cjmiller

Dave Hansen has been working more and more concertina into his frequent videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrDavidHansen/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=3

What a super tune! Anyone know of an ABC source? I can't find one, and investigation via Google & fiddlehangout.com makes me think there ain't one - worth asking though? Otherwise I'll just have to rely on my (unreliable!) ear... Ta. Roger Sadly, my ear isn't good enough to even try. If anyone has the ABC I'd love to get it too.

I tried Anglo and couldn't make heads or tails of it (still can't). The whole push for one note and pull for another is just baffling to me. Oddly enough, I can play a harmonica, but I completely lack the hand/brain coordination to work the bellows. I picked up an English, and immediately realized that the left hand played the lines and the right hand played the spaces. Written music was just a tab system for English concertina. It made absolute sense to me. Then I figured out where the 3rd's and 5th's lived, and I was hooked.

4 or 5 years ago Chris Algar had an unusual Wheatstone English on that had holes, actually rather elaborate fretwork, cut into the sides of the ends of an otherwise undistinguished mid-range concertina. It looked like it was done at the factory. If not, it was professionally done by someone. By the time I decided I was interested, it was long gone, and I've searched through the Horniman Museum photos and can't find anything like it. I'm wondering if this was an experiment to combat the problem of not hearing as well as the audience does? The side holes would project the sound up, and in theory would make it easier for the player to hear what he was playing. Has anyone ever come across another instrument like this?

I don't know about the market overall, but just the other day it occurred to me that for several months now there has been a weird lack of Edeophones for sale.

" a custom-made basketry case, handmade to order by a fine basketmaker/craftsman" That sounds interesting. Any chance you could post a picture?

I think we have a better handle on this than you might suspect for the simple reason that almost all concertinas found "in the wild" have been sitting in closets and attics for decades and when they come on the market require restoration and repair. Based on my observations it's an unusual event when a well loved concertina in good working order turns up at an auction, pawn shop, music store, estate sale or other venue. The fact that they don't turn up implies that there isn't a large pool of concertina players who fly under the radar. Another factor is that there is a very limited number of people to do repairs, supply parts, or act as dealers in used concertinas. A concertina in need of service, or one that's for sale, is probably going to one of, what, 2 dozen possible places? The same is true with new instruments, there are so few people making them, and their output is so small that the number of new instruments annually can be easily tracked--you can almost do that math in your head. Again, if there were a pool of hidden concertina players they would quickly show themselves in the form of much higher demand for service work and spare parts.

My dog leaves the room as soon as he sees the concertina, but some years ago I wound up with a parrot (a long story), and the parrot thinks very highly of concertina music. He'll fly over and sit on my shoulder while I'm playing and even whistle a bit. The higher the notes the better he likes it. (If you've ever heard a flock of parrots in the wild, you probably realize that this might not be a flattering comment on the sound a concertina makes, but at this point I'll take any fans I can find.)

Perhaps you're looking at it at bit too negatively. You haven't spent 1300 hours practicing concertina, you've spent 1300 hours making music, which is a skill in its own right, and one that will transfer to any other instrument. I suspect that at least some of the reason guitar and mandolin is coming easily to you is because of what you've learned on the concertina, and in another 1300 hours you'll probably post that the knowledge you've gained from the guitar has really helped your concertina playing. It really doesn't matter what instrument you're playing as long as you're enjoying the music.

Perhaps to be truly authentic a dose of syphilis and a bit of scurvy? Now that would give the kiddies a teachable moment or two. Yes, I posted a couple of authentic tunes that just happen to be commonly recognized at the moment because they're in a popular television show. I don't quite follow your jump from that to Disney, a pirate costume, and playing to the low information masses. It's not like I suggested the theme from Gilligan's Island.

If there will be kids on board (or parents of kids), two songs they'll think of as nautical are Dingle Regatta and Oyster Girl. Both those tunes are used on the cartoon show Spongebob Squarepants, and the kids all seem to know them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMqyQQIQHQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3bTi4BrjZM

As low tech as this process was (Note, that's low tech, and NOT low skill-- the skill and patience required is amazing), I'm surprised that you don't see all sorts of custom layouts. I know the Salvation Army sometimes had SA worked into their design, and H Boyd is well known, but you would think that every major music dealer and professional musician would have been interested in a custom concertina design. Were there others?

