RAc

Bah, humbug. As long as you're not playing melodeons... <duck and cover>

well Łukasz, you certainly have my highest respect for your work. I also have cut down on my few spare cycles for practicing in favor of working on my own custom concertina, which threw me back significantly... One remark about your design: If I remember a conversation with Alex H. correctly (please jump in, Alex, if I'm wrong), the areas marked red, though aesthetically plaesing, are statically problematic as those sharp edges may easily break under little tension?... All the best nevertheless!

Oh my... now a whole buch of things fall into place. Speech recognition, auto correction, auto translation... all major contributors to the deterioration of language and its beauty. Humans enslaving themselves and one of the biggest assets that makes humanity (language) to computers. I should really get out of that field (IT) asap...

Poor professional fishermen, they are stuck in an oxymoron, aren't they? 😙 Should I feel bad now because I love my job (not a fisherman)? Nope...

In case you have access to a Windows device, this here may be of interest to you:

I'm glad I could be of help! All the best with your choice and let us know how you get on!

ok, if I understand you correctly, you confirm my statement here that there are almost no moveable chord patterns on the Jeffries but each chord pattern is a different triad inversion? By moveable I mean that (first approximation) the same order of fingers can be shifted by rows and/or columns yielding an identical chord. This is taken to extremes by the Hayden layout where there is exactly one triangular (three finger) pattern for minor and major triads, respectively, that never changes, but which chord actually sounds depends on where the root note sits. On the Crane, this is similar, but moving the chord a row up typically involves changing one finger.

Hi wunks, thanks for clarifying, much appreciated! I'll change my #1 according to your input! I don't quite understand your remark #3 though. Could you clarify so I can work that into my earlier post as well? Thanks!

That's my background as well. Back when I asked a similar newbie question on another (now obsolete) concertina forum, the user present here as anglo-irishman advised me that a duet (in particular a Crane or a Hayden) would make the most natural transition path from a stringed fretted instrument such as a guitar or banjo. I never really tried any other system, but I'd chime in with him for those reasons: 1. Like the left hand on the guitar, each hand walks up chromtically or diatonically a row of buttons like on the frets on a string until the end of the position is reached, then moves on to the next string (or button row). This holds true for Crane, Hayden and Jeffries systems (see wunk's later post) but not McCann. 2. On the guitar, the right hand thumb takes over the pianist's left hand (accompaniment), while the fingers take over the pianist's right hand side (melody). On a duet or anglo, you're back to left/right for accompaniment vs. melody. Your brain can be trained to splitting the thumb/fingers roles into the left/right hand roles fairly easily. In fact, a number of fingerstyle techniques (stride bass, Travis picking etc) can be adapted quite fast. This holds true for all duet and anglo concertinas, but not the EC. 3. Somewhat like on the guitar, you can think in terms of movable chord patterns for both hands. To my understanding, this is easiest on the Hayden and on the EC, a little more clumsy on the Crane (because when moving a chord pattern up or down a row, you'll need to adjust one finger by a semi tone for most chords), also present on the Anglo but less on the McCann and Jeffries duet systems (I'm sure someone is going to corrent me fairly soon here if I didn't do the sysems I'm not too famiiar with justice). I know about one EC player with a guitar background and another (very good) one who adapted guitar styles to the McCann duet but a fair number of Crane and Hayden players with a guitar background. I myself still "think" guitar a lot when I play one of my Cranes. To me the Anglo is not an option because I can't make heads or tails of bisonoric layouts, but that's just me. The usual advice is to "dry test" the different layouts by printing them out on paper and "air playing" them to get a feel for the playing idiosyncracies.

Yes, I'd say it would. My smallest Crane is a 45 button, and about 90% of the "standard English dance repertoire" fits into that range, melody and accompaniment. The question of course is what keys your singer(s) sing(s) in. The Crane layout centers around the keys of D,G and C which means in those keys the fingering is easiest and you are the most likely to fit most if not all of the melody notes into the right hand in those keys. If your singer(s) need other key families, it gets harder for you the further the keys move away from the instruments' "home keys."

Hi there Wes, thanks for your input! It surprises me a little bit, though, as your statement about the mechanical switches seems to contradict Don's earlier elaborations?

Again a reminder: Alphabet may or may not follow questionable business practices, but I have to give them that: They do understand their business! If I need to search for something on this forum, I normally go to google and type into the search bar: tidder site:concertina.net/forums (replace tidder by the search term(s) you are looking for). Of course, google can only guess spelling corrections that much, but it's probaly the best way to find something reliably.

Of course you are right - thanks for pointing that out! ☺️ Just because I'm at this right now - another major trap door is the one that concerns magnetic disturbances - I am using reed switches in the matrix points, and as it turns out, already the spring, being made of metallic spring wire, transport magnetic disturbances that make the reeds switch when they're not supposed to. Fortunately there's a working relief: Self-adhesive copper foil in the spring posts (copper finish would be even easier to apply). Slowly getting there...

Actually, I remember reading your earlier very useful descriptions of the task. They were one of the steps towards my decision to use reed switches (not the same as hall sensors) for the contacts. One beneficial side effect was that my concertina still has a reed plate, even though it doesn't make a sound... ;-) Of course I totally agree that "all that remains" is a very crude euphemism, hence the quotation marks! Absolutely; if for no ther reason than for the reason to play mimick the arm action. I use that too as the sound end of fluidsynth. So your work, even though you yourself never brought it to completion, has helped other projects on their way, which I'm very grateful for!

Hi Richard, the Software is all there for you. You'd need an Arduino Due (because that one has a USB comm interface different from the programming interface). Then query the net for Arduino +USBMIDI (or MIDIUSB), and you'll get tons of sample code that you can modify (no problem if you have programmed before). What you have then is something that you can plug into any USB port of your PC (you won't even need an external power supply as the Arduino is powered by the PC). It will identify itself as a USB MIDI sound card. By shorting pins on the Arduino, you'll get a MIDI play sound command that you can feed into a MIDI synthesizer on your PC. "All that remains after that" is to build the mechanics that short the pins for you when you press your button. All of that will be in my video documentation, but currently it looks as if it'll be a while before I get around to making that. In the meantime, I'll be happy to discuss anything that may be of interest to you either by PM or in the public part of the forum. Granted, bisonoric is an additional level of complication. Once I get to the bellows, I'll add a pressure sensor. It would be possible to evaluate the pressure based on the "resting pressure" to distinguish push from pull.