Kautilya

Omnbra mai fu - Cerco, cerco, ma non ci riesco a trovarla!

P - was that a hint hint, squeeze squeeze, knock knock?

Jim - you can't get past the front page even... Anglo Saxoninas would never do that... it those English Normans who came later....

MELODEON FAST BELLOW-DAN-SING (apologies to clever bellow-sing post!) Somone helped me out with their youtube site: In two parts - slow start then the beginning of the faster piece which continues on the second URL for grand finale.... http://www.youtube.com/user/InsightandMind#p/u/3/Z1LsQQWI8d4 http://www.youtube.com/user/InsightandMind#p/u/2/RSEKGi_B1fI Dancing melodeonites doing slow bellow-dan-sing http://www.youtube.com/user/InsightandMind#p/u/1/rt-Lay92dUI Bell-less playground-/'step-'/morris-dancers who couldnt quite get their joint bellows action right but prove that you can even make a fine noise with just one-sided-belly-danc-clap-ing. http://www.youtube.com/user/InsightandMind#p/u/0/6IudKCcyzkI ps -as many will know, the weekend organiser Dave Townsend is a whiz tina player and his coorganiser, his better half, plays the accordeon.

I honestly do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about.... Perhaps you can explain? ...here is a nice piccy which may help. It looks to me that Kautilya is pressing that finger against the end in order to brace the back of the palm tightly against the strap, forming a "rigid" structure to transfer the force used to pull out the bellows. I expect that otherwise there would be some play in the contact between the hand and the hand strap, resulting in a slight delay when trying to pull suddenly and strongly. I suspect that the placement of the finger in that "hole" in the fretwork is a coincidence of the size of Kautilya's hand and the details of the fretwork design. That finger (or another) could just as well have been braced by simply pressing against some other portion of the end. Edited to add: I just took another look at the photo, and I revise my analysis. While what I describe above is a viable technique (variations of which I use all the time; after all, pressing on a button also braces the hand), it looks like Kautilya isn't just pressing on the end, but may actually be using the finger in the fretwork to pull the hand tighter in the strap. Hmm. Yes Jim y're right - pulling ( The finger there also allows a bit more push as my overstrong airbutton spring means the heavy lower pressure from the thumb seems to push the top of the fretwork away from the bellows and up to the right if the finger is not exerting counterpressure to thumb... probably just a bad habit but I certainly did not set out deliberately to achieve this - mmy hand just sort of worked it out on its own. Mabybe no connection but interesting how many Melodeon plays use their right thumb against the vertiical keyboard to stop it moving and increase that control with their ONE shoulder/elbow strap -- go watch the video which I will put in next box separate from this. They keep adjusting that shoulder/elbow strap like its a live snake!

Dirge - you're worried about being close to the sea?! I found on my last space trip the lack of air meant I had to attach a motor to my bellows to get any real whoosh and then of course on landing the water which shot up in the air sprayed everwhere. Put me in an L of a Cross mood http://www.nasa.gov/

I honestly do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about.... Perhaps you can explain? Concerning the use of the bellows, I find that fanning (I never use it) is restricting my use of the bellows and therefor the dynamics I want to achieve. Probably it works for some kind of music (or musicians) but certainly not mine (or me). That said I am not someone who thinks you have to stand up and sway your concertina around with some big gestures to get your concertina going. I saw some English EC players do that. I do it for fun sometimes (when no one's around). I turn around and sway/play my concertina until I get dizzy. But honestly I think I get the same effects sitting down and working my bellows ''normally'', except for the dizzyness of course. If the first sentence was a question for me then here is a nice piccy which may help. V diff to take it lefthanded upside down, so, if it does not explain what I was stating, I will get my assistant (French not Russian!) Bresson to take it . BTW using the index finger would mean I could not reach the air button with thumb! click to enlarge.

How much via paypal please?

Hi Kautilya He has a YouTube channel with his ideas. http://www.youtube.com/user/Gran43#g/u Thanks Leo Tks!

