bellowsing on English concertina

[m3838]

Or are they just accents (and does this amount to more or less the same thing anyway, fo that matter?)

 

Old Russian Bayan tutors adn even high level score books have bellows marks /\ - means pull and \/ - means push. Sometimes the marks are |_| and reversed upward. Bellows direction and reversals are of outmost importance. The reason they are omitted is just sloppiness. It makes it much more difficult to actually play all the pieces and then mark suggested bellows direction. May be the reason it was a norm in Russian books is salaried position of the authors. Not anymore.

[Alan Day]

The bellows direction details in old tutors is a very interesting subject because it describes exactly how the concertina was played in the early 1900. I donated a couple of old Anglo tutor books to the ICA. The pattern of playing music and chords were completely different to how many of us play today.

The bellows direction symbols details that you mention M3838 is exactly the same in the Anglo Tutors

Al

Edited January 19, 2010 by Alan Day

[billybunterr]

These Hornpipes were marked with a curve,some people might argue that it just means play smoothly, but then one other Hornpipe had a group of four marked one seperate then a slur over three, that has to mean a bellows change.

one /three is quite a common pattern for fiddlers /violinists to use.

although a lot of traditional players periodically use this pattern of slurring three over a bar line, which makes me think it was a classical musicians interpretation of traditional music.

It is however a useful exercise, but not one I would slavishly copy.

It sounds ok, but a little predictable.