Dan Worrall

I'll have to see if I can find some recordings of Ella-Mae O'Dwyer. I have not found any on eMusic I did put quotes around the word, so no need to take it so seriously. I would not be surprised if that is what Chemnitzer players call their instruments on their on-line forums. Also, I just reflected what I thought was the attitude held by everyone here towards those cheap German boxes. See the paragraph 6: http://www.concertina.net/buy_used.html So, I am evading responsibility on that one too. After my experience with Scholers, I am not going to recommend those to anyone, unless it is for taking apart. I did not see much wrong with suggesting other instruments, because I am learning melodeon too. Maybe, I should have suggested the Stagi C-2, but that is the best quality anyone is likely to find in a double-reeded hexagonal Anglo. ...................................................................................................................................... Ella Mae O'Dwyer was recorded by Neil Wayne and John Tams in the 1970s, and those recordings are part of the Clare Set of classic recordings of Irish concertina music. Those recordings as a group are a standard for anyone interested in Irish music. Your information on German concertinas is both a bit narrow and out of date. In the old days, there were many grades of quality among German concertinas. I have seen excellent players in South Africa still using their grandfather's double-reeded German concertinas, still in excellent playable condition. The really cheap ones indeed would fall apart, but good musicians would eventually gravitate to the better quality ones. I now own Ella Mae O'Dwyer's German concertina, having been given it by her son Sean, an excellent Anglo player. It is a 'Ceili' model from the early 1950s, and contains double (octave) steel accordion reeds that are individually mounted, very like modern hybrids. It and its bellows are in great shape, a testament not only to the instrument's quality but to the care taken of it by Mrs. O'Dwyer. It plays very well, especially considering that each depressed button plays two reeds instead of one, and that the bellows are much larger than those of most Anglos. These instruments are designed for, and well-suited to, playing the moderate tempo ballroom dance music of their era, not the frantic pace and reel-rich repertoire of modern revival sessions. In South Africa, where like in Australia the old ballroom dance repertoire still reigns amongst traditional musicians, German concertinas are held in high regard by consummate players who also know their way around 40 button Wheatstone keyboards. In fact, South Africans have begun to make their own replacement German-style concertinas, patterned after one that is similar to Mrs. O'Dwyer's. These superb two row German-style hybrid boerekonsertinas are made by Danie Labuschagne; you can read about him and his new-made Germans in my 2009 history of the Anglo-German concertina, available (free) online at Google Books. I own two of his (CG and GD) and think the world of them. As you can see, the Stagi is definitely not the best quality one can find in a double-reeded German-style concertina (by the way, they are not 'Anglos'). As a matter of interest, German concertinas outsold Anglo concertinas by a factor of nearly 100 to 1 in England and Ireland during the concertina's heyday in the late nineteenth century. Certainly price had very much to do with that ratio, but German instruments with their accordion-like double-reeded sound were highly sought after for the house dances (ballroom dances in houses) of the time in Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Cheers, Dan

