playing the mandolin. My beginnings in concertina were different. We didn't have one at home, but I'd always wanted one (for sea songs, etc.) When I had the funds, al I could find in Belfast was an East German 20-button, so I became an Anglo player. I now have my second upgrade in Anglos - a Crabb - and it's my main squeeze. I've tried Bandoneon (bought in a West Berlin junk shop the 1980s for 60 DM, which would be €30 nowadays) and Crane duet (which cost serious money from a reputable dealer), but the Anglo has remained my free-reed means of expression. So I say, if you can lay your hands on a playable concertina of any variety, take it up. The farther you progress, the more the potential repertoires will converge. At some point, you'll want a better instrument, but at least you'll know which type it should be! Cheers, John

Hi, Steve, I have no problems with my concertinas at the moment, but it's nice to know there's someone close by who can help in an emergency. Since Wim Wakker left the Netherlands for America, there hasn't been a dedicated concertina repairer on the Continent. Good luck with your endeavour! Cheers, John

I would say, "Yes!" Weight just has to be held up, but mass has to be braked and accelerated at every change of bellows direction. The faster you're playing, the more energy you need to do that. What I remember from physics at school is, "Work is done when a force moves its point of application in the direction of the force." So holding up a concertina is not work, but pulling and pushing the bellows is! Cheers, John

@HansQ, Ther are more instruments out there than anglos and ECs, you know! For example, there are guitars, mandolins and 5-string banjos. All plucked stringed instruments, all well accepted as folk-music instruments. I play them all, to a certain extent. But my favourite (non-free-reed) instrument is the banjo. Why? Because it's good at doing the things I need done! It will never have the full bass of a guitar, nor the singing tremolo of the mandolin - but it's ideal as an accompaniment to my voice, because of its frequency range, and it can play harmonised solos far better than the mandolin, and more easily than the guitar. By the way, if I have a song that just calls for a nice guitar accompaniment, I pick up my guitar. And if I'm in a group situation where a strong melody line is called for, I'll take my mandolin. Perhaps you might be best served if you played both Anglo and EC. You could concentrate on the one that gives you the most benefit, but use the other for the weak spots in the repertoire of your main squeeze. Just a suggestion!😉 Cheers, John

David, to make it a bit more transferable, I've measured the distance from the edge of the hand-rest to the centre of the middle buttons of the rows, i.e buttons 3a, 3 and 8 on each side. Here are the results: 30-button Stagi: inner row 40 mm, middle row 54 mm, accidentals row 67 mm 30-button Dallas-Crabb: inner row 45 mm, middle row 58 mm, accidentals row 72 mm In both cases, there are only negligible differences between the LH and RH sides of the same instrument. Hope this helps, Cheers, John

It would certainly be interesting to hear a concertinist with a similarly competent technique to Mr. Kelly's on the guitar playing Regondi on the EC! Cheers, John

Thanks! The traditional material is probably the best in the long run. Don't needlework and handicraft shops keep felt, too? Cheers, John

No, not concertina valves - bicycle-tyre valves! Do any of the elder cyclists among you remember the days when a piece of rubber tubing was used to both seal the valve in its seating on the inner tube, and provide the non-return function for the pumped air? It was called valve rubber, and came in rolls. The man in the bicycle shop would cut a few inches off for you, and you could then cut off shorter pieces (about 1/2") to repair faulty valves. Like many practical things, valve rubber has uses the manufacturer never dreamed of. Thirty years ago, I used some for a vital part in the lubrication of a ship model. Needless to say, when refitting the model for my grandson, I found that the rubber had perished. As a reflex reaction, I googled "valve rubber" - and actually found some! My model is now as pondworthy as ever it was. But just now I identified a problem with my Dallas/Crabb Anglo: one of the buttons sits lower than the others. I'm practising some rather filigree phrases at the moment, and the slightly misaligned button (RH #3) is irritating. It turns out that the misalignment is due to the lack of a bushing in the offending button, where the lever passes through it. I've tried bushing the button with felt, but the little felt I have is of poor quality, and tears before I get it place. Then I thought of my valve rubber! I slipped about 1/4" of it over the end of the lever, and carefully pushed the button into place over it. The connection is flexible, doesn't wobble, and keeps the button at the same height as the normally-bushed buttons around it. This is a good quick fix, but I'm wondering whether it's wise in the long run. Rubber will perish some time - but maybe felt bushings (like the missing one on my button 3) fail, too. Have any of you had experience with rubber bushings? Should I gradually replace failing bushings with valve-rubber, or should I order a supply of decent bushing-felt from one of the reputable dealers on this list? Cheers, John

