Chords on Concertinas

[michael sam wild]

This may be obvious to some but does cause me some difficulty.

 

I play an Anglo C/G 26 and a 30 button and like Irish tunes, Morris, 'English harmonic style' , singing accompaniment and am working on songs from an older period of popular music from Music Hall through to pop music. if I could i'd play blues, cajun and South African tunes.

 

I don't aspire to classical music but if I mastered a Duet or English i might, I love all music.

 

The question is about what chords and and when to use them.

 

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common ( not lowest) denominator?

 

 

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

 

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed .

 

With concertinas, where you have more scope to build up chords within the constraints (and possible limitations) are people looking to more buttons and layouts for wider effect?

 

 

 

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

 

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was ahealthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

[Alan Day]

This may be obvious to some but does cause me some difficulty.

 

I play an Anglo C/G 26 and a 30 button and like Irish tunes, Morris, 'English harmonic style' , singing accompaniment and am working on songs from an older period of popular music from Music Hall through to pop music. if I could i'd play blues, cajun and South African tunes.

 

I don't aspire to classical music but if I mastered a Duet or English i might, I love all music.

 

The question is about what chords and and when to use them.

 

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common ( not lowest) denominator?

 

 

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

 

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed .

 

With concertinas, where you have more scope to build up chords within the constraints (and possible limitations) are people looking to more buttons and layouts for wider effect?

 

 

 

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

 

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was a healthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

Michael you mentioned the Internationals and their specific aim is to highlight the versatility of the Instrument.

With arrangements we specifically ask the player, when being accompanied by other instruments, to ensure that the concertina is dominant(as long as it does not effect the arrangement). This is purely so that the listener can pick out what the concertina is doing. This would, I assume, revert back to their original style after the International recordings have been made. We do try to offer various styles that are not so chord dominated and do not necessarily reject recordings that are not heavily chorded.

One of the most successful players of the concertina has got to be Alf Edwards who's backing for A.L Lloyd and Ewan MacColl

was fairly basic ,mainly one note at a time ,but would not have been any better with full chords.The playing style of any musician is down to individual taste,we hear a style of playing and try to emulate it, or even modify it to suit our tastes.

Some players prefer chording style, but just as many do not. I do not think that we will ever change that ,it will however open ones eyes to what music can be played on the various systems and various ideas on how to play it.

Al

[FatBellows]

This may be obvious to some but does cause me some difficulty.

That'll clear up when your grown... or so tells me my wife.

I play an Anglo C/G 26 and a 30 button and like Irish tunes, Morris, 'English harmonic style' , singing accompaniment and am working on songs from an older period of popular music from Music Hall through to pop music. if I could i'd play blues, cajun and South African tunes.

Ever considered a concertina rap? No. Me neither. But everyone should play an Anglo....

I don't aspire to classical music but if I mastered a Duet or English i might, I love all music.

Ravel's Bolero for ten conertinas....

The question is about what chords and and when to use them.

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common ( not lowest) denominator?

Personally, I like simple chordal accompaniment. Mostly 1st, 4th, 5ths of the key, hitting the 1st & 3rd counts of a measure. My sense of time is awkward enough, I find that a steady, uniform left hand is both necesary to keep me in place and about as complicated as I can play. Besides, when listening to others play, really complicated efforts are lost on me as I just don't seem to "hear" them.

Moreover, when playing with others, I find the tone of the chord irrelevant; they could play a simple "G" or a "G#mDim7thSus23" and it wouldn't matter, so long as the rhythm was steady.

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

For every "rule", you'll certainly find at least half the musicians playing exceptions.

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed .

Sounds like guitar-players.

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

I'll respect your arrangement if you'll resptect mine. Then we can both badmouth somebody elses...

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was ahealthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

[Daniel Hersh]

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common (not lowest) denominator?

Listen to what the people who are already there are doing. If you try something different, watch the reactions. If they scowl, don't do it again.

 

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc. I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them, and that players who do it are widely esteemed. With concertinas, where you have more scope to build up chords within the constraints (and possible limitations) are people looking to more buttons and layouts for wider effect?

