Anglo-Irishman

I absolutely agree with this! I'm a singer myself - the concertina is one of my accompaniment instruments. I'm a bass-baritone, and when I'm singing solo I tend to stay in my "comfort zone", which is between the E2 below the bass stave and A3. The concertina I sing to is a C/G Anglo, and my acompaniments centre around middle C (C4), which gives good separation between voice and accompaniment. My other main accompaniment instrument is the 5-string banjo, which also has a "trebly" timbre. One other tip: to judge from the recording, you're singing with your voice "in the back of your throat." Try to get it farther forward in your mouth, where you'll have more resonance. You can hold a melody all right, but you can do more! 😉 Cheers, John

Judging by the fretwork on the ends, it looks like a rebadged Stagi to me! The ends of my Stagi 30-button look just the same, only with fewer holes (see my Avatar). I bought mine new back in the 1990s. Cheers, John

Yes, my Bandoneon is like that. The three main rows are like the concertina's, but in G/A/E plus accidentals. The earlier, small, 20-button German concertinas were, I believe, in A/E. The reason for having two rows a fifth apart (C/G, G/D, Ab/Eb, A/E etc.) is that the most common modulation of key within a tune in European music is from the home key to the key with one sharp more (or one flat less). C major plus 1 sharp (F#) is G major; G major plus 1 sharp (C#) is D major. This makes tunes like The Ash Grove or Crimond (The Lord's my shepherd) very easy to harmonise. For the same reason, my old 2-key autoharp is in F/C, and larger Autoharps have their chord bars arranged along the Circle of Fifths, e.g. Bb, F, C, G, D, A. Both the Concertina and the Autoharp were invented to make musical arrangements of simple music instinctive, and their basis in the Circle of Fifths is a major part of that. Sort of built-in music theory for the amateur. Having said that, I must add that, on the Bandoneon, I usually play the psalm-tune Crimond on the A-row, modulating to the E-row (like I do on the C and G-rows of my Anglo). However, I can also play the tune - fully harmonised - on the Bandoneon's G-row, modulating to the A-row. So the rows that are a whole tone apart do have their uses! Cheers, John

I'm another multi-instrumentalist, and apart from the concertina, I also play stringed instruments. I feel comfortable with 5-string banjo and Autoharp, both solo and as accompaniment to my own singing, and can work up decent accompaniments on Waldzither and guitar. Each of these sounds different from the others, and offers different capabilities for arrangements. Also, some things are easy on one instrument, but more difficult on another. So yes, I need them all!! Switching from one instrument to the other - even during a gig - is no great problem, because they are so different in shape, size and weight. When I take up one of therm, my brain recognises it immediately, and loads the appropriate routine in my "music processor." My Anglo is part of the mix. I use it for solos, accompaniments and ensemble work. Needless to say, my brain never confuses it with any of the other instruments. Once, when comparing my instruments, I realised that my anglo was the only "diatonic" in the bunch. Its C and G rows were super for solos or accompaniments in those keys, and for accompaniments in D and F. But the Autoharp had six keys available, and with a capo, the fretted instruments could be played easily in otherwise awkward keys. So I read up about the duets, and decided that the Crane was the one for me. Completely chromatic, like a piano, so capable of accompanying any tune, whether sung by a bass, a tenor or a soprano. So I bought one. It was fun! Squeezing bellows and pressing buttons was familiar to me, and I even found out that the layout could be regarded like a conjunction of banjo and mandolin: easy chords on the left, clear scales on the right. I found out that some - very few - techniques were easier than on the Anglo; however, a few techniques were still easier on the Anglo. And after a while I realised that - because I was playing to accompany my singing - I was playing the Crane in the Anglo's easy keys of C, G and F! So the Crane is now in "retirement," and I've upgraded my Anglo, so it's really good when I need that free-reed sound! Under other circumstaces, I might have ditched the Anglo, but as it is, the added value of the duet was not sufficient to justify the effort of mastering it at the expense of my Anglo progress. Your mileage may vary! Cheers, John

Delightful! Shows that the EC can swing, if it's in the right hands!

Why not Connie or Tina?

That's why I've always believed the hand-straps or lack of them to be the difference between Anglo and EC, with respect to emphasis. Besides the Anglo I occasionally play a Duet (Crane/Triumph system). Its handstraps give me the same degree of control as the Anglo's. Cheers, John

Yes, this was true of my primary school in the Highlands back in the 1950s. The only dance I can remember is "Strip the Willow," but some of my classmates were into country dancing in a big way, and one of them even devised a dance in honour of our former teacher when we had a class reunion 40 years after. Cheers, John

We banjoists use letters to designate the (right-hand) fingers to be used. OK, we only need three: T, I and M for thumb, index and middle. But you could add R for ring and P for pinkie. Of course, the T would be redundant - unless you have a drone button on the left! I'd write the fingerings for the right hand above the score or tab I'm notating, and for the left hand below it, as is done with tablature. Cheers, John

