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EC: what about the low F?


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To be clear, all I'm talking about is the lowest left button on each hand. That's two of the total 48. Another way to express this idea that might look less radical would be:

 

Left: Ab/E

Right: F#/F

 

 

For me, this seems backwards. I'm not about to do anything like that but, if I were, I think:

Left:F#/F

Right: G#/E

 

makes a lot more sense. While the notes are out of position, they better fit the overall pattern of the English layout. Sequential runs still alternate hands and thirds and fifths are still on the same hand which matches the rest of the instrument.

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i guess i should 'fess up to the effect that after the first wind-down of this thread, i purchased a chinese 48-button ec on ebay from that outfit in texas. just took a chance. now i'm dying to get a "real" ec. i see button box has a model 22 newly in, which is very much the kind of sound i would like, but probaly can't raise the added dough in time to bag it. i guess i'm kind of an anomaly because i am a serious anglo player who loves anglo and has had no knotty problems getting on with it. i'm just starting to feel confined by its limitations. in this price range, i want to be able to play with equal facility in all keys, and i find anglo to be chromatic in name only.... i could live with one, but am not liking having all three, of these big hurdles--A) for keys such as b-flat, e-flat, and a-flat, on an anglo 30-button you are mostly "on the row," with the expressive phrasing limitations and bellows control issues involved therein; BEE) because so many main notes do not recur bidirectionally, you have to master weird, infuriating fingering patterns that involve lots of "chopping" or "jumping," and C); a few notes you don't have at all. i have been on the suttner list for a 39 key for some time, and was designing my own aimed at supplying bidirectional tonics and fifths at the least for all of these keys so you could do it all in one concertina (bass chords would be limited, but i don't care about that).....but in the last few months, i've started to question the wisdom of this course. i think the configuration is definitely possible....but would i enjoy playing it???? the bigger the concertina, the less fun it is to yank it back and forth at fast ceili tempos. i'm now playing a dipper county clare, which is slightly smaller than the usual 30-button precisely to augment fast irish dance playing.....and i'm hesitating about my enhanced-chromatic-39-key project. would an ec be a better investment, i'm wondering, since you could use it to also play single-line melody music in so many other genres, like jazz, and indian ragas, and all kinds of stuff. i know ec has a host of chordal proponents, and my are they vocal....but, the fact is it was created and designed to be a free-reed version of a violin, for fast, fluid melody-line playing, and it does this wonderfully, doesn't it? perhaps, my train of thought is running, a second concertina should be this....

 

it is amazing how ec delivers true chromaticism in such a tiny package. if anyone is wondering about the chinese 48, the good news is that it IS functional enough to give you the gist of the 48-key ec experience. in the first two days, i worked my way through "miss lyon's fancy" in E-flat, D, C, B, and B-flat...wow. very cool system.

 

the bad news is that while the middle "white-key" rows are much like people describe the jackie to be---pretty playable and responsive, with a loud, squawky, bright bark that is very charming, the outside rows are horribly unresponsive....the notes are indeed there, so you get to try out the whole enharmonic-double concept, but at the risk of tendonitis from yanking on them to get them to sound. so i'm sticking mostly to "white-key" keys. no clue whether these outside-row notes could be worked on to make them as responsive as the "white-key" buttons, or whether it's something incurable.....i'm also getting a funny feeling that the springs and the mechanism, while currently quite playable, are going to break down before long. one button has already given out in one direction.

 

i guess the overall news bulletin is that the chinese are not far from delivering a miracle---a playable learner 48-button ec, for a fraction of the price of a stagi, forget a hybrid. oh...i am ignoring that pinky thing, not using it at all, and also playing the concertina "backwards," with the sides reversed and the low notes at the top and the useless super-high notes at the bottom. this gives you your middle-c-and-neighboring alto notes, much used in irish music, right to hand, and puts the useless super-highnotes down where it is really awkward to play the ec. this probly would not be a good thing on a tenor-treble or an extended treble, or for chordal music, but for irish music on a treble, it's the greatest.....

Edited by ceemonster
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