MatthewVanitas

In the diagram above, the following pairs would form "open chords": C-G, F-C, E-B, A-E, D-A. So in that layout, any note in the middle rows forms an "open chord" if you press both said note and the one "above" it (on paper).

I'm a bit unsure here. I have learnt (from a very reliable person) that a lament doesn't have to be slowly - at least in the singing of English folk song, which this might be accounted in a wider sense. I chose to add weight through the singing whilst taking the words seriously. The song is quite repetive which I take as expression of dullness, lonelyness a.s.f. edited to erase typo I was pondering this, and came up with several good examples of rapid laments, although several I've already now forgotten: I'll Go and List for a Sailor; this I know from the Morris On album ( , and it's a dark lament played at a rapid pace: "Oh, once I was happy as a bird in a tree,/My Sarah was all in the world to me,/ Now I'm cut out by a son of the sea, She's left me here to bewail her." Second Front Song; Ewan Maccoll, ( ). Great long-narrative ballad, very dark and minor but with really driving pace on clawhammer banjo. I have no idea how to replicate that drive on concertina, though Anglo probably makes it more intuitive than on my Duet. Great patter, almost the Anglo/Scottish equivalent of "talking blues": "I let myself in quietly and tiptoed up the stairs/ The thought of being home again had banished all my cares./ In the bedroom then I murmured, " Nell, your soldier boy has come!/ When a voice replied, in sharp surprise, "Say Nell, Who is this bum?" Those are the first that jump to mind. Though for a moment when considering the question I crossed a wire, and ended up thinking of sad songs in Major modes, like "The Week Before Easter". It's a fun theme, songs that have a setting that "clashes" with the content.

It'd probably not be too difficult for ladyhealer to just whip up an equivalent version of this for the 18-button; even if you just sketch it out with a pencil and ruler by hand, it'd be a useful guide. This triangular chart doesn't cover the fancier chords, the 7ths, diminished, etc. but if she's doing folk music she can get by just fine without those. If she's doing jazzier things, by the time she gets to the point of needing fancier chords, she'll already have a feel for chordmaking. Hopefully this is a fun learning process!

There are a few ways to go about it, but William Meredith wrote up some clever charts that rather "geometrically" show how the chords are formed on an English. Your box doesn't have all these mentioned notes, but if you were to print out a copy of this and just cross off the non-applicable notes (or erase them digitally on a jpeg), the rest of the chart should apply. Here's the page posting and explaining the charts: http://www.concertina.net/wm_english_chords.html Here's an example of a chart: Though a musician myself, I had to puzzle this out for a moment to understand it. The circles are, of course, the buttons, labeled by note. The terms within the triangles are the names of the chords formed by playing said triangle. That is, in the top middle, if you push E-G-B you have an "E minor" chord; if you press C-E-G you have a "C major" chord. Your mini doesn't have all the sharps and flats, but as an example of one you can do, A-C#-E gives an "A major" chord. The only notes on this chart that your mini doesn't have are G#/Ab and D#/Eb (G# is just another name for Ab, etc). I don't know if you already have a background in chords and whatnot, but suffice to say for most any popular folksong you can just google it's name and the word "chords" and be given the lyrics showing which chords are played at what point. So as a minor example: [D]This land is [G]your land, this land is [D]my land,From Calif[A7]ornia to the New York [D]Island,From the Redwood F[G]orests to the Gulf Stream wa[D]ters;[A7]This land was made for you and [D]me. This would mean that you'd form a "D major" chord, start playing it while singing "this land is...", and then switch to a G major on the word "your". For the A7, you can just play an A and it works fine. If you see a chord written "Em", that means "E minor". This may be things you already know, but just re-stating just in case, or for other future novices reading the thread.

After the film Howl came out, I wrote an email to DMS, one of the larger and more reputable harmonium dealers. I linked that same video of Ginsberg, and asked if they carried such a harmonium. Here's the extract of their reply (the DMS-2 they reference is a different kind of small harmonium that I thought could play the same role, bottom of this page: http://www.indianmusicalinstruments.com/harmoniums3.htm): I had idly toyed with the idea of seeing if there could be a group-order of Ginsberg-style harmoniums, and/or if the Ginsberg Estate had any interest in licensing the name to a harmonium maker, etc. But ultimately I concluded that the number of people intensely interested in Ginsberg harmonium reenactment is rather small. And so I stuck with concertina. As a minor aside, for anyone curious to see Indian harmonium used in a foreign context: there's a Brooklyn-based band Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers, where the titular lead comes from a conservative Sikh family and was raised playing harmonium, and now uses it to head up this grungy-indie-blues band. They have some good clips on YouTube, including one or two of just her singing solo with harmonium.

