Anglo-Irishman

Oh dear! It was a long time ago, and I've no head for figures. Suffice to say that the new bellows cost almost as much as the whole concertina had cost some 10 years earlier. Wim Wakker was still located in The Netherlands at that time, so there were no customs duties involved. I don't know whether Wakker makes custom bellows any more, now that he has his manufacturing lines for Rochelle, Elise and Jackie in the USA. The bellows I got was perfect for an Anglo - stout leather, but with supple hinges. There's no time-lag between pressing at full pressure and drawing at full pressure; i.e there's no "slop" in the bellows. This really does, in my opinion, make 50% of the quality of an Anglo. As I said, the bellows was expensive - but it left me with a concertina that compared favourably with a new hybrid that would definitely have cost more. Cheers, John

.. which is what I'd have advised, if I'd seen our thread sooner! The photos look very like my Stagi model, which I played for 20 years with my folk group, and which is still going strong 10 years thereafter. I must admit that, somwhere along the road, I had the bellows replaced by the Wakker company, but the reeds were worth it. They're still in tune after 30 years' playing, and sound twice as nice after the bellows transplant. A really value-for-money investment. A good hybrid with a sound close to the traditional concertina. Have fun! Cheers, John

Mmmm! Delicious! Where are you? I'll bring my own plate and fork ... Cheers, John

I've thought about this quite a bit. The composer Leonard Bernstein once said he didn't differentiate so much between "serious" and "popular" music - it was more important to distinguish "good" music and "bad" music. For me, another way of categorising music is to call it "composers' music" or "performers' music." @seanc mentions Irish trad. and Bach, and these are two examples that are wide apart on the composer/performer spectrum. Bach's works are typically for ensemles of players and singers, and they are musically pretty complex. The only way to perform them is for each musician and singer to do what the composer lays down in his score (the conductor helps them to do this). Improvisation and innovation are not advisable - any deviation from the meticulously balanced mix of notes would most likely sound "off." It's the composer's music, so the performers don't mess with it! With Irish trad., improvisation and innovation are of the essence. A traditional song exists merely as a melody and a lyric - everything else, be it key, tempo, style of ornamentation orchestration, harmonic structure, expression ..., is up to the performer. You'll often find that one singer can deliver a folk song so that it thrills you, but another singer, singing the same song, leaves you cold. That's performers' music! As I say, there's a spectrum here. A romantic composer may write a beautiful version of a folk song for baritone and piano - that would be the composer's music. Or I, as a banjoist, may play my impromptu variations on a theme from a Haydn string quartet - that's the performer's music. Each performance could be slightly different, but it would still be "authentic." If the pianist or the baritone took liberties with the composer's score, it would be regarded as improper. There is a grey zone: some composers' music is so demanding that not every soloist can manage it - so a truly virtuoso violinist or pianist can make a classical concerto his or her "own." And , of course, there must have been somebody who first performed the songs that we call folk songs - so the performer can't take 100% if the credit there, either! Cheers, John

Stephen, Thanks for the link! I can see that the banjo is definitely a Windsor zither-banjo like mine - not the top model, but one of the better ones. A well-made and serviceable instrument! However, I very much doubt whether it's Hussey's playing that you can hear. The notes don't match the hand positions. And anyway, they didn't have films with sound-track back then, did they? I assume the film clip was dubbed over, but at least the music seems about right for the period - the kind of "old plantation-y" number that the black-face minstrels would have played back then. Could be from an old, remastered shellack record, or played by a modern banjoist from sheet music of back then. Cheers, John

Mark, Sent you a PM. Cheers, John

Here you go - Olly Oakley was very popular in the 1910s and '20s, and he played the zither-banjo. (On the linked page, select a tune title, then click on the mp3 link on the right of the resulting page.) Enjoy! John

