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I believe he was a leading member of the ICA in the 1950's. From ICA Newsletter No.329, July 1985: At the 1955 Festival, Arthur Clements was criticised for swinging his Concertina in order to produce that very distinctive Doppler effect. At this year's Festival, the adjudicator, Ivor Beynon, pointed out that this method of producing a ringing tone was one advantage which Concertina players have over accordionists. And: On 2nd November our President (Father Kenneth Loveless) will give us his 'Recollections of William Kimber', and,on 14th December Arthur Clements (winner of the Arthur Clements Cup at the recent North London Music Festival) will entertain us with his account of 'Sixty Years with the Concertina'. An Arthur Clements composition, Holmwood, was included in the book Dancing with ma baby. On page 15 in the book, there is a photo of Arthur "ten fingers" Clements. The photo clearly identifies him as an English concertina player. The book includes another tune "Impudence", composed by Alan Macey and arranged by Arthur Clements,

no not a doppler effect, more a derivative of Huygens' Wavy theory where sound waves can either add to other sound waves or partially cancel them. School Boy Physics circa 1963-5, When I wuz a lad.

Agreed, even though the observed phenomenon has nothing to do with the Doppler Effect.

There's been a lot of discussion of such phenomena over the years, a key search term would be "doppler".

I often imitate the sound of a European police car by playing F#4 and G4 simultaneously alternating with B4 and C5 simultaneously. Sometimes, to imitate the doppler effect of a passing police car, after a few cycles of the above I change the G to an F and the C to a Bb.

Sometimes, when I sit in my living room and practice, I can hear higher pitched warbling notes. At first I thought there was something amiss with the reeds, then I realized it only happens when the ceiling fan is on. Apparently the fan blades are angled just right to reflect the sound back to me and the spinning of the blades speeds up the wavelength creating a higher pitched sound. (Doppler effect) My wife, poor thing, sitting 6 feet away and at 90 degrees to me can't hear this. I just wondered if anyone else has witnessed such a phenomenon or am I finally on my way to the funny farm.

Often I hear that a concertina player can produce Doppler Effect by swinging an instrument. A Doppler effect can be audited by human ear at very high speeds. A train passenger can detect lowering of the pitch from a siren of approaching locomotive. Can simple swinging of concertina produce auditable Doppler Effect? If not, what is it, that people are talking about, calling it Doppler Effect?

There have been other threads about this in the past, like: Never Play Next To A Fan :) Unintended tremolo Doppler Effect

This is well-known, although a lot of folks misinterpret it and think it has something to do with the doppler effect, which is not right. What’s happening is that the blades of the fan are sending waves of compressed room air in all directions. the frequency of these waves is the inverse of the amount of time it takes each fan blade to travel to where the adjacent one was a moment ago. As each wave of compressed air encounters the concertina it affects the way that the reeds vibrate. The sound that results resembles what your voice would sound like if you shake your fist rapidly while phonating. I demonstrated this to myself by accident a few years ago at Morris Dance practice. It was a hot evening and we had a fan set up. I stood playing with my back to the fan so my body blocked the waves and my playing was unaffected. At one point one of the dancers advanced toward me and at the same time I could feel the wind from the fan bouncing off his chest and the concertina briefly exhibited the effect you describe. It’s called the ceiling fan effect, because it happens most commonly with ceiling fans. I once had to stop a concert at Pinewoods because an unsuspecting concertina player sat down to play right under a ceiling fan in the Camp House. We shut off the fan, and later I showed him what would have happened if he had played under the spinning fan.

This not only validates the Doppler effect, but the consistency suggests that the residents of Derry all kept their pianos in good tune. To be clear, this validates that there is such a thing as the Doppler effect, and that it behaves as Doppler described it. But it does nothing to support the suggestion, as has been made in previous threads on this subject (and that I do not believe), that the Doppler effect is responsible for the effect that fans have on the sound of concertinas.

I know this has been discussed ad nausium but looking back through the forum I beleive that the ceiling fan effect on concertina sound was never fully explained. The explaination is that as the fan rotates it pushes a column of air down away from the fan past both my ears and then past the concertina. The sound waves coming from my concertina then have to travel against that moving column of air up toward my ears. Because the sound waves have to travel against the air flow, the pitch is generally decreased. It is like hearing a train whistle on a train moving away, producing a lower sound. Because the train is moving away, the sound waves are spread out. Likewise the conceritina sound waves are spread out as they are moving through air which is moving away from my ears, pushed by the fan. The speed of the fan would determine the degree of the effect.

