shaunw

Not "very"? Just how offensive are you wanting to be? Oh for heavens sake Jim. It's a troll. Leave it alone. Ignore it completely and it will die of neglect. It is quite a clever troll. It reads the old posts looking for tender spots. I had to grudgingly admire the way it (apparently by chance) wrote 'You can't play counterpoint on the English' and hooked Prof. Chapman neatly. That's when the scales fell from my eyes. By then it had already sucked me in...who knows, by the time it gets bored with us it may end up unable to resist buying a concertina to put all the information it has gleaned to practical use. I don't know about the scales on your eyes, are you some sort of lizard. I own and play several English concertinas and one Anglo concertina. I don't want to be offensive to anyone except the ITM trolls. I don't think a concertina with accordion reeds is a real concertina. It doesn't have a real concertina sound. I see that you live in Napier. I have been to Napier. You have my deepest sympathy. I also see that you don't know what counterpoint is.

I think people here are generally relaxed over the question of whether you play an Anglo or an English or Duet.

You might be able to print some parts such as buttons etc. Parts that can be made of plastic are the most suitable but you will never be able to print parts such as reeds or reed shoes. You will never be able to print a cello or a violin.

Concertinas with concertina reeds sound different. They they are a completely different instrument to ones which have accordion reeds. You will have to listen to hear the difference.

I can't see how 30 buttons can be daunting. All English concertina players start with 48 buttons and don't find it at all daunting. Learning to play a musical instrument is a matter of determination and persistence. How do people of all ages learn to play the piano with all those keys to cope with?

That's not the only choice you have to make. There are three different types of concertina. The English Concertina has the same range of notes as the violin so I would argue that it is the best choice for any type of folk music. However the major choice you need to be aware of is this. Most modern beginners' instruments are made with accordion reeds and to concertina players they don't have a real concertina sound. If you really want to learn the concertina then whether you choose an Anglo, an English or a Duet concertina maybe it should be a real concertina with a real concertina sound.

Nothing is taboo but don't rush to change things. People learning to play the violin, the piano and the guitar often find that these instruments feel physically awkward at first but they don't rush to alter the design. If your concertina still feels awkward after you have been learning to play it for two years, then think about making alterations. Learning to play an instrument is a physically awkward process. It never feels natural at first.

When I was talking about four and five fold bellows I was only referring to The EC, Anglo players seem to be happier with many more bellows. At one time I had the idea that an EC with four bellows must be a cheaper beginners instrument but when you look inside them they often have the same works and reeds as the five fold bellows instruments. Other people have said to me that keys with the notes marked on the keys were student instruments but this isn't necessarily true. After a while Lachenal seem to have done this on all their instruments. When you look inside an instrument it is difficult to see much difference in terms of cost to make between the cheap and expensive instruments. Were rosewood ends much more expensive in the 19th century than mahogany or ebonised ends. Just what is the cost saving between a five fold and four fold bellows. I would think that it was very small. You would have to play a large number of concertinas to arrive at any sort of truth about this. We have this sort of information about Martin guitars i.e. times when they were well made and times when they weren't so good and the different sounds of rosewood and mahogany but we don't have enough information for concertinas. I'm not sure that price lists can help here since they may have just been used as marketing tool. Manufacturers may have felt that they needed to have a cheap, medium and expensive model in their range to match other manufacturers even if the actual cost of construction wasn't proportionate to the selling cost.

I use a camera strap as a neck strap, its broader than a cord and distributes the weight. However I am also attracted by Goram's handles and intend to make some of these also. How you hold a concertina is an engineering problem and there is always room for innovation and improvement.

The baritone Albion from the Button Box is readily available. Its price isn't ridiculously cheap, but it is "reasonable". Look up John Nixon. Look up Simon Thoumire. Look up Alf Edwards. Maybe Randy Stein would like to add something? Then you can try to start an argument about what "properly" requires. I like John Nixon, isn't he the one who plays a midi concertina. However when I talk about the jazz possibilities I mean I haven't yet heard the concertina Django Reinhardt or Louis Armstrong.

Yes but without wanting to be very offensive. Is it a concertina? Does it have concertina or accordion reeds?

