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Lewes Saturday Folk Club Workshop No 269 SANDRA KERR CONCERTINA & SONG WORKSHOP (any system) www.sandrakerr.net Places £35 (2 under-25-year-olds £17) Sunday 23rd. June 2019 10.45 a.m. - 4.45 p.m. Elephant & Castle White Hill Lewes BN7 2DJ Sandra Kerr has long been a brilliant & influential singer & player of the English concertina, since with her days with Ewan MacColl's Critics Group. A versatile musician with a fine, expressive voice, she is also an accomplished songwriter & has been a core tutor on the Newcastle University Traditional Music degree course. Sandra has recorded with many fine performers including her daughter Nancy Kerr & James Fagan. She also co-wrote the music for the children's TV series Bagpuss. The workshop will focus on creative accompaniment for the voice using any concertina system, & also a short session on the tunes Sandra recorded with Vic Gammon on the highly entertaining CD Early Scottish Ragtime. Some music will be sent in advance. ON SATURDAY EVENING 22 JUNE SANDRA KERR PERFORMS AT LEWES SATURDAY FOLK CLUB (£9; advance tickets available from from http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/WS269book.html) Provisional Timetable 10.45 Registration & coffee; please order lunch at the bar (refreshments not included) 11.00 Creative accompaniment: After a warm-up designed specifically for concertina players, Sandra will demonstrate some of the ways she uses the instrument on traditional & contemporary songs, de-constructing them, & helping you to achieve something similar. 12.30 Lunch 13.30 Your accompaniments: after a brief play through some tunes (Northumbrian - dots supplied) to warm up, we'll listen to some of your accompaniments, & look at ways of developing them or doing something different - or of starting from scratch on an agreed piece. 15.00 Tea/coffee break 15.15 To finish the day, we'll play some catchy & unusual tunes (identified by Vic Gammon as 'Early Scottish Ragtime'...!) & see if we can make them swing! 16.45 Finish N.B. Booking is recommended as numbers are limited. Maps, music & accommodation lists will be sent in advance. SANDRA KERR CONCERTINA & SONG WORKSHOP (any system) Sunday 23rd. June 2019 BOOKING FORM I would like to attend the workshop. I enclose a cheque for £35.00 (refreshments not included). Email first for youth rate. Name: Address: Instrument: No. of tickets for Saturday 22nd. June evening performance (£9 each, include SAE for these): Telephone: E-mail address: Tick for map: Tick for accommodation list: Please make cheques payable to Lewes Saturday Folk Club and send with this booking form to: Valmai Goodyear, 20, St. John's Terrace, LEWES, East Sussex BN7 2DL 01273 476757 valmaigoodyear[at]aol[dot] www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/

I keep hearing how versatile the anglo 30 button is and i'm looking for songs you can accompany. with the problem of chords in one direction i'm having trouble finding this versatility everyone talks of. could you please give me some songs that you can play with accompaniment. I recently found "what shall we do with a drunken sailor" and that was pretty fun to play cheers. oh and I bought garry coovers book about songs with accompaniment thanks for the suggestion

what i'm asking is it possible to play 2 parts rather than just one eg. a waltz but not within 1 chord eg. C CM CM I like the look of the Anglo however with what i've seen so far on the layout trying to play a polka is a nightmare. or at least say a polka using say a Bb chord and I know about transposing however that being said is it only possible to play chords in 1 range eg. c cm g cm c cm g cm or can you also a other chords and it's limitation being skill. I ask because I don't one but would like to however I like to play two pieces of the song eg. the waltz part or the polka etc. I understand that there is the English concertina however I also understand that it's all quite high pitched and so it wouldn't sound as good that being said I don't own any type of concertina and would like to ask for a suggestion I get that there are the duet systems however they cost alot considering I don't even own a cheap one yet

I apologize if this topic has been covered elsewhere. I didn't find much in a cursory glance through the topic titles. I have a C/G anglo on which I primarily play melody (mostly irish session music), but recently have been trying to arrange accompaniments for songs. I realize that the layout of the instrument and the required bellow direction changes are somewhat limiting. For now I have mainly stuck to holding sustained chords, which gives a nice 'drone' effect that fits some select songs. (Actually in most cases I find I prefer the sound of just playing the root note and the fifth, and occasionally tapping the third for this.) I was curious if anyone had suggestions for (or examples of) more interesting things to try to give concertina accompaniment more 'texture' (perhaps akin to strumming or picking patterns on a guitar). I have tried playing arpeggios, but in most cases find the sound rather jarring and hard to sing over. any thoughts? Would looking into resources targeted at english concertinas be of use, or is the technique too different?

Starting with this post and continuing (at least) through this post, the thread for the October 2013 Tune of the Month seems to have morphed into a discussion of tricks, techniques, and further discussion regarding creating arrangements of tunes. I think this is a worthwhile discussion that deserves to be continued under a title less cryptic than "Xotis Romanes", and that this Teaching and Learning subForum is the right place for it. I hope others will agree and continue the discussion here. I've created the topic title, "How WE think music really works" (now why do I think the Forum software is going to change my capitalization?) by altering the title of a book recommended by Rüdiger Asche(and the first 6 chapters of which are available for free on the internet), to place the emphasis on our own thoughts, rather than the author's. Personally, I was put off by the book's introduction, which reads like a standard "guaranteed plan to get rich", except by writing music instead of investing in the stock market. But knowing Rüdiger, I'll read further before passing final judgement. What I'm pretty sure of is that we have a variety of individual ideas of "how music really works", not only in arrangement, but in other aspects -- e.g., accompaniment, composing, or simply listening, -- and that we can benefit from sharing and comparing these ideas. I hope to find time to add some specific comments and observations of my own later today (and mostly likely beyond), but I have some chores to do first, so I hope some of the rest of you will continue this thread even before I do. How about it?