Regarding Doppler effects and rapid concertina movement: Remember that the instrument is between the performer and the audience, so any Doppler effect will be perceived differently by the two parties. Any component of the movement of the instrument that is toward or away from the audience will yield opposite effects (tone raised or lowered) as perceived by the audience vs. the performer. The component of movement that is not toward or away from the audience will not contribute to the Doppler effect as perceived by the audience. Perception at the microphone will likewise be dependent on its position, and may be unrelated to what the performer or audience experiences unless it is near one of them.

I'd never heard of "comb filtering" before, but now that you mention it I remember recording in a studio where the engineer did the crossed mic thing in front of the bellows and it resulted in an excellent sound. And it also minimized any clatter from the buttons and pads that would have occurred if the mics were closer to or facing each end. One nice advantage of having stationary mics is the ability to easily switch back and forth between different instruments, and it allows you to fade in and out and do doppler effects that are impossible with mics hardwired onto the instrument. Gary

Don, as to the flute- or trumpet-like sound I'm hearing that too (particularly the latter). However I hesitate to just chalk that up to the account of Mr Doppler as well. I reckon shorter and simpler movements could affect the envelope, particularly attack and decay, and not just re volume but harmonics as well, and this will be very much influencing our perception, with these other instruments already in mind (sort of a welcome if not intended fraud). But I'm not sure that this effect can be strong enough to really make a difference here, and there is the other factor of a both profound and nasal reed sound which has either to be already there or produced otherwise. From my own (in the given context I can only say: modest) playing I would gather that vigorous single-line melody playing (which I'm not doing very often) can produce these trumpet-like sounds (example, with no EQ applied). OTOH I seem to hear now how these frequently moving the concertina sideways would have improved the take, making the sound more lively and possibly still more trumpetish). So, after all, I reckon Mr Doppler can take part of the credit for us hearing trumpets & Co. - just like with the Leslie cabinet and effect, which is not easily produced otherwise (in this case: bellows shakes of the often discussed "vibrato/tremolo" style wouldn't resp. didn't do it to a similar extent). Which leaves us with the mystery of the high-quality recording anyway... Best wishes - Wolf

Wolf That is a good point. I suppose that miking a concertina would kill any attempt at dynamics by moving the instrument around? No Doppler effect when the sound source and the receiver are both moving at the same time. I also recall reading somewhere that waving the concertina around while playing also (again because of Mr Doppler) causes small, but significant, changes in the overtones. A sufficient enough change so as to sweeten some of the harsher overtones produced by the reeds. Listening to Cohen's playing, especially the classical pieces, I find it hard to believe that I am not hearing a flute or a trumpet. Don.

Hi Maarten, I would recommend you think of using the bellows to breathe the life into the tune. As in speaking and singing, there are natural pauses between phrases, so those would potentially be the times to change direction. Also, as others have mentioned, bellows changes can be for emphasis, dramatic and otherwise. And sometimes even out of necessity if you've mistakenly gone too far in either direction! I don't know where that whole fan thing came from, but I find it far too static and limiting for the EC. Watch players like Alistair Anderson and Simon Thoumire as they and their fingers dance all over the place, even swinging the concertina about for doppler effects. Learn the notes first and play them into your subconscious until they are almost automatic, and then experiment with how you want to phrase it. There's no right or wrong way, just how you choose to interpret those dots and make them sing. Gary