Some people are trying to do that, using Anglos with 40+ buttons or using duets or Englishes where there are no push-pull constraints.

 

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

Some will like that those arrangements, others won't. See many previous discussions here, especially about Irish music.

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to folk tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was a healthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

These things go in and out of fashion, just like folk music and the concertina itself.

 

Personally, I can't even predict my own future musical tastes and interests, so it's hard to try to make projections for the concertina world as a whole. One thing that I've learned from following c.net and listening to the "International" CDs is that the concertina world includes quite a variety of players, styles and perspectives on what's musically good or bad.

Edited February 13, 2010 by Daniel Hersh

[Steve_freereeder]

Mike,

A big and indeed interesting question or set of questions. I don't know all the answers but here is my response to some of your points...

This may be obvious to some but does cause me some difficulty.

 

I play an Anglo C/G 26 and a 30 button and like Irish tunes, Morris, 'English harmonic style' , singing accompaniment and am working on songs from an older period of popular music from Music Hall through to pop music. if I could i'd play blues, cajun and South African tunes.

 

I don't aspire to classical music but if I mastered a Duet or English i might, I love all music.

Yes - that's important. It's all music, and remains so, whatever style it is, whatever chords or accompaniment or other harmonic complexities are there.

 

 

The question is about what chords and and when to use them.

 

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common ( not lowest) denominator?

As you rightly say, there are few, if any, rules. If it sounds good and musical it probably is good and musical. However, in a session where there are a number of people playing spontaneously and with little or no pre-arrangement, we tend to stick to simple chords or none at all; the whole thing would become blurred and muddy if people started using their own individualistic chords/accompaniments.

 

 

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed.

See my responses above. Ask yourself 'does it sound good?' and more subtly: ' does it enhance the melody?'

Both those are rather subjective ideas, the latter especially; and we are usually constrained in one way or another by the 'tradition' of the genre of music that we are playing at the time. Hence the assertion that you don't use 'jazz chords in Irish music'. There are rules, but they are unwritten and subtle. Whether you can successfully break them or not depends on your courage and conviction and your musical prowess on your instrument. If you can make it sound good and make people suddenly prick up their ears and think 'wow! that sounded different!' then you will have achieved success. But if they are left thinking 'what is that prat trying to play?' then I suggest that either you weren't playing with enough conviction, or you need to find another venue where people don't have such closed minds.

 

There is always room for innovation and experiment, even within so called 'traditional music'. If it didn't evolve by people trying out little bits of new things here and there, then it would become lifeless, dead and fossilised. Look how Andy Cutting has breathed new life into some traditional English, French and Quebecois music by being a bit adventurous with the left-hand buttons on his melodeon. As for Irish music, I was listening to some of the orchestral backing music arrangements for Riverdance - there are all sorts of fancy chords and stuff going on there. OK - so it may not be 'traditional Irish music', but it sounds Irish and it is exciting. And if it brings lots of people into contact with a music and dance tradition and encourages them to try it for themselves in one way or another, then that has to be a good thing in my view.

 

With concertinas, where you have more scope to build up chords within the constraints (and possible limitations) are people looking to more buttons and layouts for wider effect?

 

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

Maybe they are. I think this is the sort of thing that Gav Davenport is looking for on his big anglos. And the other Gav - Gavin Atkin plays some wonderful jazzy harmonies on his Jeffries duet.

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was ahealthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

Cecil Sharp was a pianist. So when he started to collect traditional tunes and songs, it was natural for him to write them down and add 'interesting' or at least playable piano accompaniments. It was partly the fashion of the time. Many households possessed a piano and usually someone who could play it too. There were no recording devices then except for the wax cylinder which was really not suitable for anything other than field recording and collecting. The benefits of Sharp's arrangements were (i) the music was saved from sinking into oblivion forever and (ii) the traditional tunes and songs were suddenly made available to a much wider audience. We may consider the piano arrangements odd and artificial now (although actually they are quite good and do not seriously detract from the original tunes), but again it was the fashion - and like the clothes of the time, the arrangements are now rather dated.

 

Percy Grainger was something else - he was an oddball innovator. He collected tunes and songs too, but he also used them as part of his highly original compositions for both piano, and for orchestras and bands, which contain all sorts of squashy and discordant chords in places. But some of it is really exciting stuff.

