The Concertina Capo

[JimLucas]

You didn't say which system, so English.....

 

Twelve sided bellows, al la Edeophone, that transition to completely round ends.

Radial reed cells are all the same size.

Half an octave, at the top and bottom of the range, of "redundant" reed cells at nil transposition.

Action laid out to give chromatic semitone progression of reed cells throughout the range.

 

...and getting to the important bit.....

 

....connection from action assembly to bellows and reed pan is solely through a central bolt.

Sprung click stops at each alignment of action holes and reed cells.

 

To transpose up a semitone twist the bellows/reed pans, relative to the action, one way to the next click stop, vice versa to go down. More clicks for more than one semitone.

Brilliant idea, but I see a few problems.

• "Radial reed cells are all the same size." - But radically different chamber sizes are needed for the reeds at the top and bottom of the range. In fact, your design only needs that the chambers be the same width; they could be "stopped" at different lengths and even have different depths, but I wonder if any adjustments in those parameters, no matter how radical, would result in all reeds speaking reasonably under the constraint of uniform width. (Hmm. I've just thought of what I think may be a possible solution, but I won't describe it, yet.)
  
• "Action laid out to give chromatic semitone progression of reed cells throughout the range." - Judging from the way the levers are laid out in existing instruments, where musically adjacent notes are often not in physically adjacent chambers and many levers are bent in interesting curves, I suspect that the layout using a traditional action (rigid levers on pivots) may have to be extremely intricate, at best.
  
• "You didn't say which system, so English....." - On the English the notes that are found on either end are not all a half step apart, and in fact are not even evenly spaced. In order for your system to work you would need to have a complete chromatic set of reeds on each end, nearly doubling the number of reeds, with only about half of them usable -- i.e., under pad holes -- at any given time. If you're going to try it, I think it would be much simpler and more economical to start with a duet layout.

[JimLucas]

[small edit for clarity, I hope]

Clarity, they say, begins at home.

[Lawrence Reeves]

Look under your fingers. If you are a row player you can easily play in different keys maintaining the same fingering. Also if a fan of the Kitty Hayes/ old player style, C is better for tunes than D. My concertina capo consists of a C / G ,Bb / F, Ab / Eb instruments to play tunes.

[Mikefule]

Surely all you need to do is travel towards (or away from) your audience at the appropriate speed.

 

Modulations could be achieved by passing your audience, utilising the Doppler shift.

[TomB-R]

You didn't say which system, so English.....

 

Twelve sided bellows, al la Edeophone, that transition to completely round ends.

Radial reed cells are all the same size.

Half an octave, at the top and bottom of the range, of "redundant" reed cells at nil transposition.

Action laid out to give chromatic semitone progression of reed cells throughout the range.

 

...and getting to the important bit.....

 

....connection from action assembly to bellows and reed pan is solely through a central bolt.

Sprung click stops at each alignment of action holes and reed cells.

 

To transpose up a semitone twist the bellows/reed pans, relative to the action, one way to the next click stop, vice versa to go down. More clicks for more than one semitone.

Brilliant idea, but I see a few problems.

• "Radial reed cells are all the same size." - But radically different chamber sizes are needed for the reeds at the top and bottom of the range. In fact, your design only needs that the chambers be the same width; they could be "stopped" at different lengths and even have different depths, but I wonder if any adjustments in those parameters, no matter how radical, would result in all reeds speaking reasonably under the constraint of uniform width. (Hmm. I've just thought of what I think may be a possible solution, but I won't describe it, yet.)
• "Action laid out to give chromatic semitone progression of reed cells throughout the range." - Judging from the way the levers are laid out in existing instruments, where musically adjacent notes are often not in physically adjacent chambers and many levers are bent in interesting curves, I suspect that the layout using a traditional action (rigid levers on pivots) may have to be extremely intricate, at best.
• "You didn't say which system, so English....." - On the English the notes that are found on either end are not all a half step apart, and in fact are not even evenly spaced. In order for your system to work you would need to have a complete chromatic set of reeds on each end, nearly doubling the number of reeds, with only about half of them usable -- i.e., under pad holes -- at any given time. If you're going to try it, I think it would be much simpler and more economical to start with a duet layout.

Very significant point re Duet rather than English, Jim.

 

"Fair cop gov, you got me dead to rights."

 

 

 

[Jeff C]

I know many people who would like to see concertinists moving away from them at the greatest speed possible.

[Woody]

Surely all you need to do is travel towards (or away from) your audience at the appropriate speed.

To achieve the desired result you'd have to be moving at quite a speed and the apparent volume would decrease as well. To resolve this you'd need to be on a large truck with the Concertina plugged into AC/DC's sound system. To adjust the volume of the sound system accurately you'd need another truck along side carrying China's latest supercomputer. To protect your hearing from the sound system you'd need to be in a sound-proof booth. To ensure that you can play a full concert you'd need lots of outriders who are fully qualified lawyers to deflect the attentions of local health officials.

 

If the required key involved driving towards the audience you'd need to play really quickly before your whole enterage ploughs into them, seriously diminishing their enjoyment.

[Jeff C]

You could hire a hypnotist to hypnotize the audience and convince them that you are playing in the correct key no matter what key you play in. Of course for this to work your fellow performers would have to be hypnotized. Or very well paid.

[Bruce McCaskey]

Perhaps no more practical than any of the methods mentioned above, I have seen one Anglo concertina that was sold with an additional reed pan set tuned in a different key and I've heard of a very few others that were purchased with the intent to swap tunings on occasion. To convert from C/G to Bb/F for example, one needs to take both ends off and swap out the reed pans and then reassemble. While this works in a sense to change the tuning, it's no small undertaking that one is likely to elect to perform while out at an evening session of playing, though they could likely do it in the span of twenty minutes or less given a quiet and controlled setting where nothing is likely to be disturbed as they work.

 

I think that aspects of being able to use multiple tunings (cross-row fingering approaches aside) with the same instrument are appealing, but it strikes me that I'd rather have two complete and separate instruments at my disposal for the convenience of it, although I recognize that the inconvenience of the reed pan swap approach balanced against saving perhaps a thousand or two on the overall price if one purchases a complete second instrument is no small consideration.

 

That said, and in light of the theme of this thread, I was wondering if it might be reasonably feasible (for a maker) to alter the design of the end construction of a concertina such that a reed pan swap might be done more quickly and easily. Maybe design it with a side access chamber that reed pans could slide in and out of, or a quick removal feature for the ends, perhaps a twist or some latches.

 

I acknowledge there might be cost, weight and sealing surface issues with such a quick-change approach, not to mention protection of the delicate reeds and valves, but it doesn't seem an impossible notion to me. Again, I don't suggest it'd be practical, but I thought I'd put the notion out there.