Certainly not. In fact, I'm proposing that the fan effect may consist entirely of air-flow over the reeds, as opposed to anything Doppler. This is why I cited the deliberate usage of air flow tremolo effects in parlor reed organs. Oops, by "opposite from Doppler" I meant "the other effect", namely, air flow over the reeds -- an effect confirmed by its successful application in a free-reed instrument family. Sorry about the sloppy English. And of course the Leslie and Gyrophonic effects are Doppler, or more precisely, Doppler against a "reference" or "dry" signal. I mention reflection only because it can enhance the Doppler effect. If a sound source is moving away from you, while it's also reflecting from a wall behind the source, then you hear two Doppler-shifted sounds, one sharp, one flat, which "beat" together in your ear to produce a "chorus" effect. You will hear this intereference or beat effect even though the pitch shift (in cents, or Hz) is not normally detectable by your ear. A nice insight, though Geoff Crabb's report indicates that that alone is not the cause of the swinging-concertina effect: I suspect that you each have this half right, and that the effect is due to variations in the radiated sound, but is more directly the effect of variations in the differences in sound detected by the two ears. I.e., no effect is observed if there's no variation, but neither is one observed if there's no difference, which there can't be with only one ear. One way to test this would be to make mono recordings of alleged effects, as well as stereo recordings, and see if the effect is lost in the mono recording, which simulates listening with only one ear. I agree that changes in the sounds relative to each ear are important, but that changes in timbre, as well as beat-frequency effects, can be heard with one ear. Moiré patterns are an excellent visual example of this principle. The fact that interference is far more sensitive to differences than is independent measurement is fundamental to the way human perception works, and is not limited to frequency differences. Now we have something to agree on. I was going to point out that when one hears a tone directly, and also hears that tone phase-shifted by a Doppler or other effect, the "beat" or interference between those two tones is readily audible even if only one Hz. This is how the Leslie speaker achieves its effects at slow "city traffic" velocities, and how swinging a 'tina could work if there are any reflective surfaces around. All quite true, especially when the formants frequencies are moving rapidly. So we agree there are all sots of subtle effects that human ears pick up on. Now we just need to decide which ones are relevant to swinging 'tinas, 'tinas played near fans, etc. Edited a half-dozen times to make the stinking "quotes" balance out! --Mike K.

Well, the equivalent -- Hammond organs and Leslie speakers -- has been mentioned in more than one Topic.But the free-reed organ is quite the opposite effect from the Doppler -- I cited it as an example of external air flow affecting the tone production by the reeds. Are you suggesting that a fan does not affect the air flow? You seem to be ignoring the whole point of the prior debate, which is whether the fan effect is a "Doppler" effect. If the Leslie effect is not Doppler, then "opposite from the Doppler" does not imply "opposite from Leslie". I would expect variation in the external pressure against which your lungs are working would have an effect on the sounds -- whether voice or whistling -- that they produce. I would expect rapid variation of the external pressure to result in some sort of matching variation in the resulting sound....I can tell that what I've heard is a reflection effect. But the Doppler effect is not a reflection effect. It's an effect of relative motion. And while it's true that a Doppler effect may be observed in reflection from a moving object, there are other significant reflection-induced effects that have nothing to do with motion. Among other things, the acoustic design of concert halls is based on this fact. Standing-wave resonances -- e.g., the principal tones and harmonics of vibrating strings -- are also a consequence of reflections between "walls". Moving the source of the sound-producing energy relative to these "walls" -- e.g., changing the position of a violin bow relative to the bridge -- can have a profound effect on the quality of the resulting sound, but it has nothing to do with the Doppler effect. I often "trust" my own intuition by acting on it. But I am careful to distinguish it from experimentally established fact. A nice insight, though Geoff Crabb's report indicates that that alone is not the cause of the swinging-concertina effect: I suspect that you each have this half right, and that the effect is due to variations in the radiated sound, but is more directly the effect of variations in the differences in sound detected by the two ears. I.e., no effect is observed if there's no variation, but neither is one observed if there's no difference, which there can't be with only one ear. An important question -- which I hope Geoff and his friend would answer for us -- is whether the friend can hear the "fan effect". A comment of David B.'s is also relevant here: Moiré patterns are an excellent visual example of this principle. The fact that interference is far more sensitive to differences than is independent measurement is fundamental to the way human perception works, and is not limited to frequency differences. Differences in timing and intensity that we can't consciously distinguish can still be detected and interpreted by our brains into an awareness of the direction and motion of a sound source. Similarly, differences in the relative frequency of the "formants" of human speech are interpreted as the different vowel sounds, rather than as independent "melody" and "harmony" lines.

