Azalin

Also, musicians who play on CDs will often play quite differently than if they'd be playing with friends in a session. A recording won't necesseraly tell you how the musician would really play his stuff if he were in another context. I heard Mick O'Brian on flute and pipes, Kevin Burke on flute, in sessions, and they both play quite differently than on their recordings.

Yes, exactly. I think this is what most people who aren't really into ITM don't get. Melody is what we strive for mainly. I'm not talking for all ITM fans, but I'm sure a good portion of it. I like guitar backup when well played, but melody should always come first. Over-chording and over-harmonizing dillutes the melody, again IMHO as a ITM fan.

Amazing. Yeah, I noticed that the tone on mine mellowed out since last year... I had it for a little more than a year now. Also, I'm pretty sure the bellows are more flexible, after being broken into. Is yours comparable to a County Clare model? Mine is smaller than an average concertina, but seems bigger than yours. Mine fits me perfectly... as you're saying, everything seems easier on it. Also, the air tightess is truly amazing. It really does never run out of air. At the beginning I thought that having only 6 fold bellows could be a problem, but it's not.

Wow Beth! It looks amazing. I sure hope we can trade and try our "Dippers" when I'll be at the Friday Harbor festival this year, hope you can make it to Seattle :-)

Very cool Beth! I can't wait for sound samples and pictures

Playing devil's advocate here... The main danger with queue jumping is that people start sending deposits to all makers, knowing that later they can safely recover their deposit by switching with someone else. So you get people who are unsure if they want a high end instrument, and people still not sure which want they want, inflating waiting lists... So the danger is that when you wait for an instrument, and there's 100 people before you, 30% of them are pretty much "virtual" spots which will be traded later. This practice actually makes you wait longer for the instrument, because if only people who were certain of their decision would be on the waiting list, you'd have a shorter waiting list. The idea is to lose your deposit if you change your mind. I'm not so sure making queue jumping easy is a good idea, especially not for genuine buyers.

Colin has a business account with Fedex (had at least, at the time I got mine) and I think he's got fixed price for international shipping, I must have paid around 150$ to get mine. It was very was, like 2-3 business days and it was at my door, safely delivered in a sturdy shipping box.

I think Azalin was clear that that is a "commandment" he has made for himself, not one he's trying to impose on the rest of us. And since I was raised in a country where a person has a right to worship in his own way, I see nothing wrong with that. Yes, was just being ironic about my own rules... Now I need to go, it's time for my monthly ritual to keep the Dipper happy. A moose or deer should do!

How about linguistic sloppiness? Where it was first used here, I understood "chopping" to mean an undesirable interruption or irregularity in the sound of the music, not the "jumping" of a finger, which was supposedly causing it. If you (David and others) start using "chopping" to mean "jumping", then how are we to distinguish jumping which doesn't seem to "chop" the sound, or a "chopping" effect which is caused by something other than jumping a finger? Aside from that, I think it's an interesting and worthwhile discussion. i agree with you. i use the word jumping. but i think that david was using the word chopping to describe what i was calling jumping, though i may have misunderstood. i agree with you that chopping is the wrong word--because you can obviously jump without being choppy, so it has an implicit assumption inherent in it. i was trying to be more clear by at least partially including his word, but i think i made things more unclear. i could have done it another way, such as, "see if you can find where i jump, and if it sounds choppy or not." Good point, I use the word "chopping" too to describe "jumping", but you are right, jumping doesn not necessarily mean choppiness. I try not to ever, ever jump, as one of the concertina commandments, but when I am satisfied with my brain wires I guess I'll allow jumping for specific occasions. But can we all agree that using jumping as primary basic 'technique' will certainly develop choppiness if overused? That being said, back to my concertina practice!

It's totallt normal, in my case anyway. My concertinas, in a few years, had different problems... My Edgley had buzzing sounds, and I used a little piece of paper to "clean" the offending reeds, and it fixed it. My Dipper had a few pads go awry, and Paul Read in Toronto fixed it easily. I think the changing weather has such effect on concertinas, but usually when you pass the first year or two, the concertina will stabilize... in my own experience anyway!