Don't know how I missed this thread....I guess I have been busy. If you search out my CDRom, House Dance (thanks for the plug, Gary), you will find early recorded players from four countries, most of whom played in the octave style or a variant thereof. It was an essential way of playing in the days of house dances, and offered volume, steady rhythm, and better accuracy of playing. It was not well suited to rapid-fire reels, but the huge popularity of Irish reels is pretty much a twentieth century revival thing....in the late nineteenth century most country Irish were dancing polkas, quadrilles and waltzes in their house dances, just as other folks were in Australia, South Africa and England. Concertina players played for dancing, not for pub sessions and contests. Fine octave players of that day include Mary Ann Carolan (Ireland), Dooley Chapman (Australia), Scan Tester (England) and Kerrie Bornman (South Africa). As for playing for Morris dances, octaves have a historical precedence and are entirely suited to that genre. Oldham and Royton morris players used octaves, for example..listen to Ellis Marshall and Norman Coleman on the House Dance CDRom, for example. And William Kimber's style is a simple variant on octaves. Like many octave players, he regularly dropped out every other lower octave note to help provide a danceable pulse to the music, and then added simple third interval partial chords above or below each remaining lower octave note to provide interest and more volume to the pulse. The modern way of playing for Morris, with complex oompah chords, is a revival thing, born of new Anglo players in England copying the styles of superb English melodeon players when Anglo-playing role models were not available. That has been covered elsewhere. I love listening to modern Irish players ripping through reels at breakneck tempos and playing singly with lovely pipe ornaments. And to revival Morris players adding in hugely musical chords to their playing. Keep it coming! But more than occasionally (not in this thread) one hears that those are 'the' traditional ways of playing the concertina! Styles of playing the Anglo continue to develop, in ways that our great grandparents would not even recognise. Octave playing was designed for playing for medium tempo ballroom dances, full stop. Today players mostly want to play for listening in pub sessions, instead. I think it somewhat tiresome to hear that octaves aren't 'musical'...to say that is to miss the point. Playing for dances is the pinnacle of concertina playing, IMHO. But that is just me! Have fun, whatever style you play! Dan

I just made hotel bookings, and am primed to go. Looking forward not only to the music and people, but also the blooming dogwoods, bluebonnets and azaleas. Sean Minnie has confirmed he is coming to Palestine this year. He is a great player of Boer music on the Anglo and the MacCann duet....I've asked him to please give us a workshop on Boer style playing....it is an amazing style, and hard to get a chance to hear it on this side of the ocean! See you there. Dan

Jackie Daly had a similar comment. He was looking at the plastic, wide buttons on the SOuth African concertina, and saying that they would be easier to slide with if they were rounded a bit more. He also said one would need them to go all the way down flush with the face of the instrument to make sliding easy. On the German-style concertina (like the SA one) this is not an issue. Anglos of course are not built that way, in general. Of course, it goes without saying that you would want an octave tuned double reeded one if you wanted to emulate the sound of the melodeon. The better German ones would do this. If you go this route, he suggested completely dry tuning, as the old German concertinas in Ireland were tuned this way.

In a coincidence, I had a conversation last week with Jackie Daly in a Miltown Malbay pub. He suggested just such an animal. I was showing him my 20 button, octave (double-reeded) South African CG boerekonsertina, and he commented that it would be really great if it were tuned C/C#. He puzzled at why concertina players continue to hang on to the two-rows-a-fifth-apart design, when a C/C# tuning would be able to be readily played in any key. He of course plays a C/C# so could perhaps be expected to say that! We talked about that for awhile. Odd how C/C# accordion players continue to have a bass row on the left hand that goes largely unused, because the chords don't usually fit the keys being played (according to Jackie). A two-row C/C# concertina would do away with that, and then offer the advantage of having eight fingers covering the instrument, instead of the four fingers covering the melody on the button accordion. Could be a very fast way of playing. I don't expect I'd ever go for that...I'm a bit of a traditionalist stick-in-the-mud....but some might. Let us know how your experiment works out. Dan

Peter, Thanks for the photos. How is it I didn't get to meet you? I was looking forward all weekend to meeting you finally, but of course I don't know what you look like! Oh well! It was great for me to meet other cnetters like Larry (Reeves) and Mike. The English folks were there too...Roger and Mark and Deborah. And it was a treat to meet so many Irish players I had never met before. A few of us stayed on at the end of the Droney/Haugh session. Chris remembered me from our last meeting, on my honeymoon trip 31 years ago. I got to play a few tunes with him and Dympna, and several folks were dancing, including three generations of males in one family (Murphy I think but that might be wrong) as well as some second cousins of mine from Ballymakea Mullagh. It was great fun. I do hope they continue this. I think February may be my favorite time to visit....good prices on hotels, the weather wasn't too too bad, and not so many tourists like me around.

Dan - I am looking for the pattern on the bellows papers of a civil war ear concertina. The Crawfordsville museum would not allow me to expand the bellows to see the pattern. Would you be able to post a detailed picture of the papers on your concertina so I can reproduce it for my replica? - Thanks, Nels Sure; give me a couple of weeks and I can do it.

