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is a bandondeon a kind of concertina? or a different kind of instrement which kind is it most like(anglo, english, duet). how much dose it cost do any of you play one and is hard (I'm not planing to buy one in the near future just curius).

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is a bandondeon a kind of concertina? or a different kind of instrement which kind is it most like(anglo, english, duet). how much dose it cost do any of you play one and is hard (I'm not planing to buy one in the near future just curius).

Hi Ido

 

I would think it closer to an Anglo style, used to play tango music in South America. Here's a website from a maker, who is also a member on this forum. http://www.bandoneon-maker.com/

 

If you've the time, there was a movie made a few years ago with lots of bandoneon music, and some history.

http://www.linktv.org/programs/el-ultimo-bandoneon

 

Thanks

Leo

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[is a bandondeon a kind of concertina?]

 

yes. a bandoneon is a great big concertina. perhaps concertinas are diminutive descendants of bandoneons. i don't know which came first.

 

bandoneon reeds are configured differently and have a different sound from those in our little anglo and english concertinas, but it is a concertina. so is the so-called "chemnitzer."

 

like our wee multi-oganal concertinas, bandoneons come in bisonoric versions and unisonoric versions. as with our dichotomy between "concertina reeds," and "hybrid accordion reed concertinas," bandos come in "bandoneon reed" versions, and "accordion reed" versions. we love them.

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is a bandondeon a kind of concertina? or a different kind of instrement which kind is it most like(anglo, english, duet). how much dose it cost do any of you play one and is hard (I'm not planing to buy one in the near future just curius).

 

ido,

 

Yes! Well, actually more a Konzertina than a concertina...

 

I'm often asked if my Anglo is a Bandoneon, and my standard answer is, "No, but it's the little cousin of the Bandoneon."

Cousins have common grandparents. In this case, I see the early, small, rectangular, 20-button, cheap German concertinas that flooded the low-end market in the 19th century as the common grandparent. The simple, diatonic layout made it easier for the masses to play than the chromatic EC, and it was also cheaper than Wheatstone's high-end instruments. So English makers wedded the German 20-button diatonic layout with the hexagonal Wheatstone body and single reeds (as opposed to the reed plates with 5 pairs of reeds in the German Konzertina), and the Anglo-German concertina was born.

Back in Germany, the rectangular Konzertina was improved, retaining the 5-pair reed plates and the rectangular form, but with improved quality and tone and larger size.

 

In England, the Anglo-German was soon given a row of buttons with additional sharps and flats, and became the Anglo-Chromatic Concertina.

In Germany, too, buttons were added to enhance the musical capabilities of the Konzertina.

 

These additional buttons were, in both countries, configured differently by different makers - we have Anglos with Wheatstone and Jeffries layouts, and in Germany the Carlsfelder and the Chemnitzer layouts. The differences are in the arrangement of the notes; the appearance and construction of the instruments remained similar, in both countries. In Germany, a further layout was introduced - the so-called Rheinische. This looks like a Chemnitzer or Carlsfelder, is of the same construction (reed plates, large air-valve with thumb lever), but with a different button arrangement. This system was developed for a music dealer by the name of Band, and thus received the trade name "Bandoneon".

 

Hard to play? Well, when I stumbled on an antique Bandoneon (in the 1970s in a Berlin junk shop for DM 60, which converts to € 30!) I soon found out that it has a core area of 20 buttons that is practically identical to the middle and inner rows of the Anglo, but in A/E rather than C/G. In fact, I have a couple of party pieces that I can play on Anglo and Bandoneon with the same fingering (though in different keys, of course).

 

Finding a scale on push only or pull only is easier on the Bandoneon - which is why the tango players can play a lot on the pull.

 

By the way, I always feel slightly uneasy when people talk about "mono-sonoric Bandoneons". The original Bandoneon is a variant of the diatonic, bi-sonoric Konzertina, and a lot of the character of its music stems from this. The only thing that is "Bandoneonic" about these chromatic instruments is the "dry-octave" tuning that is typical of (but does not define) the original bi-sonoric Bandoneon. Chemnitzers and Carlsfelders are sometimes lumped together as Large German Concertinas (LGCs). A mono-sonoric Bandoneon, in my view, would be more appropriately designated as a "Large German Duet Concertina". But the name "Bandoneon" has a certain ring to it, so they use that!

 

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

John

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I will pass on a small story, related to me by Jim Ward , about Scan Tester that great old Anglo Player.He had a Bandoneon that He took around with him.

On many occasions He sold it, only to buy it back on just as many occasions at a cheap price because the purchaser could not play it. In fact it happened on such regular occasions that Scan reckoned that it supplemented his income.

Al :)

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I will pass on a small story, related to me by Jim Ward , about Scan Tester that great old Anglo Player.He had a Bandoneon that He took around with him.

On many occasions He sold it, only to buy it back on just as many occasions at a cheap price because the purchaser could not play it. In fact it happened on such regular occasions that Scan reckoned that it supplemented his income.

Al :)

 

 

:)

 

Al,

When I discovered my Bandoneon in that junk shop - in pretty good shape, cosmetically speaking - I picked it up and squeezed it. To my surprise, those central 20 buttons were uncannily Anglo-like, and sounded quite nice. The rest of the 52 buttons seemed hopelessly out of tune, but I bought it anyway, more as a collector's piece.