After playing regulary about 4 years with microphones, I still find it difficult. My setup is different, I only sometimes try to achieve a natural sound, instead I use a lot of guitar-effects, especially distortion. Here you can see my setup: https://youtu.be/k3Asf1a7VEE For some time now, I use harmonica mics - Finhol Edge Mic Blues Harp (to me the concertina is a kind of blown up harmonica): https://www.thomann.de/de/finhol_edge_mic_blues_harp.htm I took off the clamp and velcroed them under my hands (see the photo) These mics don´t have a bass range so I have much less problems with bass-feedback, also with low "rumble" noise. Concertinas don´t have much bass anyway. A problem here is that some of the reeds are further away from the mic, so some notes are louder than others. I baffle all my concertinas because I want to dampen the harsh high sounds. I pierced holes in the baffles in the higher ranges (where the higher reeds are) to soften that problem a little. Here is a recording of the mics (without baffles though) - please notice that the sound is very "dry", that means because they are so close to the reeds, there is no natural room sound audible: https://soundcloud.com/squeezer-stefan/microphone-finhol-test I guess, microphones on a concertina are always a compromise. 2 good mics on stands are probably the best for recording. The distance decides wether it pics up more of the action noises or the room. Also you can get the "doppler effect" (I miss that beautiful sound) that is the sound when you move the concertina in the air. Alistair Anderson does it a lot. No doppler effect with mounted mics. On a loud stage you can not use microphones that are so far away because they pic up everything around you. If you turn them louder you get feedback. Microphones on goosenecks are in between. I don´t have experience with them, but I guess, for a natural sound/less feedback they are a good compromise. The looks though ...... If you use mics that need phantom power you can plug into the house system. I always would recommend a small mixer with 2 mic channels (no belt pack and things alike) an example: https://www.thomann.de/de/mackie_402_vlz4.htm

There's the point of our difference. Regardless of how the manufacturers describe them, I'm not convinced that these are true Doppler effects. I suspect that they are interference effects and that the interference might have a Doppler component, but I don't know how significant it is. I've never seen nor heard any makers' sales pitches for organ speakers. But I think we can agree these are Doppler effects if we extend "Doppler" to cover not jsut frequency (pitch) changes, but phase variations. Strictly, you can't have one without the other, but phase changes can occur slowly and subtly. Certainly the mechanical organ speakers and variable delay line flangers are doing phase changes. I bet there are phase changes involved, though that would require frequency shifts as well. It's quality, volume, and pitch, all wrapped up together. Rather appealing at a slow rate, rather apalling at the top speed ;-) Well, gee, I finally tried swinging my big Stagi Hayden, and it really does have a major effect! Quality mostly, and a "rippling" in the sound, that remind me of "Doppler chorus" but I'm sure can't be that. I'd vote for this being an effect of turbulent airflow over the reed pad openings. If so, it should sound the same to you as to a listeneer in any position. That could be a Doppler chorus, but I'd bet on it being the airflow over the reeds again, possibly modulated by the fan's delivering the air in puffs from each fan blade, not a steady stream. How close is the concertina held to the fan, to get these effects? If very close (less than a meter), I'd say reflections are part of it. If farther away, I'd guess it is mostly airflow over the reeds. Another experiment would be to use an enclosed rotary blower, which delivers a fairly steady airstream but shield the internal blades from any reflection effects. Move your 'tina in and out of the airstream, see how the sound varies. Hmm, I have a fan right here in the basement, a blade fan, not a rotary, but it's time to see what happens. Ugh! When I hold the tina right in front of the fan, on a slow speed, I get a rapid modulation of the pitch and volume, like a radio that needs a new filter capacitor to remove the power line hum. Awful! When I mvoe the tina back away from the fan, still in a strong but now more continuous air stream, the rapid modulation goes away. I think it's the air puffs from individual fan blades. More later, though I'm leaving soon on vacation -- alas, sans 'tina and Internet. --Mike K.

"Doppler" has already been done to death. Though mainly wrt. fans, the "swinging" technique has also been mentioned. "Doppler effect" seems an attractive explanation based on the (spurious) argument that the Doppler effect is a weird effect on sound caused by motion, and this is a weird effect caused by motion, therefore they must be one and the same. But the Doppler effect depends on the direction of the motion, and I maintain that the swinging motion is in the wrong direction for the effect to be Doppler, so I don't think the real cause has yet been established. Previous Topics: Ceiling Fans And Concertinas Pedestal Fans, and that warbling... .. . . Doppler Effect, A Final"?" Comment on Ceiling Fans But if you're just asking what the effect sounds like, I suggest you try it. Swing your instrument in a circle as you play a steady note.

