EC: what about the low F?

[Dirge]

[the discussion about whether fast melody playing or easy chording is more important...]

 

i'm not claiming melody playing is more important. my aesthetic bent is that i like it better as a listener and a player, but i have no claim that it's better or more important. i am, however, taking issue with remarks dismissing melody playing and extolling chordal playing, and they recur outside of this thread....

 

Of course it recurrs outside this thread. Concertinas can play precise chords easily and fluidly to accompany their own melody, something relatively few decently sensitive instruments can do. It's one of the instrument's great assets. Complaining that people are being rude because you choose to completely ignore this aspect is about as sensible as moaning because you only play one note at a time on the piano and find no one will offer you an orchestra position.

 

Nevertheless it was probably my comment that started this distraction so I'm sorry for that because it did get a bit out of hand (although I admit it made me laugh); I was keeping out of it but I get niggly when people post stuff about Maccans I think is plain wrong and I apologise for taking the bait.

 

What was your original question again?

[ceemonster]

[Complaining that people are being rude because you choose to completely ignore this aspect]....not so. i complained that remarks calling melodic-style playing too "trivial" to bother with, are provincial and are themselves trivial. and i cast no aspersions on your favored instrument. you took your own bait on these and a number of other points. enough. thanks to the other posters here for much food for thought!

[Dirge]

[Complaining that people are being rude because you choose to completely ignore this aspect]....not so. i complained that remarks calling melodic-style playing too "trivial" to bother with, are provincial and are themselves trivial. and i cast no aspersions on your favored instrument. you took your own bait on these and a number of other points. enough. thanks to the other posters here for much food for thought!

I'm happy to leave everyone else to make up their own minds about that, so 'enough' from me too.

[Anglo-Irishman]

[Complaining that people are being rude because you choose to completely ignore this aspect]....not so. i complained that remarks calling melodic-style playing too "trivial" to bother with, are provincial and are themselves trivial. and i cast no aspersions on your favored instrument. you took your own bait on these and a number of other points. enough. thanks to the other posters here for much food for thought!

 

ceemonster,

 

It was I who used the word "trivial". However, I was not takling about monodic music. I was talking about the real existing concertina as we know it.

 

Our culture - classical, folk and jazz - has produced polyphonic, homophonic and monodic music. It has also produced many different instruments with which to make these types of music. Some are by design single-note instruments (e.g. flutes, saxophones, the brass instuments), others are by design multiple-note (e.g. harp, piano, organ, guitar).

Generally, the two types of instrument are used where their characteristics are an advantage: single-note instruments can be played very fluently with great expressiveness; multiple-note instruments can be used to render a harmonic structure. Often, both types are combined in accompanied solos: violin and piano, oboe and harpsichord, voice and guitar. Often, too, single-note instruments of different pitch are combined to play polyphonic or homophonic music: string orchestras, brass bands or choirs. And often, the multiple-note instruments are used as solo instruments: in organ toccatas, piano sonatas and guitar pieces. Whether these forms of music were developed for the existing instruments, or the instruments for the existing musical forms, is a chicken-and-egg question.

 

Of course, any multiple-note instrument can be used to play single notes, to if required. But doing that all the time (which is what I was talking about) is trivialising the instrument.

 

The concertinas are by design multiple-note instruments. Especially the Anglo-German (whose fingering system stems from Germany, where chordal accompaniment on guitar, zither or cittern is traditional) and the duet (which is in the same tradition of harmonised music as the piano) are primarily useful for accompanied melody. So, if your mind is set on easy, fast, expressive rendering of single-line melodies, why try the concertina? The flute and violin are ideal for that purpose!

 

"Ah, but what about ITM Anglo?" you ask. Well, this is a quirk of history. The German concertinas that got stranded in Ireland when the craze for the concertina in popular music faded were integrated in a rural style of music which, for economical reasons, was dominated by simple and easily available instruments: the fiddle and the flute, which happen to be single-note instruments (only advanced fiddlers use double stops). As it hapens, the concertina is loud enough, and expressive enough, to carry a single-line melody, although it can do so much more. However, by the design of the Anglo, the multiple-note capability diminishes the farther away you get from the home keys. So with melody lines in D or A major, you're already exploiting quite a lot of the Anglo's capabilities in one direction.

With a standard Anglo, however, you can exploit its capabilities in the other direction by accompanying a song or two after you've played a few reels. With the "fast-single-line-melodic" concertina that you seem to be striving for, you'd lose this capability.

 

I know for a fact that, if I'd wanted to get into single-line, fast melody - e.g. traditional Irish dance music - I'd have stuck to the fiddle and perfected that, and not bothered with the concertina. But I needed a song-accompaniment instrument more, so I went the Anglo concertina way.

