Search the Community

Heard this on public radio, often as a song, a number of times through this holiday season. The sentiment was much brought to mind as this household ground through twin cases of Covid across the holidays. Basically A minor, it then moves through some major chord voices. I think I discovered a left-hand button or two I've never played before. Drive the Cold Winter Away.pdf

Recently began to work through Gary Coover's excellent starter book for left-hand (LH) harmonic accompaniment on Anglo concertina. Many of the melodies presented in his book are English Country dance tunes, Morris tunes, and original compositions. They can be transcribed into C, Am, F, and Dm which have many LH chord patterns for the 3 or 4 chords required for many tunes. Some more limited chording can also accompany G and even D tunes. The practical requirement is that "most" of the tune be playable on the right hand. Many Irish tunes sit in the middle range of the fiddle, whistle, flute and pipes; low parts of melodies will commonly fall below G or A above middle C and are played with the LH on the Anglo. So, even though it's not traditional, I'd like to see, or work on collecting, a list of Irish tunes of any genre that either fall within the right hand, or can be transcribed into a key that fits there. A subset is tunes that have a second, high or B part that is right hand only. My starter tune: Kesh jig. Except for the tonic G and the A that follows, the tune is all right hand, and notes can be found in the LH for the 3 required chords.

"Joy to the Person of my Love" is a baroque era, courtly Scots song with lovely 6-chord minor to major harmonies. It is also played very slowly. As such it makes a good exercise for harmonic Anglo on the Left Hand following tab conventions of G Coover. I've left it to the player to work out the right hand melody, with just a couple of footnoted suggestions. I'm new at this, finding the voicings and getting my fingers to the more distant buttons, so comments and suggestions welcome. Joy to the Person of My Love_Am.docx

Have just bought a copy of Gary Coover's Anglo concertina in the harmonic style to further my understating of chord playing- My concertina is a G/D and the book is written with a C/G in mind. Are there abc notation versions of the tunes as written in the book anywhere, to save me having to create my own abc files to transpose. Or am I missing a trick here?