DaveM

For some reason, I like playing in flat keys(G minor, D minor espcially). I wonder if it is just something about my particular concertina sounding better (to me) in those.

I always figured that they are pared-down version of full-fledged reed organs. I too find them quite pleasant to listen to.

I have a similar problem on the low A (draw only), in my case is seems to be associated with going out of tune too. Anyway, I've heard that it can be related to the valves, or also just the height of the reed tip relative to the frame. Hopefully one of the more experience repairers/maintainers will chime in too.

What does "adapted for two concertinas" on the title pages mean? Looking over the music, I don't see two separate voices indicated.

I ended up tucking some gauze in between the strap and the body just above the thumb loop.

I made a go at grabbing the waveform from my concertina (a brass reeded Lachenal) -- I was focused on the recording, so I hit D5 instead of A4, but this looks a bit different from the earlier post. I'd say this is much more like a triangle wave + some extra modulation; you can see this in the power spectrum in that the even harmonics are down quite a bit relative to the odd ones.

To me, I think it's often better to think of these things in the time domain. "the spectrum is composed of peaks at multiples of a fundamental frequency of 1/T" is equivalent to saying "the waveform (in the time domain) is periodic with period T". Anything that manages to produce a periodically repeating waveform will be perceived as having a pitch. Savart wheels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savart_wheel) don't have anything that is vibrating à la strings, air columns or reeds, yet still sound pitched. So as long as the reed manages to make a periodic disturbance in the air, the sound will have harmonic overtones. Even for plucked strings, it's just as good to think of what is going on is something like this: the string is plucked at a point, two disturbances, one in each direction along the string, propagate away from it, they bounce off the nut/bridge and so on. The amount of time it takes for the wave pulse to make a complete round-trip is the fundamental period. It's that we get this kind of periodic behavior that gives the sound its pitch (of course you won't have the pulses run back and forth along the string without change unless the stationary modes have frequencies that are integer multiples of the fundamental...) Anyway, I find it useful to think this way in order to not get too hung up on the fact that the vibrational modes of reeds don't have harmonic overtones, and, as far as I know, the higher order vibrational modes aren't relevant for the sound production of the reeds. I wonder if anyone has tried exciting a free reed without using airflow. One could take a steel reed, stimulate it with a magnetic field at the correct frequency and see what a reed sounds like without airflow through the reed frame. I'm still unclear whether we "hear the reed vibrating" or "hear the reed chopping the airflow through the frame".

I'm working on Bach's invention no. 3 --- just the treble voice on the concertina though. The bass voice on, well, bass.

It's a shame that a person comes to Concertina.net and gets directed to an accordion! I hadn't heard "continental" for CBA (I always thought it was chromatic). Looking into it, I found this video of a very compact one: same author has a nice video on English concertina too I can hear the difference between accordions and concertinas, so that might be something else to think about, even if it is only to make sure you get an instrument that makes a sound you really like.

Youtube link to the performance Comes across to me as sort of "contemporary Irish folk"

Over the past few weeks one of my thumbs has started sliding too deep into the loop on my concertina. Moving to the next hole in the strap makes it too small. What are some good techniques for getting a tighter fit?

Didn't a concertina also figure prominently in a recent pirate themed game too?

I can't find it in the updated site.

CEG is usually the tight triangle in one hand. CGE might be, the lower CG on the left, and then the E on the right above that.

Here's some different flavors: Kulning - Ancient Swedish herding call trombone and of course, accordion

Mutopia is a repository for lilypond music; the idea is to transcribe public domain music into lilypond so it's focused more on (older) classical music. The other repository that I can think of is MuseScore - -- I think that this application uses lilypond "under the hood", but is its own music engraving program.

Wait, I thought that Bob is your uncle.

I dub it --- Bob!

The way she's working the bellows makes me think that they removed the reeds.

Used purely as decor in this Bishop Briggs video (~0:40 in) https://youtu.be/bqsiJPK-94Q

They're soo in the money, that they can just toss them aside without a care.

And another Canada Board Cartoon Log Driver's Waltz

...

Trailer for a new movie about Dickens: https://youtu.be/UxcnYR3mcPU

I think it is a bit more than just mechanical, especially for someone completely new to music. Playing scales and arpeggios allows you to associate the muscle movements with the sounds in the context of a key. Yes, tunes do this too, but then you to divide your focus between multiple aspects of the music. Presumably, for some people this focused aspect is helpful, for others it may be unnecessary.