Here is another lead in Concertina.net forums that I followed up on last year. The pictures seem to show one of the inexpensive German anglos. Nels Thanks for posting those photos! I have nearly the identical German concertina in my attic, in slighly worse condition. Same paint style, ornaments etc. I knew it was 19th C., but didn't know that it dated back to the 1860s.

Interesting cornucopia of varied responses! Some are clearly from folks with a strong Irish background. If you want to play fast reels and you listen to a lot of modern Irish players, I agree that CG is clearly the way to go; best to get a three row. And then Bertram Levy has developed a new method for three row Anglo in American "old timey" fiddle music that, similar to modern Irish approaches, eschews the old push-pull feel in order to play more fluidly and faster. If you want to sound like this - and Bertram's CD is very well worth checking out - then get a three row CG. If you are going to stick with a two row, and like playing harmonica-style (along the row), as you note, then don't feel at all lost at using a two row, and if your friends play in D a lot, then a GD is a fine choice. Always remember that perhaps 98% of the concertinas played during the instrument's heyday (1860s-1910) were two rows (German concertinas outsold anglos nearly 100 to 1, and even a lot of anglos sold were two rows). This idea of 'old-timey' (meaning old time American fiddle tunes, mostly) needing to be played in a modern three row cross-fingered way has come up before, and it is a nice way to play - but is not the way the old timers played, for sure. Not everyone has to play in the modern ways, and I note that you want to play a lot of hymns and folk songs with harmonica-like chords...that will be very fine on a two row. Chris Timson's comments about cross-rowing in Zs is good information. The old players in Australia, SOuth Africa, England and Ireland nearly all played either in variants of that or more simply along the row when playing the main dance tunes of the day, which were waltzes, polkas, schottisches and the like. Try to find Alan Day's free anglo tutor and recordings; it goes very well with a two row and seems to be a good match with the mix of music that you seem to be heading toward. There are also some good Boeremusiek two row tutorials on Youtube that use a similar chorded two row style, but in the SOuth African manner. Well worth searching for. And if you want to hear a lot of old archival recordings of very old-time players playing mostly two rows in both along-the-row and double Z octave styles, you might look up my CDRom book, House Dance, which has a couple of hundred old time recordings. And if you get to the point of wanting to play fast Irish reels, remember that a lot of great old Irish players played (and play) in basically along-the-row styles. William Mullaly played almost his entire repertoire in the 1920s on just a a D row (still not settled whether it was a GD or a DA, but the main thing is that he played nearly everything along-the-row on just a D row!). I haven't heard anyone complaining about his playing, and it would go just fine on a two row GD. Check out his CD, for sale at the ITMA in Dublin. Some great liner notes on his technique. Above all, have fun!

I received a note from Nels E., and American concertina player who went by Gettysburg to check out this concertina. Here is what Nels found out: "This was the concertina of Charles Williams, Co. H, 15th Kentucky Infantry. It was donated by his grandchildren to the Gettysburg National Military Park. Charles Williams originally came from England to Kentucky to farm just prior to the ACW. When the war began he enlisted for the Union and supposedly carried this concertina with him throughout the war." So to answer the age old question - Did they play them in the American Civil War - the answer is clearly yes,with a qualifier. Charles WIlliams being just off the boat from England, that explains how he had the concertina. Other common occurences of the concertina in the 19th C US (Mormon useage, Salvation Army useage, the anglo concertina band in Massachussets) all have equally strong English emigrant connections. By the way, Nels made some detailed photos and some drawings of it....perhaps I can persuade him to post some? Cheers, Dan

Geoff, Great to know you are on the mend. Good luck and let us know how your rehab progresses. Interesting to hear that the duet was a helpful medium. I play the anglo like a duet....usually in octaves, with duplicate and independently fingered notes on either side...so as I age it is comforting to know I could try something like you did if it ever came to that. And maybe the dog wouldn't howl as much when I play if I dropped out some percentage of the duplicate (octave) notes! Dan