Hello ladyhealer, so glad to see that you've found an instrument that fits your hands and sound. I once owned the same model (a Stagi) back in the late 1990s, but at the time was distracted by string instruments, ended up selling it and didn't get back into concertina until 2010, and now play Hayden duet. At the time that I bought the Stagi, some folks online were describing it as a "pennywhistle concertina", since it has similar range and scale to the Irish tinwhistle, which is certainly enough to play a lot of standard traditional melodies. You haven't mentioned whether your overall intent is to use it to play melodies, or also to form chords to back singing or another instrument (or maybe you're still figuring out your plan), but it should work well for doing chord backup as well. One method of holding, if I recall right from my experience, was that I ended up using just the top thumbstraps, and removing the bottom straps and just bracing my pinkies against the wooden ends of the instrument. I found a pic from an old post on CNet showing Noel Hill (a very famous Irish concertinist) doing similar on a fancy high-end mini: A separate option (found on GoogleImages, appears on the Swedish www.concertina.se), this fellow appears to have drilled and bolted on pinky rests even onto his mini: So there are a variety of ways to address the issue of how to hold a mini-concertina, and ultimately it just comes down to what works for you.

While there are enharmonic harmoniums, my understanding is that's a very recent and niche thing. Similar maybe to how there are note-bending melodeons, but that's mostly one guy's experimental development. I looked at the website for the guy who designed and commissioned the 22-shruti harmonium, and I'll admit I was tempted. It's $600 for the instrument, but another $400 for shipping though, so a bit more than I can really justify. You're right, I really should've mentioned Nursrat Fateh Ali Khan in the original post, I guess I didn't becaues I think of him more as a singer, but his use of harmonium probably is one of the most visible in the West. Harmonium actually played quite a role in my taking up the concertina seriously. The 2010 movie Howl, a biopic of Allen Ginsberg, had some old footage of him playing a very small travel harmonium while singing, and I was really struck by the voice-backing potential of small free reeds.

And no English either..... Lads, would you let the poor guy get started on the easy ones first, before he goes onto proper concertinas... But Duet is easier... oh, you mean easier to build. Roger that. All I'm asking for is a simple square-shaped, just-temperament Hayden Duet with enharmonic tuning at the far chromatic ends, coloured-glass buttons (clear for diatonic, red chromatic, blue enharmonics), and computer-cut nickel-plate ends in an Art Deco fretwork pattern. Is that really so much to ask???

I've mentioned before that owning a good concertina keeps me from buying several other instruments I'd otherwise be drawn to, including harmonium and shruti box. I like droney and swelling music, and Duet concertina is right at home there. But I still dig the harmonium, and have been watching clips of Indian harmonium players online; not the bench-sitting foot-pumping Euro harmoniums, but rather the small suitcase-sized hand-pumped harmoniums that missionaries introduced to India. Tying up one hand with pumping bellows isn't a big problem, since much Indian music is heavily melodic rather than chordal, and can be played one-handed on the keyboard. Harmonium is an imperfect fit since it can't bend notes, can't do microtones, and is (generally) in Equal temperament, but it's found a role in less rigid classical forms, Sikh and Hindu sacred music, and "film music". Duet is great since I can do most of the melody work on the right, and use the left for drones, or a kind of basso continuo. Some Indian harmoniums have stops to turn on drones, so my left hand can play that role. I've just been watching a few tutorial videos on YouTube, and there are many since India has a lot of people and a goodly amount of internet access, and evidently a ton of harmonium players. I don't listen to much Indian music, so the "musical vocabulary" doesn't come naturally to me. I'm tentatively trying to learn some Carnatic (Southern Indian, vice Hindustani in the North) riffs, but still at a very early stage. I'm not expecting I'll ever play Indian concertina in any skilled context, but it is fun trying out a new musical idiom, and one that suits the concertina well. Here are a few examples of playing Medeley of Punjabi music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZclC4uhJ4 Carnatic concert with percussion backing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMyIKQEHBLs Here's a Hindustani tune that's 52 minutes long, maybe want to put this on in the background as you do the dishes to let it soak into your musical mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPC9ymB2990

That's because they should be posted as images, rather than as links. I tried using the "img" and "/img" tags (in brackets), but I get the error message "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community." Curiouser and curiouser, I'd had no trouble uploading images to tinypics and hotlinking them here in the past.

I have one local member coming to check it over and likely buy it, and have one backup person in queue, so this one is probably off the market now. I'll update the thread if anything changes.

