How long before you felt competent ?

[michael sam wild]

I am playing Anglo but am interested in other instruments and types of music.

 

I have been playing traditional music since I started on mouth organ and tin whistle in childhood . I now play and sing British and Irish music mainly and have been playing in bands and for dancers off and on since the 60s. I have been holding my own and leading sessions for quite a long time on melodeonand and flute and can play fairly well on fiddle and mandolin.

 

I have my Gran's old 20 button German but I only took up Anglo seriously about 6 years ago , aged 64, when I got a Norman off eBay and since then have got other good instruments.

 

 

I think the Anglo concertina is the hardest instrument I've ever worked on and I practice a great deal now I'm retired and play out as much as I can.

 

I find Irish reels on the C/G most demanding followed by chordal playing for British tunes.

the harmonic stuff on C/G or G/D comes easier after melodeon if you play simple 3 chord trick 'oompah' but keys lie F and A and Bb with appropriate chords look like another lifetime's work. And ragtime and chromatic tunes on anglo ....well!..

 

 

I find the Irish stuff 'easier' on the G/D but it doesn't feel or sound as right as on the C/G

 

 

What is rthe experience of others here? Or should I bow to the leaden and beckoning finger of Old Father Time ?

 

 

I'm coming to the conclusion it should be Anglo for Irish and British trad and a duet or English for the 'clever' stuff. But then I hear Anglo International and other great players and think, 'Stick with it. How long Oh Lord, how long?

[LDT]

I'm coming to the conclusion it should be Anglo for Irish and British trad and a duet or English for the 'clever' stuff. But then I hear Anglo International and other great players and think, 'Stick with it. How long Oh Lord, how long?

 

I know how you feel. (I tried an experiment a little while ago...same tune tried to play it on melodeon and anglo. It took me over double the time to get just the melody on concertina compared to melodeon where I was able to add at least a mainly right accompaniment.) My problem is I don't get how to make my own chords...I find it hard enough just to remember the 8 buttons on the melodeon. lol

[hjcjones]

I've been playing for more than 30 years, and I'm still learning.

 

You can reach a level where you can play tunes and then sit back. But then you'll hear someone play something wonderful and think "I want to do that" and spend the next however-long trying to work out how he did it. Then when you finally succeed, you hear something else and find you've another target to try to achieve.

 

No matter how good you get in your own estimation, or even that of others, there's always someone a bit better to give you something to aspire to. Or you can start exploring different keys, or different genres of music. That's what's so fascinating about learning to play an instrument - you'll never exhaust it, because there's always something else to learn. Think of that as a positive, rather than wondering if you'll ever master the instrument, because you won't - none of us will.

[maccannic]

I'm with hjcjones on this one. You never stop learning. If you do, you're dead, or you might as well be.

 

But competence? How good do you need to be to be competent? On piano accordion, I played in public after less than 3 weeks, accompanying somebody singing. I don't suppose it was much good,but it was OK.

 

Duet concertina has been a bit slower - 18 months to really feel I was starting to get the hang of it, 3 years to use it in public for anything worthwhile, but now after 12 years I still know I'm miles from where I want to be.

[Michael Marino]

Playing in public Anglo three years plus a bit. Mostly hymnal and Jazz. working and working on getting better at the basics. Practicing scales, arpeggios, runs and key option on the Anglo has helped on other instruments I play and the inverse as well. I figure keep going and we will see. I don't set time lines just practice time and as I get feeling comfortable crank up the complexity another notch till I have think twice and work that out. It is a strange system i know but it keeps me looking and learning.

 

Michael

[Steve Mansfield]

I probably took about two years to be comfortable enough on EC to play it out in public, initially only on tunes I already knew when they cropped up at a pace I was comfortable with.

 

I've been playing EC for about five years now, and it's probably only the last year or so that I've started to be able to pick up new tunes and create on-the-fly harmonies and chords. Whether I'm competent or not is another matter entirely - but I get invited to far more sessions than I get thrown out of, so I guess I'm doing OK.

 

The other aspect of it all is that I'm still learning about flute and whistle after 30+ years playing them, so on that measuring stick my concertina playing has a loooong way to go ...

[michael sam wild]

Thanks for the helpful comments. I suppose if we lived in a small community and played a small repertoire regularly for dance and song we'd be quite good after a few years. As a kid I played mouth organ incessantly and was pretty good by age 10, enough to win prizes in talent shows,

 

I wish my Dad hadn't pawned those Jeffries concertinas we had under the bed! We never saw them again. Times were tough.