 

I think you are right about the 50s revival being 'a healthy reassertion of simpler values'. Wireless and television had brought more people into contact with traditional music and dance, and some of them wanted to try it for themselves and would eventually reclaim it as 'the music of the people'. The two-row D/G melodeon came into popularity in this period and players tended to use it just as two one-row instruments stuck together. It is only in recent years that the youngsters have started to show us some of its other potential too.

 

This is turning into a long ramble. Going back to your original questions, my views would be:

• Be guided by your ears - if it sounds OK it probably is OK.
• It's OK to experiment.
• There are no rules, and yet there are rules too. It's a sort of Orwellian 1984 doublethink. Be guided by your intuition and sensitivity about the situation you find yourself in, and the 'rules' which that situation has or does not have.

Edited to add:

Daniel Hersh posted his reply while I was writing this. We seem to have said much the same thing but Daniel has put it much more succinctly than me!

 

 

 

 

Edited February 13, 2010 by Steve_freereeder

[Rod]

Mike,

A big and indeed interesting question or set of questions. I don't know all the answers but here is my response to some of your points...

This may be obvious to some but does cause me some difficulty.

 

I play an Anglo C/G 26 and a 30 button and like Irish tunes, Morris, 'English harmonic style' , singing accompaniment and am working on songs from an older period of popular music from Music Hall through to pop music. if I could i'd play blues, cajun and South African tunes.

 

I don't aspire to classical music but if I mastered a Duet or English i might, I love all music.

Yes - that's important. It's all music, and remains so, whatever style it is, whatever chords or accompaniment or other harmonic complexities are there.

 

 

The question is about what chords and and when to use them.

 

In private or with a few friends I reckon anything goes and there are few rules but in a public session or ensemble how do you find a common ( not lowest) denominator?

As you rightly say, there are few, if any, rules. If it sounds good and musical it probably is good and musical. However, in a session where there are a number of people playing spontaneously and with little or no pre-arrangement, we tend to stick to simple chords or none at all; the whole thing would become blurred and muddy if people started using their own individualistic chords/accompaniments.

 

 

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed.

See my responses above. Ask yourself 'does it sound good?' and more subtly: ' does it enhance the melody?'

Both those are rather subjective ideas, the latter especially; and we are usually constrained in one way or another by the 'tradition' of the genre of music that we are playing at the time. Hence the assertion that you don't use 'jazz chords in Irish music'. There are rules, but they are unwritten and subtle. Whether you can successfully break them or not depends on your courage and conviction and your musical prowess on your instrument. If you can make it sound good and make people suddenly prick up their ears and think 'wow! that sounded different!' then you will have achieved success. But if they are left thinking 'what is that prat trying to play?' then I suggest that either you weren't playing with enough conviction, or you need to find another venue where people don't have such closed minds.

 

There is always room for innovation and experiment, even within so called 'traditional music'. If it didn't evolve by people trying out little bits of new things here and there, then it would become lifeless, dead and fossilised. Look how Andy Cutting has breathed new life into some traditional English, French and Quebecois music by being a bit adventurous with the left-hand buttons on his melodeon. As for Irish music, I was listening to some of the orchestral backing music arrangements for Riverdance - there are all sorts of fancy chords and stuff going on there. OK - so it may not be 'traditional Irish music', but it sounds Irish and it is exciting. And if it brings lots of people into contact with a music and dance tradition and encourages them to try it for themselves in one way or another, then that has to be a good thing in my view.

 

With concertinas, where you have more scope to build up chords within the constraints (and possible limitations) are people looking to more buttons and layouts for wider effect?

 

A big question but I am seriously interested in any response. As we get more and more new players and more recordings such as Anglo, English and Duet International, will we get back to the high esteem for arrangements that seems to have existed in the past.

Maybe they are. I think this is the sort of thing that Gav Davenport is looking for on his big anglos. And the other Gav - Gavin Atkin plays some wonderful jazzy harmonies on his Jeffries duet.