Yeah, Tam Linn... problem is, it is seen as the "Stairway to Heaven" of irish or scottish music, a bit risky to play :-)

On the other hand -- with a side reference to another Topic -- you could learn to use those variations in tonality deliberately, in the way that some folks think is such an important capability of the violin. Pfffff, I ain't playin' a stinkin' fiddle! ;-)

Yeah on mine, pretty much all reeds closer to the index fingers sound better, clearer and louder. There's another interesting remark Tim Collins made to us in a class, it's that when playing a phrase, you might want to keep the same reed you played before so that the sound doesn't change for a specific note. For example, if in a phrase you used LH pull A on the G row, you might want to use it again in the same phrase *even if you don't need to use it*. That's something to think about. The sound definitely changes from reed to reed, even for the same exact note.

Interesting Larry, I'd definitely do what you said, push D and G on G row, and then pull Bb on accidental row... you then get push / push / pull... I guess using the G on the accidental row would allow you play the sequence with pull / pull /pull or push / pull /pull, so if you really needed this for some phrasing reason, using that G on the accidental row could be the only way... But I'd definitely use that initial "standard" fingering you described.

I'm pretty convinced that "borrowing a finger" instead of chopping will greatly improve your flow in tunes. There are tunes, sometimes in Gm, where you need to borrow a finger to play the Bb and chopping would definitely not flow as much... but I guess we do what works for us. If you can manage to play as smoothly chopping those instead of borrowing fingers, good for you, but I couldn't manage on fast tunes.

Sorry I meant too early in the morning and week... My eyes are red and puffy and I'm drinking a strong tea at work to try to keep me awake, but it's not working much

I'm talking about "high" E... So push D/pull E button on LH G row, index finger... The first octave D, you can do both, but I think Edel is using pull D third finger on the C row a little more than push D pinkie on G row. It's too early for me to speak concertina fingering, I'm bound to make an obvious mistake!

Maybe we're not talking about the same type of choppiness, Jim. I'm pretty much with David on this one, and I avoid choppiness at all cost. I don't see it as a technique, but as a handicap, like driving a standard car with only one hand, one for the wheel and the same for the gear stick... dangerous :-) Since july 2008 I have moved from playing most notes with the C row to playing cross row, but the main idea, was to play without choppiness... playing cross row was mostly an end result of wanting to play without choppiness. Edel Fox did tell me to use the LH G row push D/pull E as my first choice, and to use buttons I can play with my index fingers when I have the choice... So RH B became the logical choice. But anyway, before july 2008, I could remember tunes more easily because I pretty much had ONE way to play them, ONE way to play a note. It was much easier in that sense... but my tunes were so choppy, I could not manage to get a steady flow in the tunes. I would sound very mecanical and my right hand had to do some magic to play some impossible passages. The second part of Fred Finn's with only the right hand was a random thing, I had to be very awake and in control to manage to play it through steadily... now, with cross row and LH high D/E, the same passage is like a picnic! The main problem now with crossrow and avoiding choppiness is that it's harder for me to play a tune I haven't played for a while because some tunes are like a maze, and when you want to play them steady without choppiness, you need to have a specific chain of positions/buttons that can be easily derailed if you don't practice the tune a lot.

Hmmm well I can't tell you, but at least the account seems very active, and had many sales lately. So if the account were hijacked, I'm sure the true owner would have gotten back his account quickly.

But, when you follow the basic principle that your index finger should be used on the first column, second finger on the second column, etc, isn't that fingering very standard? Middle finger for the E, then third finger for the C#, which is on the third column, and pinky on the A, which is on the fourth. I am surprised to hear other people would do it differently, what is the alternative? If you start E with your index finger, then you're moving the center of your layout to the left, which might make it very hard to come back to it, and might force you to get choppy, no? Nice posts! EDITED: I am surprised Noel told you to go from low C# to low A with the same finger, not using the same finger for two different buttons in a row has become kind of a religion to me, so Noel is actually much less strict that I would have thought. EDIT2: I realize this is what you call jumping?

May it depend on the type of music you're playing? In irish music, D major tunes with a G# are quite unfrequent. I'm sure there are, but I don't think I know any.

David I too really liked your rendition of "Farewell to Chernobyl", it's a tough tune on the concertina and you managed quite well. I like this tune a lot, not my typical trad tune but it joins the shetland tune "The Anvil" in the "arpegio filled but great tunes" repertoire :-)

Nature is unfair, she was twice my age and kept all her hair!

Lawrence, I don't think you really get it. Here's a pure traditional style: You need to remove your hair and wear a chinese outfit. Made me very popular in San Francisco

Hi Azalin very interesting .What system anglo do you play ? and What type of music do you play? ATB Bob I play a 34 buttons C/G, with Jeffries layout... so my choices might not correspond to yours, but my idea was simply to have "reverse" choices to avoid too much push/pull in some parts of a tune.