[Snorre]

Getting more comfortable now, after a year and a half with daily practice. Played for setdancers last week for the first time (on concertina), which was a milestone. Practicing slow and detailed at home, gets me through in sessions and at dances:-)

Edited March 26, 2010 by Snorre

[michael sam wild]

Getting more comfortable now, after a year and a half with daily practice. Played for setdancers last week for the first time (on concertina), which was a milestone. Practicing slow and detailed at home, gets me through in sessions and at dances:-)

 

Hi I listened to your tunes on the web site. Was that Anglo from scaratch in 18 months ? Nice tunes and playing

When you say set dancers do you mean the fast and furious couple sets or demonstration pieces like slow solo hornpipes

[Michael Eskin]

Took me about 2 years before I felt like I could play it in a session on jigs and hornpipes without making a complete fool of myself, this coming from being quite experienced on several other instruments and already knowing the tunes. Now after playing for about 4-5 years, I'm just in the past year getting to where I can play reels at full session speed comfortably.

[michael sam wild]

That's about my experience. Jigs, polkas, hornpipes , airs are OK. The reels were all there in my head and I have had no problem on the other instruments after that learning curve , which itself was long I can tell you,

 

 

C/G Anglo for D and A at speed is the big challenge. I'm OK on G. Other keys can wait for now.

 

G/D is fine but just not smooth enough but funnily enough D/G melodeon can cross row to get the right feel unless you are with dyed in the wool B/C players.

 

 

So --- how to play Irish reesl in D and possibly A ( although there aren't too many , unlike in Scotland)

 

 

Do people choose the ones best suited to the C/G Anglo, change the keys, or find ways to get there without wrecking the session ( or all of these, sounds like a multiple choice!)

 

 

I only have c# and g# pull on the RHS on the Jeffries and am thinking of c#/c# and g#/g# do you think that would help?

[Snorre]

Getting more comfortable now, after a year and a half with daily practice. Played for setdancers last week for the first time (on concertina), which was a milestone. Practicing slow and detailed at home, gets me through in sessions and at dances:-)

 

Hi I listened to your tunes on the web site. Was that Anglo from scaratch in 18 months ? Nice tunes and playing

When you say set dancers do you mean the fast and furious couple sets or demonstration pieces like slow solo hornpipes

I haven't updated the site in a while, but I hopefully will any day now.......

 

I had been fooling around with it for a while, but had no direction until I started being serious (daily targeted practice) round Xmas 2008. I have played Irish music on the fiddle for a good number of years, giving me a head start on the tunes. Also, as I taught myself the fiddle, I fell into just about every hole on the way, so learning the concertina is easier in the sense that I know what not to do......

 

The dancing would be sets, fairly fast. I lean on a fiddler when playing, which is reassuring and loosens the shoulders a bit.

[Snorre]

So --- how to play Irish reesl in D and possibly A ( although there aren't too many , unlike in Scotland)

 

 

Do people choose the ones best suited to the C/G Anglo, change the keys, or find ways to get there without wrecking the session ( or all of these, sounds like a multiple choice!)

 

 

I only have c# and g# pull on the RHS on the Jeffries and am thinking of c#/c# and g#/g# do you think that would help?

 

 

I try to pick the tunes the others are playing regardless, some tunes are trickier than others, but most tunes are playable given time and practice.

 

My fun sized recording thingy is a gem, as I can tape a tune, so not to wreck it in session, then try to learn it for the next time.

 

S

[michael sam wild]

By the time you get that Suttner you'll be flying!

[frogspawn]

Last Thursday I sang four songs with concertina accompaniment in a singaround session. It wasn't perfect but I got away with it. This is the first time I've pulled it off. Two previous attempts ended in total disaster. I've had the concertina for three years.

 

If I'd known then what I know now I could probably have accelerated the process. In my case what I needed to learn was as follows:

 

(1) A technique that I could apply.

(2) An understanding and feel for chords.

(3) The best key(s) for my singing voice.

(4) A minimum of five hours practice a week.

 

I've only achieved these very recently (a few months ago), but since doing so progress has been phenominally more rapid.

 

As a Crane owner I'm essentially self-taught, but I'm very grateful for the advice I've received here.

 

Richard

[michael sam wild]

Great! What were the songs?

[Michael Eskin]

I have RHS C#/C# on my Carroll in the normal Jeffies location along with also C#/D# and love it. G#/G#? That could be handy!

[frogspawn]

Great! What were the songs?

 

Mike

 

Thanks for your comments on and off board. The songs were 'Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy', 'Bogie's Bonnie Belle', 'The Rout of the Blues' and 'The Sweet Kumadie' (The Golden Vanity). I adopted the first two after studying them in Dick Miles' English tutor. Although not directly applicable to the duet or the way I play, I found it quite inspiring.

 

Richard