RAc

well, the one piece of advice that comes to mind is never to use any cleaner on french polish that has alcohol in it (apologies, probably too trivial to mention).

I looked at the utube video linked to on this page: Regondi English Folk Concertina I assume your instrument is the same model? The player does not seem to take the bellows to their full extent, but it seems as if the limited range provides a decent enough supply of air for the kind of tune presented here. You may want to post a video so we can look at what happens exactly.

Hi Stephanie, spring making isn't too hard. It has beren discussed many times here with a good deal of instructional videos. For raw material, any guitar or other steel string with the fitting diameter (used is fine) will do, and the tools required and jigs made should be affordable and doable for most of us. Just type the following into google's search box: spring making site:concertina.net and start making your own springs.

ok, thanks, but is that open to everyone, and if yes, what is the procedure? I could mot find a submission procedure description on World Concertina Day 2026! – International Concertina Association . If it is not openly advertised or an invitation event, that is fine with me. Just curious!

and because Mr. Barnert and Mr. Laban have reinforced their respective reputations as part time hardcore grouches by only picking on your errors and not wasting a single word on an appraisal, let me jump in here, Morgana: It is obvious that you have poured a lot of heart blood into this compilation. Thanks a billion for that labor and for providing a one stop shopping place, I am sure that a lot of forum members will benefit from that. I also suggest pinning this thread as I am fairly certain that you or others will add to the list.

Hi Tim, do you already have your copy of Dave Elliotts Concertina Maintenance Manual?

I have a few recordings of early 20th century American music on my youtube and soundcloud channels (see footer). I do not do spotify (are there compelling reasons for it for people who simply want to put out stuff with no commercial interest whatsoever)? Other players to look for regarding your scheme of prey are Danny Chapman (ratface) and Michael Pierceall (just to clarify: I do NOT imply to be in their league, I am not).

Apologies if this should have come up before, but a quick search on the forum yielded no results... I just got off rabbitholing in the guts of the www and found this tiddlybit here: I came up with this thing and played it to Paul [Simon]. And he said, ‘I love it . . . but I think it needs to be played on a concertina.’ So there was some dude from Italy doing his first tour of the United States, who just happened to Italy’s greatest classical concertina player. So Paul brings him in with an interpreter, and we sat there all day and went over the lick, and they wrote it out for the guy, who then played it. And afterwards Paul says, ‘Naw, that’s not it.’ And he dismissed the guy and he walks out in bewilderment, and we went right back to where we were and got it in about the third take.” This is Fred Carter Jr. about the guitar intro he wrote and recorded for "The Boxer." from: Takes from the Top: Recording Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer’ | Songwriter 101 | BMI.com

That describes accurately how my Holden feels.

That may be true, Roger, but is that exercise not somewhat academic? What you normally get is the bare MIDI file itself with no information about nor control over its origin. And if you did, you probably could generate a perfect ABC right ftom the source instead oft the MIDI detour, vor am I mistaken? Habe a nice Sunday, ye all!

No need to apologize for anything, Roger, I believe we all agree now that MIDI to ABC is a technically challenging process whose success is feeble and depends on a lot of factors, similar to music OCR (I still haven't found a tool that can reliably convert photographed let alone handwritten scores with reasonable quality. Lots of playground for AI, I suppose). That said, I am surprised (to come back to the original topic) that many digital music archives still center around MIDI files. The ABC format, in spite of being ancient and originally primitive, appears to be superior to MusicXML as well as MIDI (any counter arguments are much appreciated), so would it not be a natural choice to use ABC files natively in those archives?

As a side note (apoologies for slight OT): To me it seems as if transcoding from MIDI to ABC seems a rather hard piece of work to do, at least judging from my attempts to do that using several different tools, both OS/homecooked and commercial. Whereas the opposite (trivially) is very straightforward, the quality of the resulting ABC ranges from completely unrelated gibberish to close enough. Do you confirm that observation, or die I just pick all the useless tools for my tests? Thanks!

ok, here is an interesting one: Many tunes have phrases not aligned with bar lines, for example the one and only lemonville jig here the anacrusis along with the next two bars minus the last beat make a phrase, with the last beat being the anacrusis for the next phrase and so on. For practicing, it would be perfect to align the phrases to be repeated with the musical phrase. Needless to say, a software that can do that generically would need an AI, but in cases like this, would there be a possibility to instruct your tool to shift the phrase back n beats (in this case n=1), sort of virtually shifting the bar lines similar to the way some guitar tabs do it? Of course that would be neither good interoperable with a metronome nor chords...

This again is a game changer, Michael. No excuse for a 60+ geezer like me anymore NOT to learn to play lightning fast AND clean. Now all that is left to do is use the tool... 🤭 Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!

Here is a source for my previous claim: The History of Concertina Wire Quote: "During World War I (1914-1918), combat engineers began coiling barbed wire manually into bundles that could be stretched out like an accordion. These improvised obstacles were not yet standardized products, but they proved highly effective for defensive positions. In English-language sources from that time, the term concertina began to appear to describe such coiled wire barriers." For this discussion, it is interesting that this type of barbed wire did not become popular as "accordion wire" but instead "concertina wire." Etymologists come to help please! Possible interpretations are that a) concertina bellows are closer to round than the rectangular accordion bellows, thus the coiled rolls of wire resembled concertina bellows more than accordion bellows, and b) in combat settings, concertinas may have proven more practical to carry around and were thus more prevelant in military lingo than accordions.