Well its a tough world out there and all sorts of cheating goes on on Ebay. Some people bid on their own auctions, this is a criminal offence and people have been convicted in court. Even though you are not supposed to close an auction early without good reason (i.e. a reason recognised by Ebay) the chancers still try to persuade you to do this. Scammers will try to persuade you to deal outside ebay by wiring them cash and then they disappear and you never get the goods. You need to be vigilant and not get seduced by the idea of cheating Ebay out of their commission. You could just end up cheating yourself.

I suspect that there may also be differences in quality due to year of manufacture as well. My personal experience is limited, but I have played later mahogany-ended Lachenals (c. 1915 or so) that had much more responsive reeds than some older rosewood-ended ones that I've played. No you can't really tell. These are the important questions to ask. Are the bellows sound. Is it in concert tuning i.e A=440hz. Do all the notes work. Some of the players I know only want to play the sweet sounds of a brass reeded instrument with wooden ends. They would never consider a strident steel reeded instrument especially one with metal ends. Do you need six fold, five fold or four fold bellows. The people I ask say that once you have learned to play it makes no difference. Photos may tell you if a concertina has been kept well and is therefore worth restoring. They can never tell you how much restoration a concertina needs to make it playable.

I don't see anything wrong with cancelling an auction if Ebay allows you to do that and you want to accept an outright offer. However beware of accepting payments outside Ebay since this is the way in which many scams operate. Even if a cheque clears into your bank account the bank can still reclaim the money if it turns out to a stolen cheque. Cash on collection would be a safer idea if you know how to recognise forged banknotes. Ebay's charges are not out of line or excessive compared to the charges of many auctioneers.

Juliette Daum is a wonderful player and the English concertina was designed to be played from printed music so its keyboard has a very logical layout that you haven't understood yet. If you buy a beginners instrument like a Jackie then you should be aware that they are not real concertinas. They use accordion reeds which means that they don't have a real concertina sound.

Ron Thanks for your inquiry. Let me try to explain exactly what I have. I wanted to know what the exercises sounded like before starting to learn. If you have a teacher then the teacher will play them for you and this will give you an idea of what you are aiming for. This started life as a collection of computer midi files for all the numbered exercises starting at exercise 3 and including some of the unnumbered fragments also. If you can use midi files then they are so small that I can email the whole collection to you (cost zero), just give me an email address. The files are played moderately slowly since they are for a beginner but they are not so slow that you fall asleep or fail to get the flow of the tune. The advantage of midi is that you can speed up and slow down the tune and you can watch the cursor as it jumps from note to note but this only works if you have a PC and a midi editor program. If you don't have a midi editor then you can easily get a free midi player which will at least let you hear how the tunes sound and you can get a free concertina sound font which will let you hear how they will sound on a Wheatstone concertina. I also turned the files into standard CD or PC wave files using a synthesiser and a concertina sound font from a Wheatstone concertina. The result is 680MB of wave files which would probably have to be spread over 2 CDs. For the CDs I will charge one British Pound per CD to compensate me for the cost of blank CDs and possible wear and tear on my computer CD drive. Postage will be charged at cost, may be only one pound at most if you are U.K. based. If you are based in some other country then making small payments may be difficult, I can't accept non U.K. cheques since the Banks charge a fortune to convert them but we can discuss ways round that.

Because I have been surprised and alarmed by some of the ideas that people have expressed in other posts I am offering this standard professional way of learning to play the English Concertina for people who cannot afford lessons or who do not live near a teacher. 1. Get yourself a copy of Frank Butler's tutor book 'The Concertina'. This is available for free over the Internet although you will need to print out a copy. This book contains more than 76 graded exercises. If you work your way through all of them you will be able to play the Englsih concertina competently in many keys and you will be able to read music. 2. Frank Butler was a professional teacher who taught classes in London for the London Education Authority. 3. If you don't have a teacher then it may be useful or essential to hear what the exercises sound like and what you are aiming for. I can supply all the exercises from this book either in midi file format or in wav file format to play on a PC or CD player. I will have to make a small charge to cover the cost of blank CDs and CD duplication.