To be honest, I've hardly ever had the opportunity to try out somebody else's concertina. I'm usually the only concertinist in the area! However, my contact with, and love of, the instrument started very early in life. I enjoyed a Christian upbringing, with all its glorious music, and before I was old enough to sit through a church service without fidgeting, my mother (herself a musician and singer) took me to the Salvation Army Citadel every Sunday. No fidgeting at all - I was just spellbound by the brass band, and of course the concertina. When my 18th birthday loomed up, and a special present was on the cards, I wished for a concertina of my own. Back then, in the mid-'60, all that the still-numerous music shops in Belfast had to offer was a 20-button GDR Anglo. So that was my initiation into active concertina playing. I had no idea that it was completely different from what I had experienced at the S.A! Originally, I had intended to learn music theory and sight reading for my new instrument - but when it turned out that it was just two mouth-organs sawn in half and fitted into a bellows, that changed. I fell back on the tuition my father (a by-ear player of several instruments) had given me on his mouth organ. I had fun! I played sea shanties, and when our church Youth Fellowship held a holiday camp in Donegal, I took the concertina with me, as others take their guitars. Our group even held a Sunday sercice in a local Presbyterian church - and it had no organ! So I was appointed organist for the occasion, and my humble 20-button was declared a "mini-organ." It led the congregational singing vey well! The GDR concertina was one of those with double reeds, and after some years a couple of bass notes went out of unison. So when I left Ireland to work here in Germany, I left it behind. I had other instruments to accompany my singing. Then, in a junk-shop in West Berlin, I saw a square box with a bellows and buttons. I tried it out, and found that some of the buttons worked just like those on my concertina. So I bought it, and started working up familiar concertina pieces on it - and had fun again! I later found out that the instrument was a single-voiced Bandoneon; that is, a variant of the German Konzertina. Again, I employed it, among other things, for church music, playing the background music during the laying on of hands at my son's Confirmation. Meanwhile, I had heard Anglo concertinas played by visiting Irish folk groups in the Stuttgart music scene. As I was now - by a combination of circumstances - the frontman of an Irish folk group, I thought a 30-button C/G Anglo would be nice to have. So I visited one of the (then still-numerous) music shops in Stuttgart, and found a nice, metal-ended 30-button Anglo. It was branded "Stagi." It sounded a lot more concertina-like than my old GDR 20-button, or my Bandoneon. So I bought it. At first, it had teething problems: Buttons slipping under the end-plates, or just getting squint and jamming. With a combination of repair (altering the felt bushing inside the ends) and routine (checking that the buttons were all vertical before starting to play) I played the Stagi for almost 20 years with my group. At some point, I made the mistake of applying leather balsam to the bellows. This caused the glue to fail, and the bellows to collapse on the draw. In those days, Wim Wakker was still in the Netherlands, and offered a bellows replacment service. I took advantage of this, and the result was a concertina that was twice the instrument it had been before. The Wakker bellows are stout but flexible, and facilitate sharp bellows reversals. The Stagi reeds are still in tune after over 20 years' playing, and the teething troubles with the buttons have vanished. Shortly after this upgrade, I did get a chance to try someone's Rochelle. I was utterly unimpressed with it. The Stagi had (I thought) one drawback: it was an Anglo, and limited in the number of keys that could be played easily, but with a sophisticated accompaniment. So I looked around for a Duet. I settled on the Crane system, found one by Lachenal at Barleycorn, which turned out to be an ex-Salvation Army Crane/Triumph - the type that had originally awakened my childhood interest! I applied myself with zest to the learning of the Crane, with the aid of Internet learning material. I managed to get quite nice arrangements of familiar songs worked out - but I found that I was palying mostly in two keys: C, G and F. At least different from the Anglo's C, G and D, but not really a leap forward. Add to that, I found the equal temperament of the Duet rather harsh, in comparison with the more just temperament of the bisonorics. So I'm still very much an "Anglo-Irishman" in every sense of the word! My latest acquisition is, logically, a higher-quality Anglo. It's a Dallas-Crabb, i.e. a concertina manufactured by Crabb and badged for the banjo manufacturer and music publisher John E. Dallas. I bought it because John E. Dallas is also my proper name - but my namesake obviously had an instinct for a good concertina-maker, because this instrument has a wonderful, powerful yet sweet sound. The only weakness is that the bellows is rather too floppy for an Anglo. It is not original, because the present bellows has a repairer's label in Afrikaans, so it must have been replaced in South Africa. The Wakker bellows on my Stagi would probably have been a better replacement. Nevertheless, this will probably be my last concertina. Or maybe I'll invest in an old (pre-GDR) German concertina for German folk music. I've still got the Bandoneon, the Stagi, the Lachenl Crane, and of course the Crabb. The story of my life, told by concertinas! Cheers, John

