Ransom

London Bridge is kind of a slow part, and you may very well be able to buzz through the next few pages. If you don't feel you're getting anything from a song or exercise, then maybe don't play it more than once or twice-- keeping in mind that the easy stuff is a great place to practice your expressiveness. Make sure you read advice in the double-ruled boxes about stuff like bellows technique. Other than that, if you've been playing other stuff, you might buzz through the next fifteen pages in an hour or so.

I love that low run in the Ash Grove arrangement!

http://edgleyconcertinas.blogspot.com may be a better place to read about concertinas.

I've seen some clown stuff in Leo's YouTube clips. Based on those, it looks like the standard choice for clown work is a brightly-colored shiny plastic Anglo with a dozen bellows folds, and probably a frame or two. So it sounds like you're on track, more or less.

If you're talking about the Stagi A-18, it doesn't go as low or as high as a 48-key concertina. Piano accordions are unisonoric.

Only when I'm playing in public. But the last time I did that, I also got someone who identified it properly! It made my day. Once I showed it to a tango-dancing friend, who said "Ah! It's kind of like a bandoneon!" This also made me smile.

I'll just leave this right here.

Eh, that's just if you breathe any. If you're careful to drink too much water, you get water intoxication.

Earlier in the week it was hovering around $60 or $70... I tried to order it two or three times, and each time the order went through and then cancelled just before it shipped, and I got my money back. Fed up with the whole mess, and uncertain that my $100 would bring a copy of the book, I called upon my reserves of bloody-minded internet-searching mojo. My efforts were not expended in vain: the contents of the book are available as a pdf to anyone who is tired of trying to score hundred-dollar second-hand copies.

Easy, now!

I regularly visit Slashdot. There's a general technical focus, but you might find some "important subjects about the world" there to interest you. It's not entirely serious debate, nor always without personal acrimony, but the peer-review and moderation system is a gem.

The thing about temperature changes that would worry me most is condensation. (Which just killed an expensive telephone of mine, incidentally). At an offhand guess, I'd say that shouldn't be too much of a bother until you at least start having to wear a jacket out. If you've got a hybrid whose reeds are secured with wax, you might worry about melting the wax. The easiest way to accomplish that is to lock it in a hot car, which sounds like a bad idea anyhow.

I'm not always sure what you're asking here, but I'll have a stab at the last one. Because the D# sounds really nice! As you've probably noticed, though, it's not a note on the usual E-minor scale. It is a sharp seven, that is used in the scale called "E harmonic minor": E-F#-G-A-B-C-D#-E This is NOT a mode of your major scale-- the gap between C and D# is too big.

The Rochelle is well-known here, and generally respected as a solid entry-level instrument. It's not as good as anything with a four-digit pricetag, but usually preferred over Hohner, Stagi, and no-name chinese brands.

Chris Algar isn't likely to stiff you, if that's what you're asking. You might say there are keys missing-- two on each side. Check the layout to see whether those are keys you can do without. I suppose the next one up would be a thirty-key Lachenal. *Which* 30-key would depend on which one you find.

Let's start with those "tunes that end on C" that you mentioned. If a tune ends on C, and pushing C-E-G along with it often sounds good, chances are high that the tune is "in the key of C Major" (or just "in the key of c"-- let's leave out minor and stuff for now). The other telltale sign to check for is that it doesn't use any sharps or flats-- no B-flat, no F-sharp... or at least not very often, if it does. Say you've got a song in the key of C. Your C-Major chord (that's the 'C-E-G' you mentioned) will sound pretty good with it-- but better at some times than others. If you run into a spot where it doesn't sound as good, or where you feel like there needs to be a change, your next best bet is the G-Major chord "G-B-D". (You don't have to do the whole thing, either. Maybe just one or two of the notes). Some songs are written around just those two chords, and that would be all you needed. But for many songs, you'll want to know one more chord-- F-Major: "F-A-C". If neither of the others fits very well, that's your third-best bet. Those three together are the chords for what some call "the three-chord trick" in the key of C. There's not a whole lot more to "the trick"-- just figuring out which chord goes where. You'll find that "C-E-G" probably goes at the end, and "G-B-D" is probably the one right before it, and from there it's a little less certain, and you've just got to figure it out for yourself. Basically, when you're writing a chordal accompaniment, there are some helpful questions you can ask yourself: 1. What key is the song in? 2. What chords am I likely to need? 3. How might one make them? 4. When do I play them? If you can answer these questions for a song, you'll be well on your way. I've hinted at some of the answers here, and hopefully that'll give you something to go on as you explore. Each one of these questions could be a whole thread on its own (a whole book, in some cases), so in the unlikely event that you want more of my blathering, you'd be best off picking one of the questions that interests you more than the others, and then we can chat about that in particular.

Somebody else may be able to give you specific tips on the Anglo, but my advice will be: brush up on your music theory. Not only will you be able to understand other people's advice; you'll be able to make your own. There's an awful lot of useful stuff to learn before it gets out to the level of rocket science. Give me a minute here, and I'll try to whip up some advice mixed in with a music-theoretical foundation.

If you've got low notes on one hand, high notes on the other, and the same note in and out, I'd call it a duet anyway.

I discovered this recently, and was quite taken with The Celebrated Sailor's Glee.

Two and a half octaves is plenty for most purposes, but it sounds like that wouldn't give you a lot of overlap, which you might also want a bit of. It wouldn't be perfectly transposable either. Octaves, tritones, sixths, and augmented seconds would be clean, but any other interval would scramble your rows.

You could put a chromatic scale along the columns. The left side sounds like the right size for an approximation of your favorite anglo layout. You could get your scrap reeds first, and then see what's easy to make with them.

By the Fayre Four Sisters. It's on Alan Day's "English International". To me it's more a curiosity than music. Yes, I have that compilation, & am also rather disappointed by the fidelity of the ancient recording. But I was speaking in a broader sense. Maybe the pages in your book are stuck together. It should be just between "The Major Scale" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". Anyhow, perhaps I'd better address the OP: 1. Things you learn from picking up the Anglo-German concertina (like a Rochelle) are more likely to transfer to button accordions than things you learn playing a Jackie. 2. The Jackie has accordion reeds, and will sound more like an accordion than an expensive concertina will. Accordions vary in sound from one to the next more than most instruments, so it's hard to say. 3. Cajun music is famously played on a one-row button accordion, and German polkas are less likely to be heard on an English concertina, but in general, I would expect a significant overlap in the potential repertoires. 4. Maybe; maybe not. 5. If you ask in an accordion forum, you may get different answers.

Two of the five rows under his right hand are redundant keys for alternate fingerings, so not quite as many notes as it may appear at first glance. Still plenty though, obviously. Good luck on that. =) I do seem to remember hearing that that piece was a hit on the English Concertina, back in the day.

Yeah, I didn't like that one either. I would have picked Dmitriev to show off the accordion's Bach potential. My favorite part is probably when he starts dancing on the chin switches around 4:19.

Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean that it's wrong. I'm reminded of the old anecdote of the hot-air balloonist who shouts down "Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where I am?" and the fellow who shouts back "Sure, you're in a balloon!" Not only is it a true fact, it's a fact very relevant to the situation, and one that it would behoove our balloonist friend not to forget. But as an answer to the question, it leaves a little something wanting.