Thank you. I love the detail that the finger rest was made from a scrap corner piece.

I heard once that Boyd specified a slightly shallower reed pan, the concertina equivalent of raising the compression on a gas engine, to produce a little faster response. If so, it would seem to be a simple matter of measuring the depth of the reed pan. Anyone else ever heard anything like that?

Sorry, I can't help, but if you break down and have some fabricated, please put me down for a pair. I can't help but think mine are living on borrowed time. In fact, I suspect the demand for them would surprise you.

David, I trust you didn't log in at the link to report the scam to ebay. If you did, I'm afraid you might have given the scammer your ebay name and password.

I assume Chris knows what he's doing, but the odds of a high end Wheatstone popping up in Alliance, Nebraska (days after another one appears in Ashland, Nebraska and is exposed as a scam) boggle the mind. It would be like two Wheatsones appearing in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

Sadly, 13 bids had already been received, so I suspect he'll contact the bidders with a story about why ebay pulled the listing and try to do a private deal with them, so his scam might work for him anyway. He claimed to be from Ashland, Nebraska. I'm 90 minutes from there, and there is NOTHING in Ashland. It's a wide spot in the road.

I'd be interested in learning how one customizes the foam to hold the concertina securely. My experience with foam is that it is difficult to cut without leaving ragged edges, and that it tends to flake - not good for delicate mechanisms. OTOH, that might just be abject ignorance on my part. The foam is pre-scored into little 1 inch squares, so all you need to do is (starting from the center and working out) carefully remove the squares where the concertina will live. It's almost foolproof. My wife is still terribly impressed with the job I did. I guess I never got around to telling her it was pre-scored. The only tricky bit is that the foam gets thin at the edge (one square), so you're going to want to use some double sided tape to secure the foam to the case.

Very nice. Love The New Chatham Hornpipe, but while it certainly has a nautical flair, for some reason when listening to it I had visions of old western movies, maybe something the Sons of the Pioneers would play while the cavalry goes on patrol. Any chance the tune is in ABC notation somewhere so a person might learn it?

No one else has jumped in, so I'll give it a shot. I'm 90 miles west in G.I., and I've never heard of anyone anywhere in the State. You might ask Chris Sayre ( ). Maybe he knows someone or gives lessons himself, although as far as I know he only plays English. I'm completely lacking in talent and find the Anglo concertina utterly baffling, so I can't help you, although it is nice to know there's another concertina player nearby.

The Aeola is an interesting concertina. If I'm reading the ledger correctly it is quite the literally the last of the pre-war concertinas. Between the first notation (16 July) and the date completed (17 August), it's hard to imagine a 30 day period that changed the world more than that one. http://www.brainyhistory.com/years/1914.html

I would not say this is necessarlily an indictment on ebay . . . . Though you would think with 28 thousand employers they would be able to police it better! No, in my opinion it's very much ebay's fault. There's no excuse for this. I frequently get calls from Chase Bank when I make charges on my credit card that don't fit their computer models. I downloaded some music for my college age son, and somewhere the computer spit out that (99 cent) transaction as something suspicious for a 50+ year old to be buying, and I got a text message from them within minutes. If I purchase things at Best Buy, I guarantee you that I have a message to call Chase waiting by the time I get home. They frequently make me answer challenge questions when I log on, and if they spot me using a different computer that also raises an alarm. Ebay does none of these things. I haven't been required to change my password since the day I joined. I have 700 transactions on ebay--by this time they should have a pretty good idea about what I buy and sell. If I were to suddenly list 1000's of dollars of auctions in a category I've never shown an interest in before (which seems to be the pattern here) their computer should raise a warning. That's a program even a college kid could write. These scam auctions all have text about "buy it now" and "don't contact me through ebay" and a simple text search program should instantly flag things like that. Even if you don't catch it the first time, these auctions have been repeated over and over and over with exactly the same text and photos--they can't flag that in the computer? Ebay doesn't seem to care enough to take basic security seriously, and there's no excuse for it.

I have a 48 key Wheatstone TED (good term), and they eliminated the top row of buttons and added a row at the bottom. Everything in between is in the same location.

All I know is that if my wife is taking a nap, I'm allowed to play my wooden ended Wheatstone, but I'm forbidden to play my metal ended Wheatstone because it wakes her up. That's scientific enough for my purposes.