Is this Mr Göran around? Perhaps he might let us know a bit more? Some will be shocked but I have suddenly found my finger in the top fret hole on right side where the posh tinas have names of the makers. It just happens when I want to really pull out the bellows very fast against the extra strong air button spring and it makes it so much easier. More purchase than holding the concertina down against my knee.

The answer to Russians? I may (may) have the answer. There was some pretty whizzy stuff by the master tutors and squeezerati at the Witney ((hold yr air button!) Melodeon HandsonMusic weekend's formal concert on the Saturday in October but that was not for recording. But I have some bits of us mainly UK students and our homework set pieces on the final show us your stuff on the Sunday afternoon...... The dancing meolodeonites showed how to work your legs like a bellows at slow speed, Then another class did a piece that went faster and faster and faster -- hi-speed bellowsing. My group of course was squeezing in and out wildly in every direction but no pics as I did not have enough hands..... Why so much explanation? Weeeell (he said, pressing air button and pulling out bellows for a big sigh)- the video off my still camera ain't that good and the files are enormous. So u will just have to wait till I sort it out to show it somehow. I have sorted out the time delay between the music and the picture by using Videolan.org (Windows' Media Player is a no no...) .. but but but... PS on the the Russian video (he really must have been christened Akkordeon coz I could not find his name in the info -- LoL) he did not have to pull and push for different notes so he had big advantage over Anglotinas and Melodeons. PPS I am sure u did not mean the phrasing as it came out from your quill but u might want to go back and fix it or they will think we are dim if we think such brilliant playing is the same as the Pol-glish for carp -- you know, the fish but spelt with a Kr....

AIR BUTTON SPRING TOO STRONG Just while so many people are talking air buttons! Any tips for reducing strength of air button spring - really tough to press it down when going for a full open switch of bellows direction

how much do they cost via paypal? tks

Read my fingering! (with apologies to Bush snr) the word lute MAY [i said MAY]have come to us from Sanskrit via Farsi/Arabic... I ain't committing to anything here..... The great thing of course it that no one seems able to say definitively where Sanskrit came from anyway, but my money is on the ancient Welsh with Celtic overtones due to the spread of Celtic tunes by the Basque sailors who had weekend breaks away in Mohenjodaro between World Cups in Germany. It is quite clear from Jones (Jones the Indian not Jones the Singer). The Scots reference here is coz they are.... wait and I quote Wikiunknownanswers: All Scots are Celts but not all Celts are Scots http://www.abdn.ac.uk/german/course_documentation/gm1512/week1.hti

WAIT! BORROW and try out Make the surprise wow factor a weekend at one of the gatherings of tina players. e.g. http://www.wccp.co.uk/ WCCP has a few spare boxes you can try. They will go out of their way to help a beginner, and easier for one with some musical knowledge. Ring em up and talk to em. They are not SO far from you. Sanskrit apart (ancient by definition...) no one wants to see you wearing musical pyjamas (Persian roughly deriving from "an arm and a leg...") back to front -- coz you did not know what they were for to start with and paid too much and could not take em back). As a still learning concertina beginner with a little musical knowledge (school orchestra violin at six and polyphony) I back those who say you MUST let your friend have a go first.... honest! As pointed out, Anglos are push for one note and pull for another (like harmonica). If your friend has trouble patting head and polishing chest at same tame then that's one problem to be tackled. 20 Anglo buttons (21 with air release button) won't give enough sharp and flat notes (accidentals and all that) for fancy note slithering mountain toons from Qafasan. The English has loads more buttons and plays the same note on a button whether you pushin' or pullin' -- but the buttons are not laid out in a straight line like a piano keyboard. Try try try and then only let THEM buy (and you cough up the lute!) (Now: -- the word lute may have come to us from Sanskrit, via Farsi/Arabic, but that's a whole new thread and someone may hijack this gift debate by starting it!)