 

You might like to try the fiddle. The kind of ITM tunes you seem to be heading for are heavily fiddle-biased anyway, and are probably easier on the fiddle than on the Anglo or any other concertina system, existing or conceivable .

 

Cheers,

John

[ceemonster]

[but doing that all the time (which is what I was talking about) is trivialising the instrument.] well, you'd better get over to egypt and tell the baladi maestros they are trivialising their PAs. and for heaven's sake, why are irish virtuosos such as this one not listening to you???? get over there and give him the wet noodle! [just edited to substitute a more accurate clip....]

 

 

the french musette cba masters who play largely scalar/melody music? bread and water for them!

 

of course, if you are in the u.s., the airfare would be cheaper for you to go fill in all the brilliant genius composer/players of jazz piano who compose and play their art melodically that they are trivializing the piano.

 

you seem to think my aesthetics come from ignorance of some kind about instrument capabilities, instrument history, and music history. au contraire, mon frere. my aesthetics resulted from wider awareness, not narrower awareness.

 

 

[The kind of ITM tunes you seem to be heading for are heavily fiddle-based anyway....] i'm not heading for them. i'm already playing them, on CBA, PA, bisonoric box and concertina, and now intend to play them on unisonoric concertina. so do lots of people who are well aware of what fiddles can do versus what PAs can do.

 

i'm not quibbling with your appreciation of and preference for, using the multi-voice and chordal capacities of multi-voice-capable instruments to the hilt. i get it. i'm quibbling with the normative, prescriptive language, and with the fallacious assumption that someone preferring to play multi-voice-capable instruments as melody instruments must need a musicology lesson.

Edited July 17, 2011 by ceemonster

[ceemonster]

my post touching off this aspect of the discussion did not say anything proscriptive or universal. it expressed my own intention to play this type of music, voiced this way. and it did not cite only itm.

 

based on the clips on the link below, i nabbed this cd about a year ago, and it's become one of my favorite free-reed instrument recordings. it would be really fun to try this kind of stuff on cba, but i've also been musing for quite a while about how great unisonoric concertina would be for adventures in this region, among other regions. of course, some harmoniums are quarter-tone, and my ear isn't good enough to know which cuts are regular tone and which quarter tone. but just as general inspiration....unisonoric concertina would be brilliant for this kind of adventure....same with the baladi accordion music, mmmmm, mmmmm.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Milestones-Harmonium-Rare-Collection/dp/B003LN1JRG/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1310939569&sr=1-3

[Jim Albea]

I've never played an EC but I'd suggest that if you want both F and F#

you could have both of them instead of the G# ; one on the push, the other on the pull.

If you only need those notes ocasionally I'm sure this could be managed.

This just introduces a little bit of anglo logic into the EC

 

I'm intrigued with this concept of making those last two buttons on both sides of the treble operate like an Anglo. Then a treble could go down to E.

 

So this would be a possible sequence at the low end:

 

both-ways A (left)

push Ab (left)

both-ways G (right)

push F# (right)

pull F (right)

pull E (left)

 

It is somehow logical to me that the two connector notes would be pushes and the two low notes would be pulls (for lots of air). And the lowest one would be on the far left.

 

<insert here sound of can-o-worms being opened>

[Geoff Wooff]

I've never played an EC but I'd suggest that if you want both F and F#

you could have both of them instead of the G# ; one on the push, the other on the pull.

If you only need those notes ocasionally I'm sure this could be managed.

This just introduces a little bit of anglo logic into the EC

 

I'm intrigued with this concept of making those last two buttons on both sides of the treble operate like an Anglo. Then a treble could go down to E.

 

So this would be a possible sequence at the low end:

 

both-ways A (left)

push Ab (left)

both-ways G (right)

push F# (right)

pull F (right)

pull E (left)

 

It is somehow logical to me that the two connector notes would be pushes and the two low notes would be pulls (for lots of air). And the lowest one would be on the far left.

 

<insert here sound of can-o-worms being opened>

 

 

Hmmmm!! Indeed !

[JimLucas]

I'm intrigued with this concept of making those last two buttons on both sides of the treble operate like an Anglo. Then a treble could go down to E.

 

So this would be a possible sequence at the low end:

 

both-ways A (left)

push Ab (left)

both-ways G (right)

push F# (right)

pull F (right)

pull E (left)

Wheatstone's system of note placement (known in concertinas as the English system) follows a precise and unambiguous pattern, so that any extension of the pattern is rigidly determined. Replacing any note in the pattern with another note is a departure from the "true" English system. The English system is also fundamentally unisonoric, i.e., each button plays only one note of the scale, regardless of bellows direction. Your above suggestion departs from both of these underlying principles, leaving me to wonder after how many such departures it no longer makes sense to call it "English system".

 

My personal opinion is that what you describe above is already not "an English", but instead a custom layout, which only partly follows the English system.

