Johanna

D'oh, sorry. Is it better now?

In honor of World Concertina Day, I've worked up the courage to film myself on purpose. So here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9t86k0o6nrxpwmu6dynmi/WIN_20260205_21_26_06_Pro.mp4?rlkey=5h1x6kklxyqdqufzxwdw0l8el&st=3h4t96fl&dl=0

I still think it's hilarious that they wanted me to play on that song. But they've been more accommodating than they needed to be of my non-standard instrument elbowing its way into their rock'n'roll jam, and I'm grateful for any opportunity to demonstrate that all music needs more concertina.

The below video requires some explanation. This is from "Instaband," a community jam session of sorts, where prior to this performance, we all had two weeks to learn our parts (or in my case, wholly invent it), and we did not rehearse together as a group at all. The result, as you might imagine, does not always turn out well. All that said, get a load of this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LbGrDR3Qc3X8AyVXjEowd84rjkS-xWP3/view?usp=sharing

Thanks. I did redo all the pads that were letting any noticeable white light through (as opposed to red light filtering through the wood) when I held a bright LED underneath the action board. Then I briefly put the end plate back in place to line up the buttons, then checked them again with the LED. The tightness is much, much improved after that, although maybe still not quite as good as it used to be before the old pads started falling off. I'll try the blowing-through-the-action-board test if I can figure out a good way to do it. (I vaguely recall doing something similar once before using a bubble tea straw and a wad of poster putty. I'll see if I can retrace my steps.) I really appreciate the willingness of everyone here to share their expertise.

Irish tunes in F, you say? It's not traditional, but I can't get enough of this:

Thanks, both of you - that's really helpful. I'll try tinkering with it some more.

In the continuing saga of the leaky Aeola... I continued to have problems with pads coming loose and falling off - even the ones I'd just reglued. Upon closer inspection, the cardboard backing in the pads and the leather (or whatever it is - it looks more like cotton) in the mounting discs were deteriorating, so that each pad was potentially failing in multiple places. So the Aeola has got a new set of pads (purchased from Bob Snope and just installed by me) for a belated 101st birthday present. I've installed new pads one or two at a time before, but never a whole set all at once. I see in the Maintenance Manual that it says to wait at least a week before expecting the new pads to bed into place and form effective seals. So I will try to be patient and not expect too much right away. Indeed, some of the notes are nicely responsive already, but others are much, much less so - and the less responsive notes correspond to pads that aren't yet sealing well (they let bits of white light through when I try the flashlight test; the light goes away when I push the pad down into place with my fingers, but it comes back when I press and release the key). I take it this is all normal? Is there anything else I should be on the lookout for while I wait for the new pads to settle in? (E.g., there was quite a lot of debris flying around as a result of removing all the old crumbling pads. I tried to clear it away, especially from around the holes, but it's possible that I could have missed some, and that it could be interfering with the new seals.) And also...while using the flashlight, I happened to notice that at least one of the holes for the screws that hold the endplates in place goes clear through the pad board. That's a source of air loss, right? I imagine that when the screw is in place, it will block the hole somewhat, but I can't imagine it's forming an airtight seal. Is there a good fix for that?

Thanks for the comparison. I'm surprised that the piano bushing cloth is so much thicker - the listings I've seen make it sound like it should be around 1 mm thick, or maybe a tiny bit more.

Are there any cool Welsh-language songs you can recommend?

If there's any chance that you'll ever want to get into the vintage concertina game, you'll want to get comfortable doing basic repairs yourself. Maybe, in parallel with getting your next "real" instrument, you could get a cheaper vintage concertina, like a 20-button Lachenal that's in good-but-not-great shape, and a copy of the Concertina Maintenance Manual, and just practice opening up the ends and doing some basic things like changing a valve or a spring. Then, if you ever do decide to get a nicer Lachenal, Wheatstone, Jeffries, etc., those kinds of tasks won't seem so intimidating.

More geeking out on what the words mean... Near the end of the song there's a line that goes (phonetically) "och, nay nay." You might guess that that means "Oh, no no," and according to the English translation, you'd be right. But Cornish doesn't have words for "yes" and "no" - at least, not according to this, which is just about as much of the language as I've actually studied. You answer yes/no questions by repeating the verb: "Are you a student?" "I am, I am a student." By that standard, the line would have to go "Shall I wake thee? Oh, I shan't, I shan't." I guess that Richard Gendall, the songwriter, was either employing poetic license to get the line to scan or appealing to higher-level linguistic knowledge that I don't have. And back to the song that I originally posted... "Gwrello Glaw" means "Let It Rain." It's a song about getting through the winter together, which is why it's been on my mind now, even though I learned it a few months ago. If you've ever spent a winter in the southwest of Britain, you may know that it doesn't get especially cold, but it's very wet, very gloomy, and very dark. Hence the particular weather metaphor. And hence my third-favorite piece of Cornish-language trivia: Cornish is a descendant of the Celtic language that was spoken alongside Latin in Roman Britain. So while it's distinctively Celtic, it's also about 30% of the way to being a Romance language. And you can see that in the names for the months of the year. Half of them are cognates of the Latin/English/general Western European names (e.g., April and May are "mis Ebrel" and "mis Me"), and the other half are their own thing. November is "mis Du," which translates as "the dark month." December is "mis Kevardhu," whose meaning is not totally clear but which at least arguably translates as "the even more darker month." It's a language after my seasonal-affective-disordered heart.

Well, if we're going to get into details... Although "Dy Sul Vyttin" is described as a "traditional folk song" in various places on the internet, this says that it was written in 1979. I think the latter is far more likely to be true: The subject matter of the lyrics - gazing dreamily at your sleeping lover on a lazy Sunday morning - is not how people typically talked about each other in traditional folk songs. (Especially not Cornish ones. The Cornish language entered its decline around the time of the Protestant Reformation, so for a traditional Cornish-language folk song to have had any sticking power, it would have to have been medieval in origin, which Dy Sul Vyttin is pretty clearly not.) All of which is to say: Wootton's version (recorded in 1982, according to the link above) basically is the original, and everyone else's arrangements are heavily influenced by hers.

That's a great song. Tanya Brittain (who wrote all three of the Cornish-language songs that I know) also recorded it:

Neither does about 99.99996% of the world's population (including me). But learning songs in languages that I don't speak is a fun way to challenge my brain.