DaveM

Wolf, What's the soundcloud "stupid business policy"?

Thanks Lukasz, those are good points. I had worked up a middle voice, but haven't been able to execute it (on guitar) even to the level of quality of the melody. Even with multitracking, getting an arrangement as rich as Tona's seems like a stretch for me.

https://soundcloud.com/mapadofu/lespouleshuppees maybe the synth bass is a good idea, maybe not...

I think that it would be helpful to get an idea of the type(s) of music she's interested in playing on concertina. As a first cut. If it's ITM (or some other kinds of traditional music) Anglo is likely to be easier, especially in the sense that there will be more resources (teachers, online lessons, written tutors) geared towards playing that kind of music on that kind of instrument. Conversely, there is comparatively more resources for playing classical (and related) music on the English. On this score, the duet systems get short shrift -- their lower popularity overall, means that there are fewer learning resources overall; but if she's looking to play more contemporary music, I'd look into it further. Basically, I'm arguing that one aspect of "easier" is when there is a larger body of resources available that one can use for learning from.

Oh my, but that was a treat. I really like the way the two melodic lines worked together. Did you write the accompaniment? And how fantastic to have melody and harmony on two instruments. Not only do you get the pleasure of playing with someone else, but you avoid the finger contortions and honks of trying to accompany yourself. Or so it seems to me…. Thanks. Yes, I've been killing two birds with one stone by arranging TsOTM for my village band and also recording two of the parts on concertinas to post here. I'll attach this arrangement. Melody + bass line + one of the other lines works well - a bit too dense/busy playing all four parts at once.Crested Hens.pdf Towards the end, when you're playing the 3rd staff as the accompaniment, you loose that voice in bars 3 and 7 of the B section because of all of the unisons. For me, this is particularly noticeable in bar 7, where it is as though the 2nd concertina has stopped playing. I like the strident rhythmic effect in bars 1 and 5 of the B section, and I want to hear it again in bars 3 and 7 too.

Several years ago, I got the itch to pick up an instrument. For a while I considered piano accordion; but they seemed expensive given that I wasn't sure how committed I'd be; I ended up getting an electric guitar, it was much less expensive (at least in the short term), and a much more obvious fit with the music I listen too. One year the people I was playing with started talking about playing Fairytale of New York (we never did end up doing it); I had a sense that it involved one of those "small accordion things" -- so Iooked around the net, realized that I had concertina in mind (even if the Pogues use a accordion). I fell in love. It took years to convince my partner that this wasn't an idle fling, but could turn into a long term commitment. It was just under a year ago that she relented, and I got a hexagonal package from Santa.

Is that an anglo or English button layout?

Matthew I've worked through only a small part of _The Harmonic Experience_ (W.A. Mathieu), but it starts with ideas from Indian music, and it seems like it will end up connecting this to more western ideas of harmony; it might be worth looking at in this endeavour. I'm curious to see what comes of this, so keep me in the loop. Good luck in Columbia.

Jim, Jody and Tona -- are you guys recording in stereo? I'm hearing more bass in one ear than the other, and it's a nice separation of the melody from accompaniment.

Below the track, and below "write a comment" is a row of buttons, the first has a heart (like), the second a loop of arrows ... the right-most one has a box with an arrow arcing out of it that rightmost one is the "share button"

Stephen, The best way to link to a track on Soundcloud is to use one of the small buttons below the track (looks sort of like a box with an arrow), and not to copy the URL from the top of the browser (which just directs me to /my/ stream).

Though I would normally "prefer" the 2-1-2 fingering for that bit, I'm actually as likely to use 2-1-3, because I usually use 2 and 3 for B and E when they occur together, as they do in so many other tunes. But I would also suggest that you consider other potential factors, for example: Is your orientation suffering not because of the fingering itself, but because you're focusing your attention elsewhere, e.g., on the next note, which is in your other hand? Could there be a "problem" with the orientation of your hand in the first place, which only becomes evident when you play G# followed by E? I.e., should you start (and finish?) with a different orientation? Do you change the orientation of you hand during that 3-note passage, or do you keep your hand steady and only move your fingers? If the former, then are you "forgetting" to return your hand to its initial (or "resting") position? Thanks for the pointer Jim -- it's just a new fingering for me, so I was messing up on hitting the e with finger #2. I figured I'd ask to avoid getting into bad habits.