Make sure you always boil your icicle chain Man seen fleeing out of ward in hospital gown. Wot's your problem? It's that nurse after me again - she always gets everything back to front! SO? Matron just told her to prick my boil! (maybe we are getting nearer to Malopropitis...) Mother telling neighbour how lucky she was that her son had just graduated instead of dying at birth. "He was so ill they had to put him in an incinerator to survive." As Dirge harmoniously ringtoned, Spooner was at New College Oxford for 60 years which is presumably why he was rebound among bookish students as an ancient history lecherer. Give a man a hot meal and he will feel warm and happy for a day. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

It was bugging me and now I just remembered - Violin and Harmonica - comments please! and wot about the flute/clarinet in this along with the virtuoso and full orchestra: It is those last two notes which make me want to hunt the "single voice"! You dont need to know how to play all the other buttons... one will do.

Ol Ol Widor (the grandfather) was Hungarian hence the funny vv - probably from Székesfehérvár which I know well (!)....The Soviet tanks rolled out of there to crush the Prague Spring in 1968. and there is a quiet unpleasing very fast version of the toccata just after that Caen church one on a very fast organ and the organist explains he plays it like that coz he "got da machine to do it" and smaller churches allower faster bashing coz the reverb is less. That said this 128 whopper takes us back to my single note fantasy. It is not as impressive as the bottom note at Durham Cathedral which is also a banned note but I have stood next to the pipe and do you shake! I dont think this (the only one I can find) hits the bottom: and course the swell on the organ is just like a big squeeze on the tina

It just decided to load instantaneously - it had been struggling for more than an hour going nowhere till I shut it down and then after reading yr note I hit the url again and bingo! Interesting but it brings me back to sthing very interesting which u just said. I think your man over machine remark may be at the core of this whole discussion, tho praps not the way you meant it just now probably! For me it is what feeling and hence impact on the listener which the player can get from his instrument that determines the result, rather than what some say are the limits of the instrument itself. U know, a bad workmen always blames his tools. It's not that the violin cant do what the tina does or vice versa - it's what each one can do with (for want of a phrase) the same toon (at the most basic level). How far they work together also seems to be a bugbear in this discussion. I turned up early for a bash last June and the background quartet was on the steps of the castle with trombone, violin, guitar and trumpet. As no one else had arrived and the drinks waiters were just standing there, I suggested we tried jazzing up Ode to Joy with me on chromatic harmonica - it went amazingly well, and fast and slow ....it sounded 'just right'! All kinds of things got played later(they each played several instruments)along with a lot of singing from the castle ramparts till 0200.... At Witney melodeon Tim van Eyken played a long Swedish piece and sang a couple of verses of the lyrics early on (instead of all of them). The depth of meaning he produced in a very quiet way was quite stunning... it was the kind of performance which was "memorable" for what he got "out of the box" -- deep emotion (boy and girl folk song of course......). I dont think they recorded it. Where that takes us I dont know. Probably just playing arouond with one long note on whatever the instrument and enjoying how much you can get out of the note every which way ...!

WOODEN ORGAN this thread is heading for a record no. of posts so I cant remember accurately if somone mentioned about an organ sounding 'wooden'. wot abaht this old piece which for me is one of the best smooth swinger toons from deep bass right up. Has a great effect particularly when u have a long line of people processing in step... they start to sway with the waves from the organ. I wonder whether a 48 or 56 button job could not also do the business with this = with some powerful elec amplification of course. Or adding person with a bass tina to do the organ pedals? wotever, it's great to listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhgutjHOmU PS I desperately want to hear but cant get Njurkowski's Vivaldi to load -- http://www.rowlhouse.co.uk/cello/VivaldiAm.mp3

someone mentioned about viewing UK stuff. Does this refer to the issue? http://is.gd/54VKj

David - this is not a new instrument at all ... it is clearly a Frenchman, suffering from Spooneritis and a very heavy head cold, trying to write Melodeon!

Ahh - the old quotes trick - tks Leonard!

Paul - under advanced search I cant spot ways of avoiding multiple results. Searching either at main page search box or in advanced phrase such as easy tunes for anglo beginners it produces the latest (and all the previous) mentions of anglo (and the rest) Is there / was there find dog AND cat function for example? Keywords... see:http://www.my-mc.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi tks