Now, there's an oxymoron for you ...! 😉

Amen, Brother Simon! 😇

Interesting point! As a singer who has a whole collection of self-accompaniment instruments, I can see the sense in Kurt's statement. I personally use my ukulele only for song accompaniment, whereas I use my concertinas (chiefly Anglo and a bit of Crane) mainly for instrumental music, but also occasionally for song self-accompaniment. Having said that, if I had never had the chance to learn ukulele, banjo, guitar or Autoharp, I would probably be known as "the guy who sings to his Anglo." However, as it is, I select the accompaniment instrument for a given song on the basis of the character of the song, the complexity of the required accompaniment, the cultural background ("ethnic" instruments) or just pure whim. Cheerful, 3-chord songs on the ukulele. Songs requiring an interesting bass line, Spanish guitar. Sea songs, Anglo. Folk-songs, often 5-string banjo. Specifically German folk-songs, Waldzither. Gospel songs, Autoharp. Of course, most songs can be accompanied on at least two different instruments, so the allocation of song to instrument is not cast in concrete. I'm quite sure that you, @BobBobsta, will soon find yourself picking up either your uke or your Anglo, depending on the song requested! It's fun, and if you perform in public, swapping instruments makes for more variety. So keep your ukulele! Cheers, John

Reminds me of how Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744) defined poetry: "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expresst."

Also common on the hexagonal concertinas from the former East Germany, on which the Italian units are modelled Cheers, John

Thanks, whoever it was who sent it - we had a thunderstorm last night, which replenished our almost empty rain-barrels. My sympathy to those affected by flooding. It's all so unevenly distributed these days! Cheers, John

Heavy rain??? Send us some, please!!!

I assume the concertina would have 2 ends, anyway. So in a way, all our bellows-driven instruments are prime.

Hallo, Pär! It could be that there is some misunderstanding here. The photos show a German Konzertina - whether it's a Carlsfelder or a Chemnitzer is hard to say without knowing the button layout. The lady probably asked for Bandneon lessons because she thought that her instrument is a Bandoneon - to the untrained eye, Chemnitzer, Carlsfelder and Bandoneon look very much alike, and are often confused with each other. So teaching her the English concertina would not help her very much. However, some basic lessons on a 20-button Anglo, or even a small German concertina would get her started on the road. These bisonioric concertinas all have the same 20-button core consisting of two Richter scales a fifth apart, e.g. C/G (typical Anglo) or A/E (typical Bandoneon). Once you've mastered this, you can start exploring the other buttons outside the "core." Itworked for me! Hope this helps, Cheers, John

Hmm! You'd have to play pretty fast to keep in time with a Shetland woman knitting! Maybe they have "slow sessions" for non-Shetlandic knitters 😉

7mount is the brand name for concertinas built by Ralf Schlimm within view of the Siebengebirge that Peter mentioned. The 7mount Website shows the panorama of the Seven Mountains. The view is familiar to me - it can be seen from my brother-in-law's back garden on the southern outskirts of Bonn! If you've got a moment for a bit of legend ... It is said that the seven giants who dug out the Rhine Gorge knocked the dirt from their spades when they completed their job on reaching the North German Plain. This resulted in the Seven Mountains. Much later, the area entered literary folklore when the Brothers Grimm wrote down the story of Schneewittchen (Snow-white). When the magic mirror revealed to the wicked queen that Snow-white was still alive and prettier than she was, it said, "Hinter den sieben Bergen, bei den sieben Zwergen ..." (Behind the seven mountains, with the seven dwarves ...). And sure enough: the village where my parents-in-law lived is in the middle of the Seven Mountains, and the nickname for the local inhabitants, in the regional dialect, is "Ledderköpp" (Leather-heads) - indicating the head-gear formerly worn by miners, which has evolved into the present-day dwarves' pointed cap. And miners in the olden days tended to be smaller than most people. If the 7mount concertinas are as fantastic as the area they are named after, they should be pretty good! Cheers, John

Mine is my trusty metal-ended, 30-button Stagi, early 1990s vintage, which served me well for 20 years in my folk group, featured on the group's CD, and is still going strong ten years after the group disbanded. After a few years' usage, the bellows needed replacement; I got one made by Concertina Connexion, which made the concertina twice the instrument it had been as new. The reeds, however, are all in good tune, even after 30 years. Cheers, John

Speaking of older instruments ... In at least one Shakespeare play, a stage-direction calls for "broken music" offstage. This may seem somewhat enigmatic to the modern musician, but we must remember that the word for an instrumental ensemble in Shakespeare's day was "consort." There were two kinds of consort: "whole consorts" and "broken consorts." the former consisted of instruments from one family, e.g. viols only or recorders only. Of course, these families each had members of different pitch: treble, alto, tenor, bass etc. The present classical string quartet would have been called a whole consort if it had existed in Elizabethan times, because violin, viola and cello are of the one family. The Elizabethan "broken consort" was any ensemble consisting of instruments from different families: flutes, like the recorder, reed instruments like the shawm or rackett, bowed strings like the viol, or plucked strings like the ubiquitous lute. The music of the period was polyphonic, so if you were getting together with a few friends for a session, the most important thing would have been to have instruments capable of taking the treble, alto, tenor and bass lines; the mixture of wind and string instruments would have been less important. And I'm sure that friends who habitually played "broken music" together would find interesting things to do with their combinations of instruments. My experience of playing the concertina ina purely instrumental ensemble is limited, but in my folk group we did perform a couple of Carolan pieces with violin, concertina, guitar and double bass. Sounded quite nice, we thought! Cheers, John

A stringed instrument with a left-right alternating scale is the West African kora.

Looks like the innards of a Stagi - I have one. Don't know if you can get the action separately; on the other hand, everything is made of sheet aluminium, so if you want a new lever, it shouldn't be too hard to manufacture one with a fretsaw with a blade for metal-cutting. Cheers, John

That sounds to me like very sound advice in many situations. Cheers, John