DaveM

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.

In the surf music vein, Pipeline has an electric piano part that I could imagine trying on concertina. Someday, I'll play "Follow You Follow Me" (Genesis) but there's a big gap between my ambitions and my capabilities. One of the problems I see in adapting pop/rock music is the dominant use of the guitar as a rhythm instrument, so that concertina covers of guitar focused songs lack the rhythmic pulse. I'll leave off with this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CY8i3wUOXw which is in the "if a melodica can do it" family.

If you can make it down to DC, the House of Musical traditions rents out starter concertinas.

My guitar teacher recommended consciously shifting between two approaches to practicing: - "stop" -- where you stop and address mistakes as you find them, and - "go" -- where no matter what you just keep playing through the piece. In "go" practice you have to imagine that the music is just going on with or without you; you have to just play through your mistakes, if you really mess up and loose track of things, you have to join back it at the next point where you have your bearings, even if that means waiting for one or more bars. Doing (more of) the latter might help. For me, trying to play along with anything more than a metronome is too distracting when trying to get a tune under my fingers, so I usually do this kind of practice without a backing track. I believe that this has advantages since when I flub, I have to keep the tune going in my head so that I can resume playing at the appropriate point. I think that this helps me internalize the music better.

This morning I recieved a shipment from Greg Jowaisas. Presumably it contains a concertina, but it came just as I was pulling out for work, so I didn't even have time to open it. Looking forward to trying it out later tonight.

I like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKqrIOGKSDc which gets at some uses of downsampling the metronome, albeit in the context of bass guitar.

Someone (something?) is posting spam in the tune-o-tron, the most recent additions (easily found by clicking on "browse all entries") are just links to product websites.

ttonon, Thanks for the detailed reply and additional info. Just speculating here, peoples' perceptions could also affect things in how they play, i.e. subconsciously modifying their manner of playing to make a metal ended 'tina sound brighter.

<pedantic-on> It seems to me that you identified the fundamental and then plotted the spectral amplitudes at the exact harmonics of this frequency. I'm under the impression that inharmonicities between the upper partials are an important part of an instrument's timbre. I don't expect that it invalidates any of the conclusions that have been drawn so far, but is there the possibility your plots don't reflect the maximal values of the peaks, since they may be slightly offset from their ideal frequencies? I'd also believe it if someone could confirm that free-reeds have particlarily harmonic overtones, which would be consistent with my understanding of how the sound is produced, but I'm not 100% about this. </pedantic-on>

Very nice!

Thanks for the replies. Jim, I especially appreciated "pedantically intriguing but useless -- possibly even harmful -- for the purpose of learning to play the English concertina"; Sometimes I go a bit afield with theory over practice. Randy, I compared your rendition of Harlem Nocturne against a few others I found on the internet, and noticed a few distinctive elements that you put in. But it's not really about the instrument, I suspect its really about your personal interpretation of the music.

I was reading The Wheatstone Concertina and Symmetrical Arrangements of Tonal Space and the author implied that the keyboard/fingering patterns used on the EC don't mesh well with certain (polyphonic) musical patterns. I've read that harmonizing a melody in 3rds is easy, are there other techniques/patterns that come easy on the EC? Have you found pre-existing music which just didn't sit right on the EC without modification? I'm wondering what you all's experience is.

Jim, Do you have an estimate of how many people will be there?

Jim, I'm hoping to pick up the English; I rented a 20b Anglo from HMT last fall, which was fun (I wasn't totally confused by the in-out thing); I'm not coming to this from a traditional music background (I listen mostly to rock) so I don't have the peer pressure to get an Anglo. Plus I think that I'll do better with there being only one way to play each note. Specifically, I'm in Arlington. Dave

Will punters be welcome? I lurk around here even though I don't play. Yet.

I too appreciate your videos; the music is great and the videos provide a charming window into the Irish countryside.

With a new email address no less.

It got pulled as I was reading this thread.

I'm in exactly the same boat: and found everyones' input in this thread (as well as others) helpful in this recent round of thrashing about trying to decide on a system. (I've been renting an Anglo for the past two months, but think that I'm heading towards English.)

doesn't sound like a toy at all to me.

Is that *the* Ernest Rutherford, i.e. the physicist?

I found this while poking around the net for concertina music: http://mobtownstudios.com/secret-mountains-microshow/ Some of the songs like "It's been a long time" have a bit of subtle concertina backing in them. This seems to be a nice example of non-kitchy free-reed instrumentation in a non-traditional setting.