Old Blevins

Old Blevins, I can't download you either....of course, I'm as dumb as a sack a hammers . Worked OK for me. After unzip, it's in the area of the ini file. Look for another subdirectory/folder layer called "Squeezin' Out The Grass". It's another layer down. By the way, didn't Pete Seegers sister play a concertina? I vaguely remember a long time ago reading something about that? Most people drink from the fountain of knowledge, I only gargled. Thanks Leo Sorry for your problems downloading the album. I should have explained more. Download the second file at the link. It contains the music files all in a compressed folder that contains everything. Once it is dowloaded, you should unzip everything directly into your "My Music" folder, or wherever you keep your music on the computer. The files are organized as Artist folder at the top, Album folder next level down, and all the songs, etc. in the album folder. It is the same way things would appear if you ripped a CD onto your computer. Quite a few different people I know have downloaded and listened to it from that site, so I don't think there are any fundamental problems. The trick is probably to unzip (decompress) the folders and files and downloading, and then know where to look to find the song files. Windows XP and Vista should have the capability to do this. If you're operating system is older than that you may have to search for and download a programs such as "Winzip".

Check out my version of "In the Pines" on the Bluegrass Concertina album. Some of my listeners say it is one of the favorites on the album.

thankyou leo By the way, thanks for this link. It is an excellent rendition of Jimmy Brown the Newsboy. Excellent singing voice also. I've never heard it done with a Brittish accent. I think A.P. Carter would be pleased (I believe he wrote the song). There are a lot similar old songs like that done with the concertina on my Bluegrass Concertina album (even if my singing is not as good, and the concertina is the Anglo). In fact, there are relatively few songs on the album that the composer is known, and I'm not aware that any of the songs were written after 1900. Check it out.

For all the songs on my album, I recorded 3-6 separate tracks one at a time. I assume by the "latency problem" you mean the slight lag you get when you output the music currently being recorded along with previously recorded tracks. It really is unacceptable, and it screws you up. It's is probably the only frustrating/disappointing thing I experience. To work around that, I listen only to what has previously been previously recorded through headphones and select the option to not playback/output what is currently being recorded. I set the volume on the lowest audible level for playing back what has previously been recorded, so I can hear that through the headphones, but I can still hear myself playing or singing what is currently being recorded outside the headphones. It seems like this kind of thing shouldn't be necessary, but it is, and actually it worked very well, and I got good results.

Thank you. Sounds like a good suggestion. My concertina is pretty quiet as far as action noise, so it wasn't a big problem for me. I can hear just a little of it on a couple of the songs I recorded. But generally speaking that is another consideration. Experiment with reflected recording. My experience is that a single mic works fine if you position it to receive the concertina's sound reflected from a large hard object - like a wall, or to be more precise: two walls. Place the mic about 3 feet in from the corner of a room and play the concertina facing that corner about 3 or 4 feet in front of the mic. The sound seems to reflect off the walls well to arrive at the single mic with minimal volume loss. Besides needing only a single mic and having improved volume levels, having the mic further away will minimize the concertina's action noise. -- Rich --