As I'm going through both my YouTube and iTunes lists, I'm rather struck by how large a proportion of concertina singers are doing something broadly trad. Whether full trad, neo-folk, or hymns/carols and the like. Of 90+ tracks I have on my YT "Singing with solo concertina" public playlist, there are only maybe four musicians who have multiple tracks of non-trad singing: Juliette Daum (some jazzy tunes with a large EC) Yuya (simple arty accompaniment to singing in Japanese with a small EC) Steve Wilson (a mix of jazzy singer-songwriter tunes, a few pop sources like the Beatles, Bette Midler, etc) Cnet's own Geoffery Lakeman, who has a couple of jazz standards Looking through my iTunes, I have 103 tracks of singing backed just by concertina, and there are only about two tracks I have that I wouldn't call trad-related: "The Albatross" with John Roberts and Tony Barrand. Not quite sure to call what this genre, kind of somewhere between jazzy, cafe music, and film music? Neat long narrative song with a lot of dark humor. "First Kiss" by Mike Agranoff; another long narrative with a similarly jazzy-cafe ethos. Really well-done accompaniment, great plaintive singing. I'd strongly recommend those two tracks to anyone interested in the breadth of concertina-singing styles; they're both available on iTunes and as Amazon downloads for 99c each.

Dang, no Duet models... I really like some of the fretwork they offer, particularly their "Geometric" design. It's good to see a maker stepping outside the customary kinds of fretwork, doing a bold one:

***Jones is sold pending pickup, I will update members in the order they contacted me if preceding deals fall through.*** I bought this concertina from Greg Jowaisas back last fall, since I wanted to work with at least one trad-reeded concertina so I could decide whether I'm happy with hybrid reeds or eventually want "true" reeds. Greg described this one as follows: "I have a C/G rosewood Jones that is THE BEST 20b I’ve ever had... has slightly bigger buttons than a typical Lachenal. It plays very smoothly and has a rich mellow sound. Plays like butter….whatever that means. (I guess: with a rich, flowing feel)... The Jones has a wonderful sound and the notes jump right out of it. It has a warmth and depth of sound that I have not heard in Lachenals." Greg has said I could quote him on his description, and he can certainly assess concertinas far better than I. Really nice trim concertina, about 6" across the flats. It was refurbished by Greg and given a final settup just before shipping out to me, so it's in great playing shape. Comes with a wooden hex case (original?) with working lock and key. I'm really only selling because I've concluded that my brain can't fit Duet and Anglo into the same space, so I'm de-Anglicising myself to better focus on my system of choice. Asking $695 plus shipping, will make a Cnet donation after sale. YouTube clip of me testing out the buttons, etc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sh7WY1coZ0 Huh, it's not letting me post links ending in ".jpg" Left side: http://tinypic.com/r/nytonc/8 Right side: http://tinypic.com/r/16hks9s/8 Tag: http://tinypic.com/r/2nallza/8 Case: http://tinypic.com/r/zk3mew/8

Actually, turns out I looked up the wrong one, thinking is was Cyril's I know. But now that I'm home and check my iTunes, the concertina version I know is Lou Killen's cover. I know it initially from my teenage years in the '90s off the Maddy Prior/June Tabor album, but Killen's is the version I like the most. Don, the Tawney version you post has McCallum on accordion; is there a Tawney version with concertina, or just the Killen? In whatever case, a great song. That one and "Bright Smile" were among the songs I used to sing myself when I was stuck on a US Navy ship in the Indian and Pacific oceans. A song I really like and am working on arranging now is "Canning Salmon", by Linda Chobotuck. Kind of a Canadian labour song about working in a packing plant. Oddly enough, the first clip of it I found on YouTube has a concertina in it, though the singer just uses it to pitch before starting acapella: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FZ4iDiRicA . Here's a cleaner version backed by guitar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvQiqwxrdAk Good song for accompanying, slow and plaintive. Since I'm kinda new to song accompaniment on concertina, I'm mostly trying to find a properly understated way to back this up, rather than "mash C chord, mash F chord, mash G chord". I've got the music theory and fingering patterns down, I'm just figuring out how to space out the chord bits to get a more subtle effect.

I'm still working up a few myself, and though not ready for showtime I think I'm getting a feel for it. A few of my favorites: "Grey Funnel Line" by Cyril Tawney is a great slow tune without undue voice demands, autobiographical about being a sailor in the British Navy in the 1950s. It's a basic I-IV-V-vi chord settup (so in C would be C-F-G-Am for example), relaxed pace, and real long stretches of chord to play with arpeggios, swells, etc. There's a similar chord progression and theme for "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" (a pop-hit of the American Civil War period) but that one takes a little more vocal range. There's a great track of this tune, backed up by concertinist Alf Edwards, for 99c on iTunes.