 

<insert here sound of can-o-worms being opened>

Who do you expect to take the bait? Early Bird Johnson?

[david fabre]

Funny to see that my original suggestion is making its path into the brain of english-system players

My personal opinion is that what you describe above is already not "an English", but instead a custom layout, which only partly follows the English system.

 

 

On the other hand, the anglo system is fundamentally bisonic, but many more-than-30-buttons anglo (including mine) have one or several buttons sounding the same note in both directions.

Should I conclude that my instrument is not an anglo ?

Edited September 14, 2011 by david fabre

[ceemonster]

....if the question is, what one could do, or what possibilities or options one had, the issue of what a "true" system is, would seem to be completely separate and not terribly relevant.

 

but having had some time now to mull all this over, i think what this particular "one" would like, would be a custom-made new ec with an extra button on the shortest row of one side adding the F, and an extra on the shortest row of the other adding the F#. in the case of the F#, if the shortest row was a "white-key" row, i guess putting an added F# there would take me out of the realm of a "true" system. but somehow, i think i could manage to live a rich, full life without a "true english system."

[Randall Cayford]

but having had some time now to mull all this over, i think what this particular "one" would like, would be a custom-made new ec with an extra button on the shortest row of one side adding the F, and an extra on the shortest row of the other adding the F#. in the case of the F#, if the shortest row was a "white-key" row, i guess putting an added F# there would take me out of the realm of a "true" system. but somehow, i think i could manage to live a rich, full life without a "true english system."

 

From which it seems a very short hop to "just get a tenor-treble". They aren't that rare, they add the buttons wanted plus a bunch more, and they follow the same logic the rest of the keyboard does. Why invent a new layout when there is already an existing layout that does exactly what's wanted?

[ceemonster]

because i don't want "a bunch more" buttons, that's why not. as it is, the treble already has nearly an octave that i'll never use.

[Wolf Molkentin]

because i don't want "a bunch more" buttons, that's why not. as it is, the treble already has nearly an octave that i'll never use.

So you might go for one of the (as attractive as apparently rare) 48-button "tenor-trebles" omitting just those never ever used buttons on the upper end - if not simply preferring any personally customized solution...

[ceemonster]

i've been wondering what this gent's self-customed "alto-treble" is about.....

 

 

lovely clip, isn't it? really shows you what the ec can do with melody-line music, particularly the last third or so of the clip.....could become the new "flight of the bumblebee" for those of us who would run through a plate-glass window to get away from fotb....

[ceemonster]

whoops. link here:

 

[JimLucas]

i've been wondering what this gent's self-customed "alto-treble" is about.....

 

The instrument is a standard tenor-treble with some reeds switched to make it a transposing instrument. For the same fingering as on a treble, you'll be playing a fifth lower. (Actually, that's not quite true, as Robert explains here. And there's some related discussion here that might interest you.)

 

It still has the same lowest note -- C below middle C -- as a standard tenor-treble.

[Jim Albea]

Wheatstone's system of note placement (known in concertinas as the English system) follows a precise and unambiguous pattern, so that any extension of the pattern is rigidly determined. Replacing any note in the pattern with another note is a departure from the "true" English system. The English system is also fundamentally unisonoric, i.e., each button plays only one note of the scale, regardless of bellows direction. Your above suggestion departs from both of these underlying principles, leaving me to wonder after how many such departures it no longer makes sense to call it "English system".

 

To add insult to heresy I'm eying these two buttons on my newly acquired metal-ended Wheatstone Aeola Treble #27316 (pictured in my avatar). It was built in 1916, right in the middle of the Golden Period, but before the massive war restrictions took hold (I hope). This is my first (and last?, ha ha) English concertina. It was actually out of my budget range but I made the mistake of taking it on perusal and just couldn't give it back. The Tenor-trebles are way out of my budget range, at least the concertina reeded ones are, so I can feel at ease with making do with this one. And the vintage TTs, forget it.

 

So I'm very thrilled to have this one, but want to make sure I'm 'squeezing' everything I can get out of it. There are a few reeds that are speaking slowly so I'm sending it in to the good doctor Greg Jowaisas. While he's got it, I'm pretty sure I'm going have him make the standard 'Low F' modification. But this thread got me to thinking about working down a few extra tones on those last two buttons instead of just doing the Low F.

 

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

 

So I guess question one is: Has anyone tried this? The answer to that seems to be "No".

 

Question two: Would the loss of unisonoric function on those two buttons outweigh the benefit of being able to reach down three more tones in a melody line?

 

One general answer to this inquiry might be that those bigger reeds simply won't fit in the space, rendering this whole discussion moot.

 

In another thread, which I'll start soon, I'll describe my odyssey away from the Hayden Duet to the English. That may be of interest to some readers of this forum.

Edited September 20, 2011 by Jim Albea