Having now recovered my basic out of pocket costs for my 2009 two-volume history of the Anglo-German concertina (though not my time costs, of course!), I've opened up the two volumes in Google Books in their entirety, for free access to concertina history aficianados. They have been searchable on Google Books for some time, but now one can read them online at will without restrictions. They are still available for purchase in paper copies, via Amazon books in both the US and UK, as well as at the Button Box and a few other vendors. I much prefer print for such reference works...flipping pages is still quicker than paging through screens, although digital search functions are awesome. There is no digital version, except online via Google Books. Here are the links; just cut and paste into your browser. www.books.google.com/books?isbn=0982599609 www.books.google.com/books?isbn=0982599617 Cheers, Dan

There were many different grades of German concertina; some were just fine. The problem was ususally the paper and cardboard bellows on the very cheap ones. Sean Minnie showed me a cheap 70s East German concertina the other day....they were among the worst...where he (or was it Greg J) had replaced the paper corners with leather or plastic. Amazing how it transformed a cheapie into an interesting instrument; very tight and not a bad player. You would get what you pay for. John Kelly told a story of how nice was the German concertina of his childhood instructor, a woman from the next town. I have a 'new' German-style concertina made in South Africa, with reasonable cardboard bellows with leather corners, and it is both tight and long-lasting.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll have a word with Santa.

Deal! You can send it to me care of the folks putting on the concertina weekend in early February: Oidhreacht an Chláir Clare Institute for Traditional Studies Flag Road Miltown Malbay, County Clare, Ireland Fine English Ale no problem. I might even bring you a bottle of Shiner lager from Texas to boot. It will be a year or three, though.

Many thanks all, for all the very helpful suggestions. I've checked them all out online. Following leads for them, I also found this one, a newer version Sony: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-PCMM10-B-PCM-M10-Black/dp/B002R56C4O/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top For me, the main strength is the large, simple to use buttons....no wheels like on ipods, no tiny buttons that depend upon a video screen. Reviews are uniformly great for it; one of them was by an Anglican vicar who appreciated its utter foolproof simplicity. Sounds like my machine. An additional cool feature is a five second recording buffer. If the machine is on, and the music or speech starts before you can get the button pressed, no sweat - - it automatically adds in 5 seconds before the button is pushed!

Since you ask, the photos could have been a bit sharper...maybe you are holding the camera too close? Or moving? But they are totally legible and I prefer them to rewrites. But that may just be me. I learned Kelvin Grove from the playing of the old time Australia player Charlie Ordish. Nice to see that Charlie's versiono was so close to Chappell's version.

I know this topic has been handled before, but I am looking for an update....maybe there is a new model recorder out there. I'm headed to South Africa in a few months, to record some of the old Boer players there for a new project, and later will head to County Clare in February. I have a handheld TASCAM DR-1 recorder that performs well for music, but has an overly complicated set of buttons and such (at least, for a retro geezer who uses reading glasses, like me). Sometimes I think I am recording, when the right button has not been pushed, and I lose the recording. I don't want to take that chance on this expensive trip. So, I am looking for a digital recorder that hasn't been designed by a twenty year old geekish engineer! One that has a relatively clearly labelled set of simple record and play buttons (almost as easy as on an old cassette recorder). Needs to have a nice stereo mike, of course (i.e., not a voice recorder). Doesn't need to play back in forty different tunings, add electric bass accompaniment, transpose to the key of Gb minor, or whistle Dixie while upside down. Has anyone seen one like this? Cheers, Dan

