Heather

Hi Gorwel Well, we've corresponded privately on this already, so that you'll know that Craftydab's reply is about spot-on. Really, with the 20-button you stick to tunes in G major (or, for Irish tunes, most in A minor, since 90% of Irish tunes in A minor are in a mode [Dorian] which uses the same notes as G major. C major is also fine, and although not common in Irish music, it's a good key. Following Martin Hayes (fiddle), we often play the jig "Hole in the Hedge" in C, followed by "Cooley's Jig" in G - both of them easy (the first is really easy played along the upper row on the 20-button). You won't find these in The Concertina Diaries, but they're available for free download on our site: http://www.irishtunebook.com/more-tunes.php . But I think loads of 20-button players will find 'get-arounds' for that missing C#, so don't give up on D! Thanks very much to all who have posted positively about the tutor. I'm really glad if it's helpful. I think it will suit some people and not others; really important to read the first couple of chapters first before trying out the tunes. AND not to take suggested fingerings as Gospel! The aim of the tutor is to help learners's fingers find their way around the keyboard, and discover that there really are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to playing a tune on a concertina. I'm always happy to get feedback or suggestions or comments, folks. So if anyone wants to email me, contact me first through the website www.IrishTunebook.com and then we can carry on by exchanging email addresses; I prefer not to put my email address on forums, in order to avoid spam. Happy playing!

Oh, and I should have added that our Facebook page is Trad For All. Do check it out. Heather

I'm glad if you're finding "The Concertina Diaries" useful, Ron. It's selling well to learners around the world as well as in shops and online to Irish concertina learners, and getting great feedback, which is very gratifying. A couple of days ago, Dick S from the UK emailed me to say "What a treasure this book has proved to be...". Robin T emailed me a short while ago saying: "Progress is being made (albeit slowly) thanks to your really good book. Our local friend Jan S bought one too after hearing about mine,..." And if I might mention Ron: "Just received the Concertina Diaries book and have to say what a great book,I can see a lot of work has gone into this book and it will be so much help to me ,I have other books on the concertina but not a patch on this one." It's really great when people buying the "Diaries" find it useful. We're just going into the 4th printing; and during the winter I intend to produce a 2nd Edn., which will have material on working the bellows - as important, really, as learning the various button options for a given tune/sequence.. For anyone who is interested, our online website is www.IrishTunebook.com (there are other tunebooks, including "Ten Years of Tunes", which includes 419 (!) tunes in musical notation and in ABC. Many are given in 'sets', which we play out regularly and have stood the test of time. The concertina part of the website includes some additional tunes in the same concertina notation as The Concertina Diaries (plus dots and ABC of course), and notes on various aspects of playing. I intend to add a lot to these downloadable 'extras' in the coming weeks and months. So: thank you for the comment on concertina.net, which I've only just seen and am grateful for. Best wishes Heather

PS: AND sometimes playing all along the C row (except for the higher notes on the RH) especially for tunes in A or E minor. The Geese in the Bog, a jig in Emin (the natural minor of C) plays easily along the middle row.

If I were attending a Noel Hill workshop, I would consider getting a concertina maintenance person to convert the instrument to a Jeffries (easy and cheap to do). AND make sure, when asked to play a scale of Dmaj, to use the LH middle row D, and the RH pull B. True exponents of the Noel Hill method seem to play Jeffries or similar layouts - 2 or more (eg Carroll has 3 C# buttons as standard) - and often gloss over the difficulties of NOT using the lower-row B together with that C#. But in my view the lower row push D (on what my notation in "The Concertina Diaries" - see IrishTunebook.com if you don't mnd me plugging a website) would call G2 is extremely useful, very often, especially when you're playing an F# next to it (button G2), since your finger's on that button anyway for the F#. The two B options both have their place and it just depends on what tune you're playing; what sequence of notes. Indeed, why should ANY of the buttons be regarded as taboo? The three locations for A (C5, G3 and A4) all have their place; try playing Tobin's Jig (Dmaj) on a Wheatstone layout, incorporating that push A on A4 (outside row), and it suddenly become easy and elegant to play. And don't ever under-estimate the ease of playing some tunes ALL along the inside row (apart from the C#, of course); it often makes an otherwise difficult tune both easy and elegant. Heather

That smily in my post above was actually "(b)" when I wrote it...

Hi Marcus Heather Greer (author of "The Concertina Diaries" here. I thought I'd just post a response to say that I wrote this manual because, as a learner, I had found it so difficult to obtain a tutor which (a) was sufficiently comprehensive enough to show a beginner what buttons to use, where the notes actually are on different types of layout, and ( didn't follow some one line of thinking that says you MUST use a particular button for a particular note - or more usually that you must NOT use a given button (for example, for some reason many players, including good ones, just forbid the use of the D and the B buttons found on the LH inside row - a perspective that I find confusing: all of the buttons are potentially useful, and a learner needs to find the many different ways of playing a given sequence of notes. "The Concertina Diaries" grew out of my own lengthy learning process. I tried to make it the kind of manual that would have been useful to ME as I started to learn my way around the Anglo. I hope it may fill a gap for other beginners, or indeed people with some prior experience who want to explore the potential of the various layouts in greater depth. The approach is a bit like people learn a foreign language these days - NOT by learning lots of grammar (keys and scales) first, but by being guided into how to play a sequence of tunes easily and well, with essential stuff on scales and keys thrown in as the need arises. In reality, I find that "learning scales" is not a generally helpful thing to do with the Anglo, since that tends to confine the player to learning one position only for commonly used notes. I teach trad music, along with my partner (see DustyBanjos.com for more), and just last night a concertina learner who was experiencing difficulty in playing Tobin's (jig - an excellent tune for getting to grips with that pushed G on the LH outside row, if you're playing a Wheatstone type layout); she was accustomed to using the D on the LH middle row, and didn't even realise that even though she was using the 2nd button on the LH inside row for F#, she could obtain the D she needed just by pushing that same button! That's the fault of being taught by someone who insists on using or not using certain buttons to play a scale. If anyone would like to learn more about The Concerina Diaries, see IrishTunebook.com; and if you would like to ask anything about it, feel free to mail me at heather.cleggan@gmail.com