On the contrary, I find the term "muscle memory" quite useful! Memory is the key to being able to play a piece of music fluently on your instrument of choice. But memorisation has several aspects. One is remembering the tune. If you can't whistle or hum the tune, you won't be able to play it without sheet music. Another aspect is memorising the chord structure. Sure, you can develop a sixth sense for chord changes, so improvisation can to a certain extent replace memorisation - but this can leave you in the lurch when the harmonisation becomes more sophisticated than I, IV, V7. So, having memorised the tune and the harmonies, how do we know what buttons to press to get them? Muscle memory! An Autoharping friend of mine - a button-presser like us concertinists - says that she memorises a piece of music as a series of finger movements among the buttons. It's a dance that the fingers perform to produce the musical sounds you want - and the choreography of this dance is stored in muscle memory. And, of course, like with any memorisation, repetition is of the essence. Also, using the term "muscle memory" reminds us that we don't need to consciously know the name, or position on the stave, of a given note, or the name of the interval between it and the next note. To our fingers, it's just a memorised sequence of movements, stored in our hand muscles. Cheers, John

The instrument most commonly associated with the Shackleton survival epic is the Windsor 5-string zither-banjo belonging to the expedition's meteorologist, Leonard Hussey. When everyone was limited to 2 pounds of personal belongings for the trek across the ice to the open sea, Shackleton ordered Hussey to bring his banjo (weighing 12 pounds) with him, calling it "vital mental medicine." I have one of the same model - and believe me, it is heavy! There's a nice write-up here. Cheers, John

Nevertheless, some of us do have (and even play) Bandoneons on the side, so to speak. So though we may not be experts, you could regard us as a sort of "self-help group" within CNet. 😊 As my forum name suggests, I'm an Irishman who plays the Anglo, but I'm also a German with family in the Rhineland - and the Bandoneon is a German concertina in "rheinische Tonlage", i.e. Rhineland configuration. My Bandoneon is a small one dating from around 1900, bought in a West Berlin junk-shop, and single-voiced (one reed per button, as opposed to the bigger tango Bandoneons). As I quickly learned, if you can play an Anglo concertina, you can easily get a tune out of a Bandoneon! Welcome to the List! Cheers, John

Interesting! Could you give me details? Pics? Cheers, John

Peter, Thanks for the heads-up! I've been aware of these old, German "chromatic concertinas" for some time. However, the "piano" part is limited in range to just over an octave, and the LH side has a completely different layout, which makes the whole thing more accordion-like and less duet-concertina-style. Not exactly the piano substitute I'm looking for ... Thanks anyway, John PS. How did you come by your Jones Piano Duet?

Not yet! Still waiting for one at a reasonable price. I do have a J.E.Dallas 5-string zither-banjo, however. Cheers, John

Thanks for the info! That means that the thumb buttons both duplicate notes in the "naturals" row on the left hand. I can imagine using the G to make the "thumb-under" movement like when playing scales on the piano - but to get the same effect on the RH side, the F would have to be an F5. Anyway, my interest in the piano keyboard stems from the fact that we recently passed our piano on to our daughter (the only pianist in the family), and now I miss having an instrument that I can read standard notation for. And I didn't want to take up the space vacated by the piano with a cheap-looking, plastic keyboard! In the end, I went and bought a 37-key Melodica, which has one major drawback: I can't sing while I'm playing it! Cheers, John

Peter, Unfortunately, I didn't see your offer until you'd sold it! ☹️ Fascinating instrument! One thing still interests me, though: you say the two thumb buttons are G and F, respectively - but which G and F? Low bass notes? High treble notes? Duplicate mid-range notes? Cheers, John

Why are you thinking of replacing the bellows? Is it worn out, or a bit grimy, or are there holes in it, or does it not have enough folds for you style of playing? A leaky or floppy bellows on an Anglo prevents the reeds and action (not to mention the player) from achieving their original potential. For me, a good vintage pair of ends and set of reeds will sound best with a bellows that comes close to the original when it was new, and just played in. I had a new bellows fitted to my Anglo many years ago. I ordered it from Wim Wacker of Concertina Connection, when the company was still on this side of the Pond, in the Netherlands. With Wacker's bellows, it was twice the instrument it originally was. Mind you, it was a Stagi! But replacing the so-la-la Stagi bellows with a good hand-made one showed the potential that was in the Stagi reeds. Cheers, John

You mean the metal corners of the bellows folds? Yes, half of them seem to be missing, and more seriously, they're the ones next to the player - where the instrument rubs on your clothing. There are also a lot of button-tops missing. Considering the age of your instrument, I would imagine that it would be hard to find a supplier for these parts. Perhaps a professional restorer could cannibalise an irreparable instrument of the same type. At least the "central core area" I mentioned seems to be intact on both ends, so you should be able to try it and see what it sounds like. Cheers, John

