Chris Timson
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Posts posted by Chris Timson
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If you want to post images from Dropbox then take the Dropbox link and paste it in using the "insert image from URL" dialogue, but before you save it delete the dl=0 at the end and replace it with raw=1. This really works - it's how I display the images in my post in Buy and Sell.
Chris
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I've had no contact with DoN for many years. A great shame as he is a real gentleman. We stayed with them for a few days long, long ago. You're right about his suspicion of forum software.
His web site was hosted on his own home server. If that's still true then the fact that his page is still available is a good sign that he is still alive and kicking.
Chris
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10 hours ago, Don Taylor said:
It can operate as an 'audio interface' for the microphone but I was unable to get it to work on JamKazam - I suspect that the latency inside the H2N is too long to make it useful in this context.
From my experience with Jamulus I'd say you've got that bang to rights there.
Chris
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You did and I replied. For various reasons I've been away from the forum so many apologies to you and also to Nabio.
As you requested I've made a recording of Anne playing it and I thought others would like to hear it so here's a couple of tunes. The first is one of hers called Eating of Maidens is a Horrid thing to Do (it's the tune of a song from an opera Anne wrote in which a dragon is reprimanded for his anti-social activities), the second is a chordal arrangement of Lark in the Clear Air. You will hear that it has a very sweet sound that is typical of brass reeded instruments. Downsides are that they are slow to speak and hence take more work to get them to sound and because it only has four-fold bellows you have to change direction quite frequently. Both of these considerations are, however, reflected in the price.
I recorded the tunes in my studio using a Rode NT4 stereo mic. I applied no processing whatsoever afterwards so what you hear should be a fair reflection of the sound.
Here's a link to the file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jtowz8unfh5bqa6/Lach%20concertina%20demo.mp3?dl=0Chris
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Thanks for the thought but that'll be for the next owner to buy.
Cheers,
Chris
PS Jake, I believe it was.
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Hi,
We've got a a 48 button Lachenal brass-reeded English concertina with mahogany ends that we'd like to sell. These, of course, are not the world's greatest concertinas but they can get a person going. We had it fettled a bit a few years back by Colin Dipper as we wanted to lend it to a couple of people (like Anne's composition professor at university
). All notes play and are in tune (concert pitch) Four or five are a little bit buzzy but nothing excessive and should be readily sortable. As you'd expect with a brass reeded instrument it's not the lightest box to play by any means but it does have an undeniable sweetness of tone.
We don't have a case for it, sorry, but it will be very well packed for posting. We'd like to get better than £300 plus postage for it if we can. Here are some photos:
Cheers,
Chris & Anne
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That's done. George has been helpful about the status of a couple of other people mentioned above and I've updated the FAQ appropriately. John, the fall was serious enough to keep me feeling sorry for myself for a couple of weeks but I'm fine now.
Cheers,
Chris
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George Bolliger and I are now exchanging emails. And thus does progress happen.
Chris
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That's 9pm where I live. Might be there.
Chris
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It seems he may well have been present at the very first meeting of the ICA:
"According to the information in Newsletter 200, 1972 which is in the digital archive of the ICA, there was an Inaugural meeting on 27 September 1952 of the International Concertina Association. See below:
“No.2 Newsletter was issued in October 1952. It is not signed and bears no address so we do not know who wrote it. Among the names mentioned in it are: Fred Read, Alf Edwards, Charlie Parslay, Wilfred Pearce, J. Floyd, Inga Webb, Sylvia Webb, Cheetham Walters, Helen Bland, Father Loveless,Al Coomber, Herbert Greene, Sid Ive, Rosa Loader, Teddy Stream, Con Courtney, J. Mearns, Thomas Murphy, A.G.Peters." (My italics).
This is from newsletter no. 150 in 1968: "Very pleasant to have good wishes from Syd Ive, whose baritone concertina is in regular use by the Holloway Monday class".
Chris
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That's something, thanks. I have a picture of a man born around the beginning of the 20th century and a music hall/variety performer in the 30s and 40s, which ties with the time the Accordeaphones were made in the mid 1930s and the paint job he had done to it. As an older man he belonged to the ICA and loaned concertinas to new players. Could be pure fantasy but at least it ties up with the little we know.
Chris
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If you do, John, we would very much love to hear. After quite a bit of searching all we do know is this: a) according to the professional card affixed inside the instrument case he lived in Wood Green, London N22; b) according to a 1950's Concertina World the Holloway (I think it was) branch of the ICA thanked him for the loan of some concertinas.
It's not much to build a picture on ...
Chris
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That'll be the unplayable one in the Horniman. Colin Dipper's is the same black finish. Ours is ... a bit strange.
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Hi all.