Recently, I asked a local fiddler who also happens to be a physics professor, who also just so happens to teach physics of sound, and his response was: "Simple: Doppler effect." He didn't think that there was anything else to it.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm getting tired of these Doppler-gangers, and tired of repeating this most basic fact about the Doppler effect: ...The Doppler effect is a consequence of relative motion of the sound source and the target toward or away from each other. (Or in the case where the sound is reflected back and the source is the same as the target, the relative motion of the source-target and the reflector.) But the motion of the fan blades is almost entirely sideways to the direction between it and the concertina. In fact, the effect is most severe if you're sitting directly under (or in front of) the fan, where any motion in the Doppler direction would be at a minimum. Please tell your "physics of sound" teacher what I just said and ask him if I'm right. Edited to add: I overlooked what Gerry said about a "pulse" of air. If a "puff" of air is pushed toward the player by the fan blade, I could imagine that partial reflection from the moving puff would result in a Doppler effect. However, my guess is that the magnitude of the effect would be less than whatever might result from the movement of the nearby fiddler's bowing arm. So I'd still be looking for a different explanation.

OK, so this is a third and unrelated invocation of the doppler effect in concertina playing, and the only one that sounds believable to me. Case 1: Doppler effect to explain the fan blade/tremolo effect (I'm not convinced). Case 2: Doppler effect to create pitch bending by swinging the concertina while playing (I'm not convinced). Case 3: Doppler effect to simulate chorus by creating a reflected sound at slightly different frequency than original sound and relying on the changing interference between the two to create the effect. Note that in the creation of interference patterns, miniscule differences in frequency can have profound effects on the interference pattern, so even if the doppler effect is inaudible its effect on the interference pattern might be dramatic. I can believe this. But it does not lend any credence to the first two cases listed above.

Well, the equivalent -- Hammond organs and Leslie speakers -- has been mentioned in more than one Topic. I would expect variation in the external pressure against which your lungs are working would have an effect on the sounds -- whether voice or whistling -- that they produce. I would expect rapid variation of the external pressure to result in some sort of matching variation in the resulting sound. Three comments: ... 1) Whatever "Doppler" effect might be produced in such a situation is not the effect usually observed from swinging the instrument, since that has also been observed in large halls and even on open-air stages. ... 2) Assuming that there is some Doppler effect in the situation you describe, I don't think it's been demonstrated that it's large enough to be noticeable. If it were, I would expect it to produce a noticeable change from the effect noticed without reflective walls. Maybe you could try that and let us know what change you hear in the sound. ... 3) One reason I doubt a perceptible Doppler effect is that I suspect the velocities are too low. The usual example of a Doppler effect is the whistle of a moving train. Another is the horn of a fast-moving car. Note that "fast-moving". You may expect to hear the effect if you're standing still and the car is moving at highway speeds, but have you ever noticed a Doppler shift in the pitch of a car horn on city streets? I haven't. I suspect the shift (for cars travelling at legal speeds ) is too small to notice. Now, how fast is your concertina moving when you swing it in a circle?

That's what I did. He said that you are not right.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> My above contains multiple assertions. Which does he claim are incorrect? ... 1) The Doppler effect is due only to motion that changes the distance between source and destination. Any motion perpendicular to that direction has no Doppler effect. ... 2) The motion of the fan blades is mostly perpendicular to the effective direction. ... 3) The effect is most noticeable directly in front of (under) the fan. ... 4) Directly in front (under) is where motion in the Doppler direction would be least. Caveats on the above: ... 2) I am not claiming (though I think I did earlier imply) that there is no motion in the Doppler direction. But such "motion" would be a result of the fan's rotation shifting between the nearer and farther edges of the canted blade at any given point, during the time it takes the blade to pass that point. On the fans I've seen, that distance is at most a few inches. I'm questioning -- not denying, but questioning -- that this is enough to be a significant contributor to the effect we hear. ... 3) I'm taking this from memory. I could be wrong. ... 4) I was thinking that this motion is "least", because the front-to-back distance between the edges of the blade is far less than the side-to-side travel of the blade as it travels in a circle. I forgot to take into account the fact that the side-to-side motion occurs over a full cycle, while the blade is crossed in much less than a full cycle. Though my by-eye impression is still that the front-back distance travelled in a given time is less than the side to side, I think I should consider that undecided until I (or someone else) check it by taking actual measurments of one or more fans. In case anyone hasn't noticed, I'm admitting to certain uncertainties where previously I felt more certain. I still suspect my earlier conclusions are right, but I admit that more rigorous evidence is needed. However, the same need for rigor is also a requirement for any competing theory, including "it's a Doppler effect". And no caveat on point 1) above. No uncertainty. That is fact.