Very nice, Gregor! The trim and fittings remind me of my small no-name Bandoneon, but mine is "zinc-plate rich"-sounding rather than "zinc-tin-plate-poor," as you put it. Cheers, John

Yes, there is! Three rows, in fact. If you take the core area of 20 buttons (10 left, 10 right) and ignore everything else, you basically have an Anglo in A/E. I play the Bandoneon a little, and I have one party-piece, an arrangement of "Linden Lea," which has the same fingering on Anglo and Bandoneon - it comes out in C major on the Anglo and A major on the Bandoneon. In addition, the Bandoneon has a third push-pull-diatonic row in G. Playing across the G row and the A row gives you interesting capabilities, which are different from playing across the A and E rows. When I bought my Bandoneon (in a junk-shop in Berlin) I thought at first that it was terribly out of tune, until I discovered that central core area - and then I was playing tunes within minutes, using my Anglo experience! Have fun! Cheers, John .

My view is similar to David's. I started as a child by playing whatever I could lay my hands on, which meant the instruments we had lying round at home: mandolin, violin, piano, Autoharp and mouth organ. I suppose children from less well-equipped homes would have started out with some "conventional" or "mainsteam" instrument, such as the recorder, which is taught at school, or the piano or violin, for which tuition is readily available. If I recall correctly, i was at least 18 when I got my first concertina (at my own wish). That is, I was able to make my own decision on what to learn, and was at liberty to choose something less "mainstream." Cheers, John

It's a Bandoneon, to judge by the button layout. It's missing an awful lor of buttons, though ... but still worth more than an old Scholer!. Cheers, John

Think about it: we can enjoy Renaissance art, Celtic sculpture, even Stone-age cave painting. But we have no idea what an improvisation by J.S. Bach on the organ or by W.A. Mozart on the piano sounded like. Knowledge of these musics - and many others as well - were lost at the death of the last person to hear them. Cheers, John

Just today, I "Liked" a posting in a banjo forum in which someone said it annoyed him when people speak of printed scores as "music." Music, he pointed out, is sounds in the air, not dots on paper. I personally would go even farther and claim that music isn't bytes on a data storage medium, either! OK, what comes out of a loudspeaker or headphones is sounds in air. But they are not the sounds that a musician has produced on his or her instrument. Recordings are perhaps analogous to photographs. They can give you a pretty good impression of the original, but it's always the same impression. It's the impression of how the model looked while interacting with the photographer, or how the music sounded when the musician was interacting with the sound engineer. That's the difference between the art forms of painting and music: a painting is varnished on leaving the studio, and remains unchanged, no matter who looks at it; whereas a piece of music has to be performed over and over again, and the audience present at each concert can affect the interpretation of it. So, yes, for me, music is a volatile art form. But a song - even a phrase of a song - doesn't die. If someone hears it, well knowing that they will not hear it quite like that again, it will live on in his or her memory. Cheers, John

With me, it was the other way round. At the age when other little boys dream of becoming engine-drivers, I dreamt of running away to sea! I could handle a dinghy on salt water before I could roller-skate (I can't roller-skate even yet). There came a time when I realised that a shore job was more desirable than seasickness 24/7, but when I took up a competitive sport, it was rowing. That was about the time that I took up the Anglo, with the intention of singing more sea songs (I already had enough instruments to accompany my landlubber songs!) Cheers, John

In another thread, mention has been made of the harmonium, or reed organ. This is a free-reed instrument, of course, but it also has the keyboard of the historical keyoard instruments. I reckon, if I had a piano and a harmonium in the house, I'd prefer to work up arrangements on the harmonium. It gives me the capability to sound a combination of notes, and then alter one or two of them while the rest are still sounding. Or I can pause on a melody note for as long as it takes to find the best supporting chord. And because the harmonium's "natural/accidental" keyboard suits the "natural/accidental" style of standard notation, I imagine it would be easier to write a harmonium arrangement down than, say, a duet concertina arrangement. As for me, my instrument for finding melodies is my voice, and the most convenient way of finding the matching harmonies is the Autoharp. After that, I can usually work out arrangements for other instruments (e.g. Anglo or banjo) quite easily. Cheers, John