 

Can such expertise have a detrimental effect on fok or trad music. I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was ahealthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

Cecil Sharp was a pianist. So when he started to collect traditional tunes and songs, it was natural for him to write them down and add 'interesting' or at least playable piano accompaniments. It was partly the fashion of the time. Many households possessed a piano and usually someone who could play it too. There were no recording devices then except for the wax cylinder which was really not suitable for anything other than field recording and collecting. The benefits of Sharp's arrangements were (i) the music was saved from sinking into oblivion forever and (ii) the traditional tunes and songs were suddenly made available to a much wider audience. We may consider the piano arrangements odd and artificial now (although actually they are quite good and do not seriously detract from the original tunes), but again it was the fashion - and like the clothes of the time, the arrangements are now rather dated.

 

Percy Grainger was something else - he was an oddball innovator. He collected tunes and songs too, but he also used them as part of his highly original compositions for both piano, and for orchestras and bands, which contain all sorts of squashy and discordant chords in places. But some of it is really exciting stuff.

 

I think you are right about the 50s revival being 'a healthy reassertion of simpler values'. Wireless and television had brought more people into contact with traditional music and dance, and some of them wanted to try it for themselves and would eventually reclaim it as 'the music of the people'. The two-row D/G melodeon came into popularity in this period and players tended to use it just as two one-row instruments stuck together. It is only in recent years that the youngsters have started to show us some of its other potential too.

 

This is turning into a long ramble. Going back to your original questions, my views would be:

• Be guided by your ears - if it sounds OK it probably is OK.
• It's OK to experiment.
• There are no rules, and yet there are rules too. It's a sort of Orwellian 1984 doublethink. Be guided by your intuition and sensitivity about the situation you find yourself in, and the 'rules' which that situation has or does not have.

Edited to add:

Daniel Hersh posted his reply while I was writing this. We seem to have said much the same thing but Daniel has put it much more succinctly than me!

 

Relax. Follow your instincts and have the courage of your own convictions. Play to satisfy yourself and let others do the same.

[michael sam wild]

[

 

 

Relax. Follow your instincts and have the courage of your own convictions. Play to satisfy yourself and let others do the same.

 

 

Rod

OK in private or with friends but much more tricky in a session I notice the scowls when folk are 'too inventive, or idisyncratic or downright cloth eared

Edited February 13, 2010 by michael sam wild

[Rod]

[

 

 

Relax. Follow your instincts and have the courage of your own convictions. Play to satisfy yourself and let others do the same.

 

 

Rod

OK in private or with friends but much more tricky in a session I notice the scowls when folk are 'too inventive, or idisyncratic or downright cloth eared

 

 

Michael. I'm quite sure that you are right. As far as I'm concerned my Anglo is a solo instrument played purely for my own amusement so I am able to get away with murder! Rod

[Anglo-Irishman]

OK in private or with friends but much more tricky in a session I notice the scowls when folk are 'too inventive, or idisyncratic or downright cloth eared

 

 

Michael. I'm quite sure that you are right. As far as I'm concerned my Anglo is a solo instrument played purely for my own amusement so I am able to get away with murder! Rod

 

Rod,

I play my Anglo solo, too. I do, however, try to stop short of murder, especially when playng for others!

 

I am also the only concertinist in my folk group, and they let me do what I like, as long as it fits in with what the others (fiddle, guitars, bass) are doing. Sometimes it'll be chords to support the fiddle, sometimes it'll be simple melody with counter-melodies woven by the fiddle. Because that's what group playing is all about - several musicians using the instruments at their disposal to present tunes as attractively and entertainingly as possible. Players and instruments have to take on different roles in different pieces.

 

For me, music is about performing. I've been to a couple of sessions, but have no inclination to repeat the experience. It seems to me that you do have to find the lowest common denominator. When I jam, it's with the members of my group, with the aim of working out a good arrangement of a new piece. That is fun! The harshest critique I get is, "Lovely! But I think we need it a bit simpler here!" (And of course there are pieces to which I can contribute more with my banjo or mandolin, but that would be a different thread )

 

Cheers,

John

Edited February 13, 2010 by Anglo-Irishman

[m3838]

I got a chance to look at Regondi Method and read a few pages.