Some of you will know that we have owned a Lachenal Accordeaphone (surely among the world's rarest musical instruments) for a good few years now but we hadn't made much of it as it needed quite extensive renovation and it has proved a problem finding a repairer who would take the job on. Well I am now pleased to report that Jake Middleton-Metcalf of Wolverton Concertinas has taken the job on with great fortitude and triumphed! Yesterday we got the machine back, beautifully renovated.
The Accordeaphone was intended to be Lachenal's answer to the piano accordion, which in the 1930s was sweeping all before it. It has three reeds on each note and uses concertina reeds and methods of construction throughout. The button layout is that of an English concertina. 20 were made but only 8 were sold by the time Lachenal went bankrupt. Wheatstone bought their stock and scrapped the remaining 12. Of the 8 sold we only know where four are and this is one of them.
In this video Anne Gregson plays The Lark in the Clear Air on the beast.
Chris
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Chris Timson is taking very delayed note, sorry. Dave Barnert drew my attention to it just about the time I had a bad fall and forgot about it again. Sorting it out now.
Chris
Edit: Can anyone help? I'm finding very few details online for George Bolliger apart from a choice of email addresses (which isn't helpful
). If anyone has useful contact details for George could they send me a message?
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23 hours ago, Jody Kruskal said:
Perhaps the algorithms that make group speech possible, interpret music as background noise or feedback. They certainly suppressed the music I was playing. I even employed the "enable original sound" option (preferences/audio/advanced, tick the box) but no joy.
Hi Jody,
You're quite right about what is going wrong, Zoom interprets musical instruments as noise and tries to minimise it (it's much better on the human singing voice). However you can minimise the problem and I'm running sessions successfully online - that is, everyone apart from the person leading the tune mutes their mic and plays along, it's not a good as a real session but it's way, way better then nothing. So I've had a bit of experience with this.
As well as setting the Enable Original Sound option there's Suppress Persistent Background Noise and Supress Intermittent Background Noise, both of which have to be set to Disable. The advanced settings screen should look like this:
Also once you're in the meeting you have to click the button up the top left hand corner that says "Turn on Original Sound", otherwise nothing will change.This last button will only be visible if the host of the meeting has enabled it in their online settings. It's not straightforward but if you do all these things then the quality of the sound is good, or at least as good as the quality of your microphone.
I've written an article about this for Sound On Sound magazine which you will find here.
Cheers,
Chris
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So, ladies and gentlemen, here with John Watcham's permission is 24 minutes straight of Mr Gladstone's Bag in full flight, recorded by me back in the late 70s at Stratford (East London) folk club. Have fun! it's gloriously funny.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5hcy2wzzev0e9ps/Mr Gladstone's Bag.mp3?dl=0
Chris
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I'm in the process of digitising the recording. It's not quite a whole half but it is an uninterrupted 24 minutes from Mr Gladstone's Bag's second set and it's quite wonderful even after all these years.
Chris
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On 3/23/2020 at 3:40 AM, Jody Kruskal said:
I spent the past three hours on JamKazam tonight playing live music with a random bunch of folks from all over the world and had fun. It was sort of like a festival where new musicians would join unexpectedly and new influences would occur. Very cool!
Interesting, Jody. I hadn't bothered with JamKazam because the site looks moribund, quite frankly. The JamKazam FB page was last updated in August 2016, the last news item on their website is dated 6th August 2014 (!) and clicking on JamKazam Support just gives a 404 error. Since you've done OK I'll have another look, but if it takes a lot of techy input then it may still prove impractical. Anne (my wife, for people who don't know us, and a fine EC player) wants to find some way for her band Fiery Dragon Company to practice online and, of course, Zoom doesn't cut it. We shall see.
Cheers,
Chris
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I'm investigating Zoom.us videoconferencing software. Still too much latency to make session-style playing work but should be good for singarounds (my particular interest here) or "playarounds". However there is a setting in its configuration that increases sound quality markedly. This video covers the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50NoWIiYECAChris
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How you doing now? I've not been around this group much for a while either.
Chris
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From the current edition of Private Eye ...
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In my home sessions in Bath and Bradford on Avon I play G/D, Mark plays C/G and Dave plays C/G or G/D depending on what he wants to do in the particular tune (he is a very good player). We all co-exist quite happily and anyone not an anglo player would have no idea we were playing different instruments.
All this is to say what I've said on many occasions and that is you find the instrument you're happy with and you then work out how to play what you want on it. I resist the idea that there are rules on this. I think it no more set in stone that English music should be played on the G/D only than that Irish music should be played on the C/G only (and playing Irish music on an English is the sin against the Holy Ghost). It's down, always, to the player.
Chris
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To misquote Lena Horne:
I got a new concertina
And there's nothing to it
You just sort of stand there
And just sort of do itSo, just do it.Chris-
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Mr DoN Nichols....
in General Concertina Discussion
Posted
I created it but DoN hosted it and the associated mailing list. Access to servers was much more difficult in those days so DoN's help and support back then was invaluable and it was in gratitude for that that the committee made him an honorary life member.
Chris