Very nice of you to do this! I've often seen advertisements for this book in period newspapers. I downloaded it onto your ABC editor and got this image (attached). I had thought that this book was for Anglo-German (or even just two row German) concertina, not for English concertina. But the arrangement leaves questions. The chord at the beginning of line two is not playable on my 30 button or a two row....I have no pull C that is required (unless I am missing something up in the cranium department!). Does the book say what sort of instrument it is intended for? If it is for Anglo, then I assume that Minasi (or more probably, some of Chappell's staff) took some simple arrangements from piano or some such and then just placed them in the key of C and called it a day. It wouldn't be the first time that was done. I find the original images much more useful than abc, better allowing questions like these to be approached. It is not necessary to scan them on a scanner. My usual method in a library is just to photograph them in good light with a digital camera. Even a simple one these days gives a quite acceptable image. You can crop off the unexessary bits in something like Powerpoint, rotate them to square, perhaps switch to black and white and adjust the contrast and brightness, and that is all that is needed. Just a suggestion. Again, thanks! Dan

Here is the website for the bookshop at the National Library of Australia, which is now carrying an Australian edition of the House Dance CDRom. http://bookshop.nla.gov.au/book/house-dance.do Many of the Aussie recordings on this CDRom were from the collections of the NLA. This sales site is in addition to Musical Traditions (UK) and the Button Box (USA). Cheers, Dan

Good point, Peter. Back in the 90s we lived four years in a coastal part of the Netherlands, below sea level, with incessant fog and damp... not a lifetime of it, but a good sample. Hard to imagine how it must have been in the old days in those old stone cabins in the west of Ireland, before anyone learned how to protect the foundations from damp, and before central heating or even decent metal fireplaces. My grandmother in Inagh grew up in one of those two room cabins along with eight siblings back in the 1880s. It must have been incredible. The new bungalows in the west may not look as charming, but they certainly are more comfortable! Of course, here in the Great Plains areas, the old settlers lived in sod houses (a.k.a. dirt walls) without glass windows, and many women, stuck at home, slowly went mad with the constant wind. But you haven't talked me out of visiting. A warm fire, good conversation and some great music wins, at least for a visitor!

Peter, I understand. You'd have to wonder about our long, very hot and humid summers here in Texas to understand that some folks like to (occasionally) experience cold and extreme weather. We were married many years ago in Dundalk in the early Spring, and the night before the wedding, there was darkness, heavy gale winds, and horizontal rain that stung the skin (and made it hard to shut the door). My horrified future sister in law (from that town) took charge, and buried a statue of the Infant of Prague, upside down in the garden. Problem solved - next day, the sun shone in a calm sky on the big day! My wife's father was a fifth generation lighthouse keeper, and he knew some great old stories of extreme weather on the lights off the west coast of Donegal, Mayo, Kerry and the like. Imagine weather so bad that waves crested over the top of the lighthouse (I think it was Tory Island), snuffing out the light! Yikes, that weather will build character.

Two points Shelly; firstly the Weather is almost 100% garanteed to be 'HORRIBLE'.. in February ... so perhaps not an ideal time of year for 'The Tour'. Secondly; I lived around Miltown Malbay for 16 years and played the EC and nobody was nasty to me about that... so don't worry on that score. Geoff. Maybe its just me, but Irish music seems better played near a fireplace in a room when it is dark outside, with howling winds and horizontal rain. Preferably a turf fire, but coal will do in a pinch. And of course, there are many fewer hordes of tourists in the towns. Also, from experience from several winter visits to my wife's family there over the years, February weather can actually be ok!

Just a head's up. Oidhreacht an Chláir, a community-based cultural group in County Clare, is hosting a Concertina Cruinniú - a three day concertina gathering - in early February. There is a posting about it on their website, here: http://update.oac.ie/concertinacruinniu The idea is a celebration of the concertina in Clare, perhaps beginning an annual event. There will be a grand mix of things, including appearances by old Clare masters, Noel Hill will host an afternoon, there will be a showcase of younger Clare concertina talent, a concert, a repair session by Stephen Chambers - and yours truly will give a little talk on the social history of the Irish concertina. Sounds like a great celebration of our favorite instrument! Thought many of you would appreciate an early warning; I'm sure there will be a formal announcement at some stage with more details. For now, check out the Oidhreacht an Chláir website. Cheers, Dan

Warren, Nice ones; thank you. Obviously the first one would appeal to an old agitator like you! Dan