I would never recommend this method as it's too scholastic and deprived of practical application of acquired knowledge, but there's some wisdom there.

Like explanation of how to play chords.

His idea is that (from my memory):

"when playing chords, wrist must be let go the moment the fingers depressed the buttons, and let the sound continue as though on it's own, without any deliberate effort on the bellows."

"Chords consisting of high notes should NEVER be played loud. The higher the chords, the quieter it should sound".

"Never strain close chords to avoid screeching sound".

I find these principles to be valuable. Use them and even Irish sessions will be very accommodating. There is nothing more terrible to hear than honky concertina bellowing out long strenuous "chord" resembling mating sea lions.

 

 

[SqeezerGeezer]

I try to follow a rule that the more people I am playing with, the less notes of a chord I use. This is not only true for concertinas. A lot of jazz guitar players

will play fewer notes of a chord if they are playing with a keyboard player. Think of it as allowing space for each of the instruments to be heard. The more instruments,

the more space you need.

[Daniel Hersh]

I try to follow a rule that the more people I am playing with, the less notes of a chord I use. This is not only true for concertinas. A lot of jazz guitar players will play fewer notes of a chord if they are playing with a keyboard player. Think of it as allowing space for each of the instruments to be heard. The more instruments, the more space you need.

 

I agree. This is especially true if there's someone there whose role it is to provide the chords (usually a guitar or piano player). You should follow their lead on chord choices or not chord at all.

[LHMark]

Playing in a full band, I usually keep my chords to triads, and don't worry too much about elaborate voicing. The nice thing about the concertina is the texture it gives. It's like the guitar's role in '40s big band: effective when felt but not loudly heard.

[hjcjones]

Most folk tunes can be accompanied with the simple "3-chord trick" : I-IV-V.

 

However if you're playing with a lot of melodeon players, you may find the chords they're playing are bit unexpected. This is because of the way a melodeon works, you've only a limited number of chords to choose from and they may not fit the music where you want them to. Used creatively, this can be wonderful precisely because the chords aren't quite what you'd expect, but it's not so easy for other instruments to play along with. The Andy Cutting style* 'strange' cross-rowed chords are actually quite easy on melodeon because they only require 2 or 3 buttons, whereas on a concertina you have to construct the whole chord note by note - not always easy on the fly.

 

As you've already identified, it's usually better not to play 7ths. Leaving out the 3rds keeps the chord nicely ambiguous, so as long as you have the same root you can play it alongside other more fancy chords without it clashing. The 1st and 5th notes are common to most chords you're likely to come across in a folk session, so just play those and let other instruments fill in the rest, if they're going to.

 

Above all, listen to the other players. Listen to what they're doing and whether what you're doing fits in with it. If you're not confident about a tune, hold back and fudge the tricky bits - someone else will take them. If someone comes in with a new idea and it works, try to play along. Some sessions can really take off, and at the end of the tune you sit back and think "Wow, what happened there?"

 

Finally, remember that a session is not a performance. A few rough edges don't actually matter too much. If it's a large session the chances are any of your mistakes or different ideas about chording will be overwhelmed by the majority.

 

 

* although he was not the first to use them

[michael sam wild]

Thanks Howard, good advice, , there's another thread on 'jamming' that looks at this too.

 

Yesterdauy I played along with an Irish piper with the full set of regulators and drones , that was another ball game !

[Brian Peters]

I've been told that for traditional music you don't use 7ths, too many chords spoil the broth, there is no place for 'jazz chords' in Irish music, 'modal chords' are best so take out the 3rds etc etc.

Hi Mike,

You've already had some of this stuff from me in person but, to clarify for the benefit of others (and to add to Howard's post which makes several good points):

 

The reason I bang on about not playing 7ths is that, for reasons completely obscure to me, it became the default, when adding guitar chords to a song or tune, to specify the dominant chord as a 7th - e.g. D7 in the key of G. I thought this sounded crap when I first learned the guitar, and it's even more crap when I see squeezebox players trying to bend their fingers around 7th chords in order to satisfy the twisted designs of a chord scheme never designed to be used for squeezebox self-accompanists. That doesn't mean there are no circumstnaces where you might want to use a 7th - just don't use them as a default, that's all.