Dangit, I wrote a longer post but accidentally erased it trying to hit the key combo to get the "£" on a US keyboard. In short summary: really enjoying the Beaumont, played it just about every day for the last five weeks, and making plans to incorporate it into friends' music projects. Been selling off a lot of other music gear to focus down to the instruments I truly want to play seriously, since I had an embarrassingly large amount (numerically and in terms of the square footage of my small apartment) of instruments I didn't really play more than a few times every few years. I made some inquiries to other trad-concertina makers, but in the end it appears that Wim is really the go-to guy since he has a standardized and refined design he's developed and crafted a number of, whereas for others it's an unduly complex process of making a one-off niche instrument when they have 5-7 year waitlist for the Anglos they've already mastered. So Wim would be the best bet, and people seem quite pleased with his gear; his website's walkthrough shows a really exacting process he uses in his builds. It's a hefty wad of cash, $5900, but in the big picture the people who in 1985 bought Wheatstone Haydens for £655 (US$1070) probably feel pretty good about it since you can't exactly buy one of those for US$2,375 in 2014 dollars this week. At the moment I'm inclining to putting my $200 down, as I don't expect a new master trad-reed concertina maker specializing in Haydens is going to emerge in the next three years.

Despite nearly all of my 4-year concertina experience being with the slanted Elise, I'm finding the straight layout of the Beaumont comfortable. I think the stretch would be unpleasant on the sharp notes if they were slanted further away from my ring and pinky fingers, given the Beaumont's larger number/breadth of keys. Still finding the Hayden system intuitive, though I'm becoming more cognizant of its tradeoffs. For tunes outside of Western classical or trad, you occasionally have three half-step notes in a row, which in some keys requires bouncing the full width of the keyboard on a Hayden. Further, fifths and fourths are really easy to finger, but switching between major and minor thirds can be a little vexing because minor thirds fall to the left of the root button, while major thirds fall to the right. Every duet layout is going to have pros and cons, and even on a Hayden playing in B♭ minor (the relative of D♭ major) takes some brainpower.

Yeh, those things are huge if it's what I'm thinking. Like nearly 8" across for a 20b, which traditionally are as small as 6". So don't let the size intimidate you, they get smaller as quality goes up. I'd imagine it's not anywhere near fast enough for playing Irish at session-speed (plus lacking the C# is somewhat limiting though not killer), but I'd imagine it'd do great for voice accompaniment, maybe harmonic playing. What kind of tunes are you fixing to play on it? Got a photo of it to share for reference?

Is yours the kind with shiny red marbled plastic, and there are like brass pins with round heads? If so, yes, you pull those out and then you can lift the end off. I would suggest marking the bellows frame and the end with a little smidge of tape or something so you can line them back up the same way when you re-install. The stuck buttons are very likely due to the rubber hinge-sleeve drying out and crumbling over time: a huge proportion of post-WWII Euro concertinas were built with those sleeves, so it's a known issue with a recongized fix. This article is a little old (and pics not great) but here's the basic article on it: http://www.concertina.net/gs_stagirepair.html . The Aerotech tubing they mention is no longer made, so I bought Du-Bro 3/32"ID Silicone Nitro Fuel Line. There are a few other threads here about this same "minor surgery", which takes very little skill and no more than an hour or two of your time. I suggest you try fixing just a few buttons first, to make sure you're cutting your sleeves at the right size before you rig up the whole box. A key tip (which I failed to follow) is not to use scissors to cut the tubing, since it'll bend and cut ragged. Instead cut it straight from above with a very sharp knife or razor blade so you get a clean cut.

Good catch; the Tedrow is the one that is louder, as well as larger and heavier, and has been played more (mine played just three weeks). I still found the Tedrow slower responding, in terms of body motion, than I expected, either due to weight, bellows, or some combination. I've having a little intial breakin issue of one sporadic and one total reed stoppage on the Beaumont; I emailed the shop and they said it's likely some bit of fluff caught in the reed, so they can either talk me through it, or I could send it up for a checkup. I'll probably Skype them sometime so they can look through the camera and take a squint, and advise me what to do to clear out the reed. I have some similar-but-worse minor reed finnickiness in my Elise, so hopefully once I learn the safe way to clear a reed a bit, I can open up the Elise and do likewise.