Who in the world told you that that was "correct"? I've gotten just the opposite advice from several excellent concertina players, including players of all systems (English, anglo, duets). The advice has always been to avoid, if possible, using the same finger twice is succession. I also wonder who told you, "You are not supposed to use different fingers on the same row of notes." Using different fingers is something I do all the time, and I find that it greatly improves my playing. Well Wheatstone and Rigondi and all the other great concertina players told me how to use my fingers. So suppose you are playing the same note four times in succession then try to avoid using the same finger. The people who told you that are idiots and you fell for it. Get hold of a copy of the Butler tutor for the English concertina. It is available for free over the Internet. He will show you how to use your fingers without the amateur bullshit. Avoid using the same finger twice in succession, that's the best concertina joke I've ever heard. I must pass that on to all the players I know. Does that apply to the piano keyboard as well? You really need to get some guidance from a professional teacher. Butler was a professional teacher. Give yourself a chance to benefit from his experience for free. If you learn bad habits early on you will never be able to correct them.

The standard treble English concertina has a range matching that of the violin. But there are also English concertinas with other ranges. In particular, the baritone English concertina sounds an octave lower than the treble. I know someone who got himself a baritone English concertina, and with the express purpose of learning to play jazz he started taking lessons from a trombonist. Unlike the slide trombone, though, it can't play "in between the notes". Yes but the problem is that there aren't many baritone concertinas for sale at reasonable or even unreasonable prices. The piano can't play between the notes either but jazz pianists found a way to work round this. I don't know if the jazz possibilities of the English concertina have been properly explored yet.

The very first concertina(s?) did not have the range of a violin, but one more closely matching the range of a flute. I don't think there's any indication that the intent was ever specifically "orchestral". Instead, at the time it was enlarged to have the range of a violin, the violin was a popular parlor instrument, and it seems far more likely that home musicians were the target market. But then as now, popular songs and musical arrangements were just as "chromatic" as music written for large orchestras. A side note: Your statement, "a fully chromatic orchestral instrument so like a violin it can be played in all keys including all the strange variants of minor keys," makes it sound as if "all the strange variants of minor keys" is something in addition to all major keys. But if an instrument can play in all the major keys, then that is the same as "fully chromatic", and it can't avoid being able to play "all the strange variants of minor keys". Like the English concertina, the intent of the anglo seems to have been to play and accompany popular music of the day. That's completely wrong. Since anglos can have two different notes on each button, then if all duplicates were eliminated, an anglo would need only 24 buttons to include all the notes on a 48-button English. But an equal-tempered English itself includes two duplicates in each octave (a total of six duplicates on a standard 48-button treble)... so in fact, 21 buttons would be enough. So isn't it strange that Anglos with 30 buttons are still much more limited than the English. In fact the EC was designed, not to accompany popular songs of the day, but to be easy to learn to play from printed sheet music. Wheatstone was interested in designing an orchestral instrument which could play classical music not a folk instrument. As far as I know there are no Rigondis who play the Anglo concertina. Do you know any great players of classical music who play the Anglo concertina?

Are you capable of saying anything without including some sort of insult? I am only abrasive about ITM because to me it represents musical fascism and I detest fascism of any sort. It is the ITM people who have tried to hijack Irish Traditional Music and tell musicians what they can and cannot do. So guitars are out and you can only use an Irish (Anglo-German) concertina. Why do you expect me to be nice to a small minded group of people with a defective sense of history who think they are the only true guardians of what is and what isn't Irish music. Are you always so nice to fools?

