Steve Mansfield

I've got 1 warning point, which I got shortly after having asked what warning points are. When I got in touch with Paul and asked why, his reply (having reassured me I hadn't actually done anything naughty) was basically that I'd asked about them, and so I now had one. So I think it's like Fight Club - the first rule is, you never talk about Warning Points ....

Yes, and yes, basically. It's a matter of fluency, familiarity, and practice. Getting the overall shape of a tune will help putting the individual notes in the right places.

I think we've probably all been there - fine playing on your own, but the wheels fall off when you first start playing with other people. It's just a matter of getting back in there and trying again, and carry on trying until you suddenly find that you can keep going (and then you'll fall off the tune that time as well, because the very act of realising that you're keeping up will interfere with the largely subconscious process that is allowing you to play fluently). There are many factors at play in a session that you just don't get playing at home on your own - you maybe can't hear yourself as well as you're used to, other people around you may be playing subtlely diferent versions of the tune, you are not in sole control of the tempo, there's all sorts of visual and auditory distractions ... And also you're nervous because you so want to get it right, and that interferes with the playing too. There is only one way to get better at it - and that's getting out there and doing it. One day you'll be sailing along on the crest of the wave of a favourite tune, and will look back on your first attempts and think 'Ha, now I've got it', ... And then, of course, you'll fall off again because that thought also got in the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3XMGlbUYpI - thanks for that, not an AC video I'd seen before. The video is minorly marred by whichever eejit in the audience is humming along (completely out of key and obviously not knowing the tune very well), but a lovely version as ever, and a mountain for the rest of us to climb!

On the contrary, I'd have thought that if anglos were all fitted with thumb straps and 'pinkie' rests, and maybe at the same time do something about the note arrangement and get it so that the same note plays on both push and pull, then we might be getting somewhere ;-)

We could end up with a month where the TOTM is John Cage's 4'33'' - the full three-movement version of course.

Less than two months to go. Getting a bit giddy now ...

The tune book is well worth it - and the latest CD, Batiska, is the first one with substantial input from the quartet version of the band and is just lovely.

Here's a Belgian schottische from the wonderful band Naragonia. I learnt this at Toon Van Mierlo's music workshop last Sunday at the Sheffield Eurosession before the splendid evening bal with Naragonia, and a fairly lo-fi recording of the workshopped result is at http://soundcloud.com/sfmans/de-hemel-in-sheffield with yours truly leading off over a base of droning fiddles ... X:131 T:Den Hemel In M:4/4 L:1/8 Z:Steve Mansfield 2013 C:Toon Van Mierlo, Naragonia K:G G2 Bc BG B/c/d | ed cB A2 FG | G2 Bc BG B/c/d | e g2 f dc BA | G2 Bc BG B/c/d | ed cB A2 FG | GB cd AB cd | GB cd d2 ef :| |: g4 f4 | e2 dc BG B/c/d | ed cB dc Bc | A A2 A Ad ef | g4 f4 | e2 dc BG B/c/d | GB cd AB cd | GB cd d2 ef :|

[quote name="Mildredestelle" post="147267" timestamp=" What happens, for instance, when playing with others if, as Steve said, you develop and learn a harmonized version of a tune and then can't get back to the basic melody? Do most of you who regularly play with others learn both? From my limited experience of Sessions and jams, it seems that one is either melody or accompaniment and that too much harmony rapidly becomes a veritable cacophony. Perhaps it is merely a matter of experience -- the tune coming first, the harmony not learned, but showing up (or not) as needed? Sarah The real fun starts when you play the same tune with two non-intersecting groups of musicians, and each group has quite developed harmonies which both work with the melody but don't work with each other Personally I've come to concertina from a long time previously playing flute (and do still play a lot of flute) so, for me, the tune comes first. I love the way that the same tune can have multiple different harmonies, or indeed the supposedly same tune can have multiple different versions (there's a tune book on my shelf with two whole pages dedicated to different versions of the Morpeth Rant for example). So, for me, the tune comes first and the harmonies are built on top of that, or if you're playing in a bigger group /session I try to concentrate on playing the locally 'right' version and let others worry about the chordal harmonies. Others will have very different approaches, and quite right too! I've just read that back and I'm not sure whether that answers your question or not, but there you go! I can see this spinning off into a thread of it's own, leaving the June TOTM thread to get on with being about the June TOTM ....