I figured that "PC" may have been a typo for Piano Accordian. Roy Acuff had an accordian quite regularly on his early old-timey, classic country music recordings from around the 1940's, and it sounded great. I recommend the Roy Acuff Proper Box Set. It is a 4 CD set that includes a lot of these earlier songs. Considering he is known as the "King of Country" music, it is a little strange that others did not follow suit. The influence of rock and roll on country music in the 50's probably didn't help the cause. Even Roy pretty much dropped the accordian from his records in his later years. In any case, if "THE MAN", the inventor of Bluegrass, wasn't opposed to having an accordian in his band, then that pretty much settles it. Whatever the purists, grass holes, or whatever you want to call them say, there is absolutely no historical or traditional reason why bluegrass music cannot include the concertina. By the way, I think the "traditional" bluegrass band lineup is more influenced by the popularity of "string bands" in the early 20th century than anything else. I am fairly sure I have seen photographs of Maybelle Carter with a piano accordion. I wouldn't be suprised Dick. Once the Carter family children started touring with the grown-ups, the PA (sorry for the typo earlier) was a part of their sound. I forget which of Maybelle's daughters was assigned PA duty but a wonderful book Will you miss me when I'm gone gives the low-down. Wonderful page turner. Yes, Bill's mother played the single row button box. The biography Can't you hear me calling gives a brief view on their relationship. She played and sang and Bill was very connected to her. Her early death left him adrift. His uncle Pen (fiddler) and a black blues guitarist, harmonica player, singer became his anchor. Many interesting influences there. His mother and uncle Pen were of Dutch heritage, poppa was Scottish and the black musician (I'm recalling Paul Schwartz...my feeble mind is not trustable here and I'm sure one of our members will set me straight) gave him a very deep pool of experiences. All these bits and pieces are what keeps me connected to bluegrass even when I get a bit frustrated at a growing trend in American bluegrass circles towards exclusion and osification rather than the long standing tradition of inclusion. Good luck on your journey Old Bevins and you can bet I'll download your experimental bluegrass concertina album. There ain't many of us box players rollin' around in the bluegrass and we've got to stick together .

Thanks for your information, Mark. I agree with what you say. I am pretty much committed to the AC and making it work for what I want to do. No thoughts of switching to the EC. I started out playing Celtic music on the concertina with others a long time ago. But since I picked it up again about a year and a half ago and started playing mainly bluegrass, I have played mostly by myself. But I am starting to play more with others, and record some songs with others, and hope to more in the future. As things progress and I learn more tunes, I may try to find a local session. I also attend about 1 bluegrass festival per year, which presents some opportunities. You mention Bill Monroe touring "with a PC player in the band". What do you mean by "PC", and assuming it is a concertina, did he record anything with it? Anyway, you have a lot of experience about this subject, and if you could download my experimental Bluegrass Concertina album, listen a bit, and give me some feed back on how you think I can improve my playing (never mind the singing), I would appreciate it. Is your goal to play with others? Bluegrass is by nature a communal activity. Tempi are on the swift side. OT is communal, but the fiddler or banjo player often can be seen as the solitary wanderer playing and singing alone. The style Dick demonstrates I think is perfectly at home in the OT genre and his song has been often done, less so bluegrass unless a few clicks faster with the off beat accentuated (beats 2 & 4). If you are playing with bluegrass musicians, the mandolin will most likely take care of the off beat. The company you keep kind of dictates which side of the line to hang out on. EC or AC is unimportant. What you are comfortable with is. Make it work Are there any bluegrass jam sessions in your area? It might be fun to just go and see. On free reed instruments in bluegrass other than the occational harmonica: Bill Monroe toured with a PC player in the band. Long, long time ago. My group Obi's Boys is seen as a novelty act...neither fish nor foul. I play 50-50 banjo and concertina and we mix in all sorts of genre. The same was true of my old band Shady Grove. Today they play traditional Bluegrass. The musicians involved are mostly welcoming...give it a shot.

Does anyone have any experience recording the concertina or live music in general at home onto a computer? If so, what kind of results did you get, and what kind of harware/software did you use? I am not an expert on this, but my experience is as follows: I recently recorded a Bluegrass Concertina album at home. If you are interested, you can read more about it and find a link to download by clicking the following link: Bluegrass Concertina Album Post My story goes like this. A few months ago I bought a USB turntable for converting old vinyl records to digital. It came with some recording software for the computer. I recorded a few old vinyl albums onto the computer and was really happy with the results. So I thought, I wonder what I can do with this software if I plug a microphone into laptop? I quickly got it working and played a little concertina into the mic. It sounded pretty good, so the experiment quickly evolved into a project. First a song, then another one, and pretty soon plans for a whole album, which I completed over a couple of weeks vacation time. To make the album, all I used was the following: 1. The laptop (Dell Inspiron 9300) which is 2.5 years old. It was a good middle of the road laptop when new with a pretty good soundcard, but nothing special 2. The recording software called Audacity, which came with the turntable. 3. A $50 Shure microphone that we use for Karaoke at home The results were pretty good considering it was done on a whim, and I didn't buy or use anything I didn't already have. It was also a learning experience, and I got better at it as I went, particularly with the editing. But I didn't go back and redo anything that was already considered "finished" and "good enough". It was a little tricky playing the concertina into a single mic and getting good level volume from both sides. The mic had to be pretty close to the source, whatever I was recording. Even so, the volume of the finished songs turned out a little lower than the average commercial CD, but not bad. I suppose I could have amplifed everything digitally, but I avoided doing that. I was little concerned about things sounding "unnatural" if I did too much digital manipulation. So to try to improve the results in the future, I have ordered a better microphone ($100) designed for instrument as well as voice, and a USB pre-amp that enables recording from 2 microphones simutaneously (also $100). I figure this will enable me to record the music at a higher volume, and enable me to mic both sides of the concertina and/or record two sources (instruments or voices) simultaneously. That is about the maximum I wanted to invest at this time, and if I get the hoped for improvements, that will probably be good enough for me. Does anyone have any comments or other suggestions?