shaunw, One point about "large duets" and keyboards is portability. As soon as you electrify your music, you lose portability. As every sound-man knows, "there is no alternative to mass and volume" when it comes to satisfctory amplification. An acoustic musician can carry all he needs (OK, except pianists and organists, but most venues they play in have an instrument available!) but electric musicians need an articulated lorry (or at least a large car). And then there's the music itself. Recordings and broadcasts are dependent on electricity, but music isn't. Walk down a main street and listen to the street musicians. Go to church on Sunday and listen to the choir and organ. Go down your local pub when there's a session on. Stand on the pavement when there's a parade on, and listen to the bands. Go to a symphony concert or an opera. Visit a mediaeval faire and hear the "minstrels". Eat at a good hotel and lend the pianist your ear. All of this is music, and never an electron in sight! You can, of course, obtain electric recordings of all this, but electricity neither adds to nor detacts from the music. It simply conserves a part of the impression that the music made - and not even the acoustic elements of the music are completely conserved! A recording is at best a good reminder of music you've heard live and unplugged. There is some music that really needs electricity. Like the Theremin and the Trautonium. But neither of these is intended as a substitute for a traditional acoustic instrument, and their selling point is their unique sound, not their portability, and they are a niche. The electric guitar and bass are popular, I grant you, but they are not "most music"! I'm not trying to bug you or put you down - just pointing out that, in this day and age of electr(on)ic recording, it is necessary to remind oneself from time to time what music really is, and what it really sounds like. Cheers, John John thanks for your reply but I think it is selective. I play acoustic instruments including the concertina and the guitar but I also play the electric guitar and I mess around with electronic keyboards. I know many acoustic musicians who play instruments like the harmonium and the double bass. These are instruments that cannot be moved around easily without the use of a car and so these musicians depend upon a car. If you play the piano then many venues have a piano but it is unlikely to be in tune in many small venues. What really gives you away is when you say 'what music really is and what it really sound like'. This is the typical reaction of some musicians when they hear the words 'electronic music'. I imagine you have heard a few cheap synthesisers and think that this is all that electronic keyboards can do. You need to open your ears and listen again. What music really is, is a sequence of notes it doesn't have to be on an acoustic instrument. And of course you are wrong about the facts, most opera performances now use electronic amplification as do many street musicians in London where I live. If I want to play a Steinway grand piano in my living room, I can now do it thanks to the millions of pounds Yamaha have spent on researching electronic keyboards. If I want to play a bass concertina, I can't buy one, there are none for sale that I have seen but I can do it through the magic of electronics. If I want to play my concertina in the middle of the night without disturbing the neighbours then again I can do it thanks to the miracle of electronics and this is not an inferior synthesised approximate concertina sound, it is the sound of a particular real Wheatstone concertina with an individual sound unlike any other Wheatstone concertina. Electronic music is developing all the time. You need to forget your prejudices and open your ears.

The Anglo German concertina is not a traditional Irish instrument. It was adopted into Irish music in the 19th Century just because it was cheap. At the time many people objected to its use. They felt that it cheapened the sound of Irish music. The most suitable concertina for Irish music is the English because it has the same range as a violin, a traditional Irish instrument. I dislike the use of the Anglo concertina in Irish music, it gives an unnatural false oompa oompa sound to the music but perhaps this is just because it is so often used by unskilled players. You have to remember that in any form of music there is good and bad music and that applies to Irish Traditional music as well. Just because some old man in Clare has been paying the Anglo concertina since 1955 which may be before you were born, that doesn't make him an important part of the tradition. He may be a lousy musician. Irish music did not start in 1850, it existed long before this and O'Carolan never heard an Anglo concertina or a melodian or a harmonica. In the end there are people who love music and people who love Irish music and because they love Irish music they want to preserve it and to continue it. Then there are people who are part of ITM. For these people Irish music is a dead historic thing which can never change because all change is bad, they think like this because they are also dead, brain dead at least. Let us thank God that O'Carolan wasn't a part of ITM if he was he would never have written a single tune.

The 'correct' way to do it would be by repeated button presses and always using the same finger. You are not supposed to use different fingers on the same row of notes. However in the end it depends on what sounds best to you.

If you play your trombone from sheet music then your most sensible choice would be an English concertina. People who buy Anglos are generally people who learn to play by ear maybe because they are too scared to learn to play from music or they need the bigger buttons because they think they are too clumsy to cope with an English. Like the trombone the English Concertina is a fully chromatic orchestral instrument (the Anglo isn't) and it has the range of the violin. You can learn to play it on your own if you can read music. Just get a copy of the Butler tutor book which is available for free over the Internet and work your way through the exercises.