 

'Modal' chords without thirds are what I would usually choose when accompanying traditional song, particularly (though not exclusively) songs with modal tunes. To my ears the thirds tend to make everything sound a bit too rich and mushy, even on a major-key tune, but having said that there are plenty of players of unmodified Hohner melodeons who are playing thirds all the time and still manage to make it sound good.

 

I won't presume to pronounce on Irish music, but anyone who says that jazz chords aren't traditional is going to have to convince the world that Peerie Willie Johnson and the Shetland accompaniment style he pioneered was in some way 'inauthentic'. Or that Cape Breton piano accompanists aren't playing in traditional style. Whether jazz chording (and syncopation, which is has been a feature of Cape Breton accompaniments for years and is also popular with many younger musicians) is appropriate for a given piece of traditional music is a subjective decision that we can all argue the toss about. To my ears, a little goes a long way in that department, especially with English music, which doesn't sound right to me with too much jazzy stuff going on. But that's nothing more than an opinion.

 

I notice that with many melodeon players there is an increasing trend to 'fancy' chords and retunings and layouts to achieve them , and that players who do it are widely esteemed.

The kind of stuff that Andy Cutting introduced (see Howard's post again) was not only technically very accomplished, but a necessary corrective to years of lumpen, unimaginative melodeon playing. However, as with many fashions, derivatives of Andy's style have now themselves become such a cliche for many (especially young) players, that they're in danger of becoming a bit of a bore. It's nice to have styles like Mark Bazely's to give a bit of balance.

 

I feel that the kind of piano accompaniments to fok tunes that Sharp, Grainger and Vaughn Williams et al added actually detracted from the music and one of the influences of the 50s and onward revival was ahealthy reassertion of simpler values. Or was it a backward step in some peoples' eyes?

Having been brought up musically in the revival, I've always tended to agree with you about the naffness of those Edwardian arrangement ideas. Simpler is often better with folk music, in my opinion, but let's not forget that the revival has established all kinds of accompaniment and performance styles that have as little to do with the way musicians of old went about this stuff, as anything that Cecil dreamed up.

[gavdav]

Something that nobody has mentioned as far as I can see is the MECHANICAL logic of certain patterns on the anglo (as on the melodeon) - I am totally rubbish at the umpah style of playing - couldn't do it on the melodeon, struggle with alternating bass on guitar and now feel like I'm doomed sometimes to be naff on the anglo too - however - there seems to be a natural set of patterns that fall out of the system - obviously on your C row you have handy chords on adjacent buttons, and for me (on a G/D) in Bm I have convenient diads across the rows. I find myself walking through circuits of chords just like I do on guitar - the rightness of my arrangements is in part tied to the physical patterns, then I might start to worry about making them more musically correct. I've found my drone keys to be very helpful when jamming in sessions too!

[Brian Peters]

Something that nobody has mentioned as far as I can see is the MECHANICAL logic of certain patterns on the anglo (as on the melodeon) - I am totally rubbish at the umpah style of playing - couldn't do it on the melodeon, struggle with alternating bass on guitar and now feel like I'm doomed sometimes to be naff on the anglo too

Hello Gav. I believe that the evolution of the umpah style on anglos and melodeons was at least partly dictated by the mechanical logic of the instrument. Playing a scale, or your average folk tune, on the simpler kinds of anglo requires frequent changes in bellows direction. The umpah style leaves crucially important gaps in the harmonic accompaniment, and it is into these gaps that the short bellows reversals often fit, so you don't find the chord changing involuntarily with nearly every beat. An anglo with more buttons, and hence more directional alternatives, allows you avoid many of the revesals, and hence use a different accompaniment style. The young melodeon players we were mentioning tend to play as much as possible cross-rowed for the same reason, hence the syncopated or sustained chord patterns they are able to achieve.

 

Of course the umpah (vamping) style is used by pianists and other musicians who do not have bellows to worry about, and it does provide a very bouncy accompaniment for certain kinds of music (including English trad). But it does become limiting if that's all you ever do, and there's nothing to say you're a naff anglo player because you don't use it!