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Howdy All- I'm a complete and utter beginner with this whole concertina thing (totaly playing time so far about 1 hour) so I joined this forum to learn from you all. Glad to meet you all. I've got me a brand new Jackie and hope to get the barest rudiments of playing it down eventually I learn best via negative feedback and have the scars to prove it so please feel free to beat me about the head and shoulders when I need it. Which brings me to the "Neanderthal" part of the thread title. About 1/2 my bones are diagnostically Neanderthal according to paleoanthropologists and my brain seems to work the old way, too. Just as Uncle Neanderthal chipped his rocks the same way for a quarter million years, and was considered avante garde by Grandpa Erectus who was stuck in his ways for over 1 million years, I have neither imagination nor capacity for innovation. But I know a good idea when I see one.so slavishly copy the inventions of today's new-fangled H. sapiens in my crude, unskilled manner. You could classify me as a Chateperronian Neanderthal, I guess. I have a bit of history with musical instruments. I played trombone all through school (and haven't touched it since), taught myself a tiny bit of harmonica (but had severe problems with the inhale/exhale thing), utterly failed at the bagpipe due to being left-handed, and reached my Neanderthal physical finger and mental creativity limits with a Stratocaster, I have never been able to make sense out of a piano and have a 1-(MIDI)-track mind anyway. But I can type 60 words per minute, learned on a manual typewriter. Thus, of all types of concertina, I seem most suited to the English, so I'm going to give that a go. Anyway, I look forward to this adventure and hoipe to learn much from you all.