Don Taylor

Fiddle vs. violin?

Regarding enhancing the tone of a concertina, I once raised the idea of adding some sort of resonator. Wunks: so your focus is on your left-hand. Other than to play occasional melody notes that are too high for the LHS, do you use the RHS notes at all? Maybe for ornamentation or for a high drone? It is an unusual (inverted really) approach to playing a duet (or an Anglo in the harmonic style) and I am intrigued about what can be done.

Wunks I get the impression from your posts that you mostly play the left hand side of your (big duet) concertinas and that you mostly 'bow' with your right hand. Is that right? If so, is this because it mirrors the way you play fiddle or because you prefer the sound of the lower notes on the concertina? The way that you say you play 'oom-pah' on the concertina seems to be fiddle-like: a strong single melody note on the down beat for the 'oom' and a light double stop for the 'pah', have I got that right?

Wunks My apologies, I thought that you had only recently bought your first concertina and wondered if it was an entry level model. Clearly not the case. Your observation about the 'thinness' of tone in the higher register, as opposed to a lack of volume, makes sense to me. But you mentioned that you have managed to 'bend' notes. Can you do this at will and, if so, how do you do that?

Wunks Thanks for starting this topic. What concertina do you play? (type of duet and maker, wooden ends or metal). Concertinas are rarely described as not being strident enough - usually the opposite! It might be that what you hear as a player is not what a listener on the dance floor hears. Try playing close to a wall on your right hand side, this should make the sound come right back at you. When you play fiddle then the sound is right in your face whereas the sound from a concertina projects outwards from the ends. The fiddle and the violin are both very expressive instruments, do you feel that you can wring the same amount of emotion out of a concertina? Danny Chapman says that his cello is better for expressive music than his concertina, maybe David has some thoughts on this topic?

Give the fiddler a dram! Wunks, I would be very interested to hear more about how, as a fiddler, you approach the concertina and how fiddling techniques can be adapted to the concertina.

I noticed that the bottoms of the button holes in the action board of my Beaumont have a little disk of thin leather at the bottom, presumably to absorb the force of button bottoming out. I was surprised that it was not felt and wondered if the upgrade would replace these leather disks with felt disks. I must ask the BB about this as I could do that myself.

How old are your Morse concertinas? The Button Box told me that my 5 year old Beaumont has an action that they have changed on newer models. They offered to retrofit the new action for me for about $300. If your boxes have the old action then it might be worth giving the Button Box a call.

OK thanks. I am not on Facebook but Google found this link for me: Facebook electronic concertina

Can you post a link?

I am curious to know how folks hold their smart phones or iPads while using one of Michael Eskin's concertina apps. Do you hold it flat on your lap with the screen facing upwards and play it like a two dimensional piano or a Jammer interface, or do you hold it almost vertically with the screen facing away from you in imitation of the how you would play a real concertina? Or maybe some other way? I am particularly interested to hear from Duettina players as I am hoping to persuade Michael to implement a new, larger Hayden layout for the iPad. Personally, I have not used the Duettina app much as I had mistakenly assumed it only supported the mirrored Wicki keyboard layout. Since then I have tried it both ways and think that I prefer the laptop orientation rather than the semi-upright orientation. However, I am really not in a position to pass judgement, so I will largely discount my own opinion in favour of more seasoned users (David?). Thanks in advance, Don.

Sold for US$1,552. There were 8 or 9 bidders, anybody here buy it?

Thanks Michael.

Does the duettina app have the Hayden layout on the LHS or is it still the mirror imaged Wicki layout?

The web-site says that they only sell to addresses in the US and Canada.