Or, for that matter, why bother playing in an environment that's so noisy that even a concertina can't be heard without amplification?😎 Cheers, John

Banjo, eh? What style do you play? I play finger-style 5-string banjo, and my take on working up a tune is basically the same as for the Anglo. Find the melody notes, and then see which chords have the given melody note as their highest note, and (if there are more than one) take the chord that sounds best. Use (some of) the notes of that chord to build arpeggios, or oom-pahs, or block chords, or even counter melodies. Experience with Clawhammer or Bluegrass banjo might not be as helpful. At any rate, like Simon says, have fun! Cheers, John

Precisely! There has to be a certain elasticity in the system, but it should be in your hands, not in the straps. Cheers, John

@RAc has just given the reply that a player of dance music must give. Perhaps you're expecting me, as a singer and self-accompanist, to have a different attitude to the metronome. In that case, you'd be disappointed! When @SIMON GABRIELOW talks about speeding up and slowing down, he's probably thinking of rubato, which is an advanced technique for soloists performing with an accompaniment. Rubato means "stolen" - time is stolen from one note and added to another, but so that the entire section of the music retains the same duration. And this momentary hesitation or hurriedness is really only noticeable when the underlying beat is kept steady. This effect is most noticeable in "hot" jazz, where the soloist is all over the place, but the rhythm section is like clockwork (or a metronome, which is, after all, a form of clockwork!) Of course there are forms of solo music, like slow airs, for instance, that seem totally un-rhythmic. However, it is good, when singing or playing them, to have a beat in your head. And you learn that beat from using a metronome. Cheers, John

I suspect you're right!😉 This is just the way those camp-fire guitarists and ukulele-strummers learn their instruments. I have good experience of the method with finger-style 5-string banjo and Waldzither - and also with the left-hand ends of the Anglo and Crane duet concertinas! You don't need to know what notes are in the chord; just that, for C major, your fingers go here, here and here, and for G7 they go there, there and there. Then find the finger patterns for F major and A minor, and you can start chording along! Gradually add the patterns for G, D7 and Em, and keep going, step by step. With the Anglo, as with the fretted-string instruments, you'll find different finger combinations for one and the same chord - inversions - which you can choose from. Sometimes you'll want the inversion that fits best harmonically, sometimes the alternative inversion will make for a needed change of bellows direction. With this initial approach, you can later learn to "thin out" the chords where appropriate, and how to treat them rhythmically. And when you've got the 3 or 4 chords that make up a certain key (e.g. C major), you'll soon learn to re-organise your fingers on the fly to move between them, and with practice you'll learn to hear when a chord change is coming up. That's what playing by ear is all about! Cheers, John