I'm another one who viewed the results and, as a result, cast a null vote. That's fine by me actually - I'm perfectly happy to have a go at whatever the vote decides upon, and if I did vote I would probably play safe rather than stretching myself. So a null vote, from me at least, is far from an expression of disinterest, it's an interested abstention. My version of La Luna Dins l'Aiga is now up on the June thread BTW, and I'm eagerly awaiting B-ES's analysis of the latitudinal jolliness of my version compared to his

I love this tune, although I didn't realise that was what it was called until now. It crops up in French dances and sessions (or bouefs, as they rather wonderfully call them) every now and then ... Here we go then - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDevDugAosc , three times through and designed to provoke mass spontaneous outbreaks of schottisching wherever it is heard. Having tied myself in total knots trying to do a complex harmonised version of Parson's Farewell for May's TOTM; so much so that at the moment I can't even play the basic flipping tune any more!; I decided to go back to melody-plus-twiddles for this one, because melody-plus-twiddles is what I do

That would make for an excellently lively thread wouldn't it. (Says the man who's very aware he's still not yet posted his Parson's Farewell to the May thread )

Anglo-german ? You said it! Ah, that'll explain why the sheep baa in a different note when they're bungee-ing down from the tree than when they're bouncing back up again. For an English system sheep, of course, the baa is the same on both the bungee and the bounce.

That's very sad news indeed. Thanks for letting us know Dirge.

To follow up on my earlier posts I've just had one end off my Wheatstone to free a gummy reed, and there's a Repaired By Accordion Magic sticker inside

The Hobgoblin shop on Oxford Road Manchester have a concertina repairer under contract, and they did a lovely job on my Wheatstone EC a few years ago - obviously the shop act as agents so don't reveal their ID but it was a quick turnaround and wasn't expensive. Dave Elliot http://www.concertina-repair.org.uk/ literally wrote the book on repairing concertinas and is just over the Pennines in Sheffield. I took one look at the aforementioned book and decided that I'd always get work done by somebody like him who knows what they're doing.

Here's my attempt (I thought I would share after all) - A couple of bum notes to give it that live feel, and boy oh boy that push low B is flat, but my Concentina Connection Jack baritone gets its moment in the sun.

Interesting discussion on what a waltz is - the Boda strikes me as quite a jolly Swedish waltz by comparison to some ... I've tried several times to make a TOTM contribution that I'm happy with but to no avail. On to next month's tune!

a good start would be to put them together into an abc file and/or a PDF and put them on your own website. People are always in search of intersting new tunes and they will find their way to your collection somehow or other. Why not also put them up as an abc file or a link in the Music and Tunes section here?

Vals från Boda This tune was learnt from a record by Laggars Anders, Röjås Jonas and Pål Olle, from Boda near Rättvik in Dalarna, Sweden. All three of these players have since passed away. The waltz was taken by them from the playing of Soling Anders. Fiddle Music From Northern Lands, Charlie Saksena 2008. Lovely tune, looking forward to hearing what others do with it, and will put mine up in a few days once I'm reasonably happy with my playing of it.

That's great: there are a couple in there that I'd missed, especially as I deliberately didn't listen to anyone else's take on the tune until I had done my own ... On to April!

That's really nice, I love muiñeiras and Galician music generally, I look forward to hearing / seeing more from you two!

Here's my effort - twice through on my lovely Wheatstone EC from c.1854. Recorded on my iPad, using the concertina case as a tripod ...

When The Powderkegs were coming back from the Prague Folklore Days festival a few years ago, the customs officials at the airport made everyone unpack their musical instruments and give them a quick tune. Whether they were checking for endangered materials, or bombs, or just getting a free gig at our expense, we never found out: but when a burly Czech customs official with a uniform and a big gun said 'Play', we played ...