shaunw

Why go to all that trouble. Just make some high quality recordings of your concertina. Turn these recordings into a soundfont. Then play that soundfont using a midi concertina. You will have a fast acting concertina with a real concertina sound with the added advantage that you can play it as a bass, baritone, treble or piccolo concertina and you won't have destroyed your acoustic concertina by messing around with its insides. The original poster said that you can't get a real concertina sound from a midi concertina. That is just completely wrong. You absolutely can get a great sound with a MIDI concertina and the right samples, I did this three years ago with a Wakker MIDI and Native Instruments Kontakt running on a laptop. I sampled every button on my instruments. Those same samples became the basis of my iPhone and iPad Concertina-related apps and I think sound extremely good. That being said, it was a lot of work editing and balancing the levels for the sample set. I agree that creating a good sound font can be a lot of work but for the average person there is a very good sound font (made from a baritone Wheatstone concertina) available for free via the Internet.

What does the phrase 'The Pure Drop' mean ? Could you explain it for our younger readers?

Why go to all that trouble. Just make some high quality recordings of your concertina. Turn these recordings into a soundfont. Then play that soundfont using a midi concertina. You will have a fast acting concertina with a real concertina sound with the added advantage that you can play it as a bass, baritone, treble or piccolo concertina and you won't have destroyed your acoustic concertina by messing around with its insides. The original poster said that you can't get a real concertina sound from a midi concertina. That is just completely wrong.

I think of the bandoneon as an accordion and not a concertina. If you want to listen to the best bandoneon player in the world go to www.youtube.com. Search for Libertango and then listen to the Astor Piazzola and Yo Yo Ma version. Astor Piazzola is the composer of this tune and I think he is probably the worlds greatest Bandoneon (Tango accordion) player. Wikipedia has an article on the Bandoneon complete with pictures showing the inner construction.

All these are consistent (I think... well I only checked the first one!) with it being 4 in the original, but if the copy isn't very clear then that 4 can look like a 1. The original fingerer seemed to be a fan of the one-finger-per-row method, which is a bit bonkers I believe Rigondi only played with two fingers and he only used one finger per row. The index finger for the top two rows and the next finger for the bottom two rows. You can get the music with fingering for either two fingers or three fingers. My wife plays it as an exercise with three fingers which is now the most common way of playing an EC. Using only one finger per row is the best practice and the classical way of playing the EC so it seems strange to describe it as bonkers. I would describe as normal.

A Midi concertina can not only sound like a real concertina, it can even sound exactly like your concertina. You need to understand MIDI and sound font technology. There are other advantages to a MIDI concertina. It enables you to play a Bass, Baritone, Treble or Piccolo concertina without any extra expense. It can also enable you to play other instruments such as a piano or church organ (with limitations). Implementing bellows on a midi concertina can be done but is not necessarily the best solution. A midi foot pedal can make for a more expressive instrument and one that is easier to play for people with arthritis etc.

There is no concertina patch in the general midi set of instruments but you can get real concertina sound on your PC. In fact you can even use your own concertina to get that sound. To a concertina fan the unique sound of concertina reeds is important. If I was happy with an accordion sound, I would have learnt to play the accordion. There are Anglo midi concertinas but building your own is more complex than building a midi English because the bellows direction is important. Commercial Anglo Midis are expensive.

Paul I'm using standard circular push to make switches made of aluminium and plastic. The sort that are available on Ebay in packets of 10 or more with various coloured tops. I don't know what the part numbers are. For the electronics I'm using an Arduino Uno since its an open source project. There is a guy called Tom Scarf who offers Arduino kits already programmed for an English treble concertina. However I wanted to write my own program because I wanted to add some extra switches. Lists of Midi commands and note values are available on the internet. If you can't find what you need, start a private conversation with me. Then we can exchange email addresses and I can email these things to you. One of the good things about a midi concertina is that you can choose to play a bass, baritone, treble or piccolo concertina or even a church organ if you want to. Do you know how to get a real concertina sound on your PC because general midi instruments don't include a concertina sound.

I'm also building a midi concertina so I can play, at night, through headphones without disturbing the family or the neighbours. If you need any help with the electronics or software side of things let me know.

I remember reading an article in 'New Scientist' magazine, many years ago, which said that most people can learn to have perfect pitch just by memorising one note. However not everyone can do this.

Thanks for the tips, very useful. I'll try them out because I have trouble skiving edges as well.

Well that is an interesting suggestion and I will try it out.

Bob I don't know how you can say that. Bone is a wonderful material the product of millions of years of evolution. Many concertinas with bone buttons have survived for over 150 years. I'm not sure that any plastic (which is a supercooled liquid) will do that.

Suggests, perhaps, but doesn't require. After all, the guitar doesn't use one hand for melody and the other for walking bass. It's the coordination of the two hands that generates the desired result. While the details are quite different, the same holds true for the English concertina. And there are players of the English -- Simon Thoumire, for example -- whose playing demonstrates melody against not only walking bass. but also more complex bass figures. The guitarist uses his thumb to play the base and uses his fingers to play the melody. This enables the guitarist to simulate two handed piano playing. So the guitarist can play a separate base and melody using the fact that humans have opposable thumbs. It may occasionally be possible for an EC player to play melody and a walking bass but the instrument was not designed for it. In general Simon Thoumire does not play walking base against a melody, if he did I am sure he would buy a duet. I only play the EC and I have no wish to play a duet but I always advise people to get the instrument that was designed for the job. EC - designed for melody and chord playing. Duet designed for counterpoint and piano like independent two handed playing.

There is a simple relationship between printed music and the EC. Suppose a chord is three notes and the chord is printed as music. Any note on the lines of the stave must be played with the left hand and any notes on the spaces between the lines must be played with the right hand. So given any arbitrary chord you may have to use both hands to play it on an EC. As other people have pointed out only the duet was designed deliberately to make independent two handed playing possible. But a duet is not a piano. It is however the closest thing to a piano in the concertina world.