Thanks, I had a great time! Maybe each time there will be more and more Duets until we seize the plurality of players... Glad you enjoyed the Shape Note tune, though I feel I was kind of rough starting it out. I'm used to doing Shape Note with a big group of people who are all familiar with the genre, and its "aural tradition" beyond just the text. So I kind of punted it at first, having to clarify that the note shapes are ancillary and can be ignored if you can read music, and the repeat isn't necessarily recognized in some tunes. Plus tough to keep time with only one person used to the song (who's used to cuing off other singers rather than literally reading the notes); having someone stand in the middle and beat out the time with their arm, as the singers do, would've made it much easier. But I am glad that I tried bringing out a multi-voice piece of 1820s American music to challenge us, though really glad I picked one of the simpler and shorter examples vice a "fuguing tune" which involves different parts coming in and out at different times. Here's the one we did, Detroit. Posted below, and here's a link to a higher-res version: http://sacredharpdetroit.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/39tdDetroit.jpg I and a few other players also had some confusion over some players describing their genre of choice as "old time". Where I hang out, "Old Time" means very specifically 19th and early 20th century North American music, fiddles and clawhammer (not Scruggs-style) banjos, a mix of Irish, English, African, blues, gospel, etc. music. What used to be called "hillbilly music" or "mountain music"; not to be confused with Bluegrass, a post-WWII genre based on earlier styles. A lot of folks at the Squeeze In, however, seem to use "old time" to refer to Tin Pan Alley, 1920s-1930s "pop music" tunes, etc. Not saying either side is wrong, but just found it striking that there were two completely different interpretations of the same term in the same room among players of the same instrument.

I tried a Tedrow Hayden at the DC Squeeze In this weekend; great chance to feel out another high-end hybrid. In contrast to mine, the Tedrow was notably bigger, notably heavier, but the button action was pretty good, though the bellows seemed stiff (or maybe that's just how I interpreted the heavier weight). The Morse EDIT: Tedrow was notably louder, and I think more resonant too, either due to the weight or larger ends, or to whatever degree from having been played for a year or more vice mine which I'm still "opening up" by playing in. One small thing I'm not thrilled about is the case that came with it only has one latch. For a concertina of this price (or really of any price) I'd like to be totally sure it's not going to accidentally open and dump my gear on the ground. So I'd like doubled latches of hard-to-dislodge design. So I'm going to end up either adding a latch, or getting one of those cinch straps to wrap around around it to keep it closed during transport. Plus I need to find some cool stickers to put on it.

And 3 of 14 concertinas were Duet: my Morse Hayden, a Tedrow Hayden, and a vintage Maccann. That aside, the meet was really English-heavy; what, maybe 8 English and 3 Anglo?

I'm into concertinas, and into crowdsourcing, so I'm certainly interested. English isn't my format, but if this does lead to more affordable Englishes it won't be long until more affordable Haydens follow after! I think there have been a few posts on the forum about these things, so I'd suggest you also ping the folks who've taken an interest before, but might not be following threads closely these days: One day I'll 3D print a whole Concertina! Started by Andy Holder, May 31 2012 07:02 AM 3D printing Started by SteveS, Nov 25 2010 05:23 AM Advancing technologies and their effect on concertina building Started by Jake of Hertford, Oct 29 2011 06:24 AM Among the various points to ponder: Folks have derided 3D printing for a couple of reasons, but I think we're really forgetting the reductive options like home 3D milling. Sure, if you "cast" a reed shoe you're limited to whatever kinds of plastics go into your printer and the composition that comes out, but on a 3D mill you could chuck in the material of your choice (brass reed shoes, for example) and have them produced. I have no clever ideas on how to mass-produce bellows There have been a few threads about computer-assisted cutting of fretwork, which a number of makers do (and some others specifically state that they do not do). Here's an interesting thread about Hamish Bayne, a Scottish former maker who used (probably now "antiquated") computer assisted machining to reduce time/costs on his concertinas. I'd imagine you'd positively have to have machine-cut fretwork to have anything remotely near a $1000 pricetag. The hugest question for your project: are these to be instruments with "hybrid" accordion reeds, or trad concertina reeds? I'd imagine the former since cost is a priority. It may be there is some way to use computer-assisted tools to make the basic components of concertina reeds, but as I understand several folks with large amounts of concertina experience have tried and not gotten it right yet. Given the huge amount of skilled hand-labor that goes into concertina reeds, reducing that would probably be a game-changer. The difference between roughly comparable hybrid and trad Anglos is like $3000 vs $6000, so huge amounts of effort on just the reeds, when instead you can buy factory-made accordion reeds and then just to the fine tuning.