Timbecile

My first show ever playing a concertina was a few months ago....in one of our songs, there's a fairly prominent concertina "solo". I run to the front of the stage, do my best "look at me" pose, and right as I'm pulling air into the concertina to play "POP!" the left hand strap breaks. (damn cheap chinese handstraps!) I had to struggle through the solo trying to finger and pull on the strap block at the same time....sounded terrible I'm sure, but at least I looked good! the next day I ran out and mangled a pair of belts and rigged up new hand straps....which will take a large explosion to break. (good thing too, as we had another show a few days later!)

In my circle, I'm well known for they variety of freakish faces I sport when I'm on stage. When I'm practicing though, it's a completely different story....concertina face all over the place! One thing I've noticed through my travels is that forcing yourself to think about (and do) other things while you're playing a song (like singing or making anything other than a blank stare-face) helps you (me!) learn the song better. I guess trying to do two things at once helps commit the song to muscle memory...(or maybe my brain stops getting in the way of playing the song!)

Super! Irish Washerwoman was my first song too! (If you don't count the songs my band does)...still working on it. I just started learning Ashokan Farewell on the new Rochelle...such a great song!

My new Rochelle finally arrived from the Button Box last night. I know some people were asking about the differences between the Rochelle and the Hohner, and now that I've got some experience, I can finally say: WOW! Such a huge difference. I'm amazed at how much easier the bellows are, and how much more responsive the button action is. I was afraid that I'd have some trouble adjusting, but I took it out of the box, and started ripping it up right away. It seriously is worlds better than the Hohner. I'm a little glad I started on the Hohner though...I think the stiff bellows and slow action helped me build up the muscle tone to play the Rochelle a lot cleaner than I would have had I started with it. I'm totally excited, and can't wait to get home and play it some more!

I've got the Hohner D-20. It's my only squeezebox right now, so I've been putting a lot of time into it. I haven't played a Rochelle or any other box yet, so I don't have much to compare it to, but here's my thoughts on it.... The bellows are really tight. When you want to get really loud (I play in a rock band) it takes some pretty good strength to pull the thing...I've already ripped through the stock set of handstraps and had to replace them with a cut up pair of belts. (works tons better) The action is fairly sloppy, and the keys stick sometimes. (after playing a B on the RH, I have to pull it back out or it will constantly speak) All in all, it feels like a cheap instrument (IT IS) and I'm sure that it's not going to hold up to the abuse I'm probably going to be putting it through. I'm already 2/3 of the way to my goal in my Rochelle fund. Still, on the upside, without the Hohner, I probably wouldn't have ever got into playing it.

Thanks!...we try to look cool on stage ...most people call the kind of music we play "Celtic Punk",...but I think we sound like a mixture of The Pogues and AC/DC not the best sound, but here's a link to a song from our show at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood last night...

I just started playing, so I don't have a concertina as cool as any of you guys yet! but here's a pic of my Hohner 20 key from our show last Thursday!

hmm..forgot about fry's...I do have one close. I ended up buying Remote Control cases from Polycase. I liked them because they have a battery case built into the box so I don't have to take it apart when I want to change a battery. I'll definitely post soundclips and pictures when it's all finally assembled. Right now I'm playing with adding a "tone knob". The instructions recommended experimenting with bridging some parts of the circuit for different effects...like usual, one of my projects is getting out of hand

I mostly learn songs by ear....I often prefer dots because I'm lazy, and it's easier for me to read it. In my experience though, learning to play songs by ear is one of the best exercises you can do to help your ear training. The more you do it, the better your ear gets. Plus, when you play with a group that does originals, there usually isn't time to write out a chart when you're learning a new song, and without a good ear, you can be dead in the water.

I'm going to guess that the Radio Shack mics are electret condensers (ECM). Online you can find many circuits listed for electret condenser mics, in fact, I had considered purchasing some ECM mics (just the the actaul mic module) and wiring up my own system since the avaiable sysems are a bit pricey. The ECM modules themselves are often as cheap as $1 each, up to a whopping $20+ per module for "High End" ECMs. I did a quick search and found this page: http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/microphone_powering.html which has a small article on powering ECM microphones. You should be able to run as many as you want from the same power supply, considering voltage and current. If you have parallel connections to the battery, the voltage across each will be the same, though current will not. ECM's don't need a lot of current (or voltage) which is why they can be run from very small batteries. Current drop is done with a resistor to keep the ECM from being overpowered. Maplin, Digikey, and many other companies sell a variety of ECM modules. wait, I thought Whiskey was the devil? Whiskey's only the devil the next day Funny that you responded today. I actually found a full kit for an electret pre-amp. Electret Amp Kit. it works off a 9 Volt batter, which should give me longer life (and cheaper cost) than the button kind. I put it together last night and it works great! instead of soldering the mic straight to the board, I added a pair of 1/8 input jacks, and connected the speaker to a 1/4" instrument jack to plug into my amp. I also added a power switch/volume knob combo...I thought this whole thing would be beyond me, but it was a piece of cake! ...now I gotta find a belt-mountable case to put it in..

Since it's an LP, maybe they meant that you have to play the record backwards to get the concertina samples?

I think that the proper response in that situation is..."How about a straw?" Then you can play AND have the pint!

Great news! using a pair of $20 radio shack headset mics worked!...I had my marshall up full blast with zero feedback. woohoo! What I'm not as excited about are the two tiny cords and the miniature batteries they come with. If there's any electrical engineers that can help me wire up a better power supply for them they would be perfect! (hint hint )

That's a really interesting comment. Letting the listener decide if it's major or minor goes against everything I was taught in music theory. I love it! You're absolutely right about the rules being more guidelines anyway. Even my music theory teacher agreed with that. Every time we did something wrong and tried to use the "rules were meant to be broken" excuse, she'd heartily agree with us. ...then she'd tell us that in her class we had to learn and use the rules before we were allowed to break them.

Thanks for the props, guys! As far as the Pogues go, I'm not sure why we didn't put them in there. Me and the other guitar player are huge fans of Shane McGowan. As for the Concertina, I'm playing a Hohner D-20 at the moment. (was a gift from the guitarist), but I plan to upgrade to the Rochelle as soon as I can. Thanks for the advice Martyn. I'm actually playing through a Marshall MG (solid state). I'll check out the JTS mics. I picked up a cheapie unidirectional headset mic from Radio Shack today that's worked great this afternoon-no feedback. We'll see at practice tonight how it goes.