Anyone have suggestions on the EC fingering for the B-G#-E part of the melody? I've tried using 2-1-2 but find hard to keep my hand oriented on the buttons after this.

What you did sounds good to me. I liked it Thanks Geoff

I too tried the multi-track approach: https://soundcloud.com/mapadofu/k536no2sec3 but only got one section together.

Nice even tempo and control of phrasing. If you can keep that while gradually working up to a a more "normal" speed, you'll be way ahead of those who try too hard to play "up to tempo" but then lose control of the flow. Thanks for the encouragement Jim.

Maybe a bit late, but it does fit with the theme of the month https://soundcloud.com/mapadofu/josephinsdopvals Comment (or tips) are welcome.

Ballet des feus from Suite #1 of Praetorius's Terpsichore dance tune collection. Thanks, your rendition is nice.

Which particular tune is this?

In line with (the other) David's comments, I hear your voice coming across as more distant/muffled than the concertina, which is more up front and present. I believe that I'm hearing more reverb (from the room?) on your voice, making it less articulate. In terms of raw volume I do not find the concertina overpowering, and it sounds clear and full. I figure that this has more to do with your recording approach/technique than with anything about the musical performance.

I think that there is something wrong with the date, maybe you mean April?

This sounds like support for after-touch, but I'm not 100% sure how often after-touch is mapped to note velocity in a way that switches samples; Horns and woodwinds do this, so I'd think it's likely that a good sound font engine would support it. I don't think that answering this question has much bearing on the construction of the sound font itself, but rather is a requirement on the sound engine software.

On each side the arrangement is the "harmonic table layout", with the two sides setup to realize the English's idea of having a scale alternate from hand to hand in a sensible manner, and to give "lines on the left...". On the English, a downward pointing close triangle is sometimes major, sometimes minor (non-isomorphic). On the dualo, a given shape is always of a given flavor, in this respect it is more like a Hayden (isomorphic). Another way to look at it: it's taking alternating (slanted) rows of a Hayden and assigning them the the left-hand-side, right-hand-side, left-hand-side, so on.

Lukasz Maybe it could be more accurate to measure the time rate of change of the distance between the ends of the concertina, rather than trying to measure the air pressure; I'm thinking of an ultrasonic or laser range finder type of device on one of the sides, measuring the distance to the other (do they make chip-sized versions of these types of things?) with a high enough sample rate (>100Hz or so) that the response would seem instantaneous. Then, the airflow/bellows would only be there for user feel.

Near-field vs. far field considerations may be important in understanding these features: Note that the wavelengths involved are on the O(1 meter), e.g. middle c is 130cm, so your head is in the near-field regime of the concertina, if you're right at the edge of the band you're probably in the transition region, but if you're out in the audience (more like O[10meters]) you're in the far field regime. <vague physics handwaving> A small free reed emits waves more like a perfect point-like source (a dipole). In a concertina, this sound comes out throgh the fretwork which has a linear scale of a few centimeters or so, still much much smaller than the wavelength of sound produced (except maybe for the uppermost notes of a treble) Since the sound producing element is effectively point-like, the output is almost exclusively radiates into the far field, like a pure dipole source. Instruments with larger sound producing units (violins, and esp. guitars in their upper registers) behave as extended sources, and thus could produce more higher order near-field power relative to the far-field (dipole) signal. Thus, you might expect that a large instrument will have a sharp drop-off in volume across the transition from near-field to far-field, while smaller instruments will have a more consistent (1/r^2) drop off. </vague physics handwaving> Something that is not vague handwaving: you can only get directionality of sound projection if the sound producing element has a size comparable to (or larger than) the wavelength under consideration, so I'd expect that concertinas have more uniform projection than other common instruments. These types of considerations might have something to do with differences between say concertina and violin, but don't do much to explain why different concertinas seem to have different amounts of projection.