I am having trouble getting the YouTube link to work, even the 2nd version. Says "The URL contained a malformed video ID". Can't even seem to find that particular video by searching. I am interested to see it. In any case, I figured I would learn that there are some other bluegrass concertina players out there. Interesting that others are using the English rather than the Anglo. I find that the Anglo works pretty well for about any song, but the fast instrumental tunes are difficult (for me at least). Perhaps the English is better for the instrumental tunes. I am 100% self-taught on the Anglo Chromatic, and I honestly don't know how conventional my style or techniques are, or what kind of music my style of playing is best suited for.

I am a new member, and I know this is a very old post, but I ran across it recently doing a Google search on "Bluegrass Concertina". There ain't much else out there on the subject. Maybe this post will resurrect the topic. As you probably know, the concertina is seldom if every used in professional bluegrass music. I have over 2,500 bluegrass and old-time country songs (new and old) in my music collection, and there is not a concertina on one of them. I believe that traditional bluegrass music has an unhealthy (and not historically justifiable) bias towards stringed instruments. After all, the concertina predates not only bluegrass music, but also country music, and recorded music by many years. It stands to reason that the old traditional songs and tunes that are the staple of bluegrass music were played a lot on the concertina in the late 1800's and early 1900's. It's a shame, because Bluegrass (as all folk music) sounds great played on the concertina. I have taken on the mission to try to promote and encourage the use of the concertina in bluegrass music. So I recently recorded a homemade album, "Squeezin' Out the Grass", which I believe to be the first bluegrass concertina album in history. It was recorded using only a laptop computer and a single microphone. It is mostly old-time traditional songs that have been recorded bluegrass style by various artists over the years. I call myself "Master of the Bluegrass Concertina", which is tongue-in-cheek. I am not that good, but there are no well known bluegrass concertina players, so I jokingly claimed the title by default. It features the Anglo Chromatic Concertina as the primary instrument, if not the only instrument, on every song. I felt I had to include vocals and other things to keep the album interesting. I tried to mix it up a lot. Slow tunes, fast tunes, secular songs, gospel songs, some other instruments and surprises thrown in occasionally, etc. I'm not a great musician (I guess I would be considered intermediate level on the concertina) and even less of a singer. So it is strictly an amateur job both talent and production-wise, but it turned out better than most people (including myself) anticipated. I forced my wife, kids, and brother to all make guest appearanes. Most importantly, I had a hoot making it, and I am having fun distributing it and getting people's reaction. The majority of my friends and co-works like it and have found it interesting and entertaining. Ironically, people who aren't bluegrass fans and aren't familiar with the songs seem to like it best. As a result, various friends and acquaintances want to record a song with me "Bluegrass Concertina" style, so there are plans for various sessions and additional recordings in the future. If anyone is interested in downloading a copy of this album, it is at the link below. The first file contains good images of the album cover front and back. The second contains the music. As far as the music goes, it is all in one compressed file, so it is all or nothing. The 13 songs are in MP3 format and the files are organized in standard digital music format with all the tags, etc. Squeezin' Out the Grass This is the first time I have made it available to the general public in any way. Any questions or feedback, let me know. It is what it is, and if nothing else, I think it is unique.