After a while, I discovered that the remining 32 buttons weren't out of tune - that was the way they were supposed to be! Having no concertina at that time, I pesevered with it and managed to get quite a few arrangements worked out. After a while you notice that the buttons still aren't logically arranged, but when you need a particular combination of notes, you'll find them somewhere nearby. :D

 

Cheers,

John

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i have one and got a serious start at learning the note placement before switching to learning cba, which is an addictive and seductive instrument indeed. or perhaps i shifted because learning bando notes is actually something done best in stages with rests in between.

 

but it's not that bad, actually. the bando has a super-high octave that you rarely use for basic folk (right side, most on the outer perimeter) or tango. so you throw that out in terms of learning at first. and it has a super-low octave (on the left, mostly on the outer perimeter) that you don't use a lot, so you throw that out at first (if you start playing tango, you learn it by hunt-and-peck anyway for your ba-dum-bum basses). now you're down to three essential-use octaves, a tenor on the left, a soprano on the right, and a middle that is common (almost) to both sides. that is a very manageable mouthful.

 

you then copy the keyboards several times and make a colored set for each of your three essential octaves, and do one octave at a time, and TAKE your time. you can do all one color per octave, or separate colors push and pull. you take just that octave, and learn it by slow chromatic scales. if it takes a couple months or a few months even per octave, who cares?

 

once you kind of have a feel for the three essential octaves, you can start on easy waltzes. this is as far as i went. doing the waltz basses, you hit a tenor note or find a convenient one from your as-yet unlearned super-low bass notes. then you do two chords. waltz bass rhythm, NOTE-chord-chord, NOTE-chord-chord, etc. all on the left side.

 

the great thing about bando is, for your waltz bass chords in a simple waltz, three notes are fine, even two, and if the buttons for a conventionally voiced chord are an inconvenient stretch for your hand, there will be an inversion that sounds perfectly fine that is right to hand and easy ergonomically.

 

seriously, waltzes from, like, book three or four of the palmer-hughes kiddie intermediate accordion course grades sound lovely on bandoneon.

 

i repeat: it's not as hard as they say. it's really, really, really hard to become anibal troilo. but it's not as hard as reputed to get a handle on the most-used notes and play something elementary that sounds lovely.

 

speaking of troilo, his great all-instrumental small-group recording with guitar player roberto grela is one of the best concertina records ever.......brand-new for six bucks on ebay...

 

 

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ANIBAL-TROILO-ROBERTO-GRELA-CUARTETO-TIPICO-CD-NEW-/120556083408?pt=Music_CDs&hash=item1c11b3d8d0

Edited by ceemonster
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I think of the bandoneon as an accordion and not a concertina. If you want to listen to the

best bandoneon player in the world go to www.youtube.com. Search for Libertango and then

listen to the Astor Piazzola and Yo Yo Ma version. Astor Piazzola is the composer of this tune

and I think he is probably the worlds greatest Bandoneon (Tango accordion) player.

 

Wikipedia has an article on the Bandoneon complete with pictures showing the inner

construction.

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i'm not much on the orchestral tango sound...i love bando in small-group instrumental settings like the troilo/grela classic above...

 

the instrumental bando record i'm listening to a lot right now is this bando-piano duo, listenable on cdbaby....really lovely stuff.

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/davidsonjaurena

 

tango has its own version of "the pure drop." they say, "la guardia vieja." it's a cleaner, more single-melody-line version that is closer to tango's folk-dance roots than some of the super-arranged, closer-to-classical stuff the big orchestras started doing.....i love the two instrumental trio recordings by ciriaco ortiz in the more "guardia vieja" style....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbcKzF6yDxA

 

 

and last but not least, i also really enjoy this solo unisonoric bando recording of thelonius monk music by olivier manoury, tracks listenable here:

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/manoury

 

 

 

okay, that's all. 'night. :rolleyes:

Edited by ceemonster
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I took a stab at one of Harry Genus' c-system student models. Even with those dreaded accordion reeds it had a wonderful, dark tone to it. But I'm not yet retired, so my Crane still takes some thinking and I was slowing myself down with too many fingering systems to learn. Someday, though .....

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[what is the price? more ecpensive than a concertina?]

 

no. cheaper. well, that's not 100% accurate.....if you go on the button box accordion store's web site and look at the jeffries anglos for sale there in the realm of 9K to 11K....a bandoneon is cheaper than that. the "jeffries" of bandoneons would be the AA or Alfred Arnold, and as with wheatstones and jeffries, there are "golden era" ones that go for more than other eras. i've read up on it in the past but don't remember all the ins and outs of it. also as with wheatstones and jeffries, there was a period where you could get them for, not a song, but much less than they are now going for the last couple of years. the one i have, i purchased on ebay about six/seven years ago at a much lower price than they are now going for. i was told in nyc about a year ago that one reason the prices have shot up is that argentina wants to keep them in the country or bring them back home for cultural-heritage reasons. no idea on the accuracy of that. but a vintage AA bandoneon can be probly be had for about 2500 to 6,000 depending, and fixer-uppers for restoration can certainly go for less. there are also vintage bandos by other makers such as ELA, and some of them are very nice tho not as "desirable" as the AA. it all depends on the era, and things such as, aluminum reed frames (less desirable) versus zinc reed frames (more desirable). it's analagous to the situation with vintage concertinas. also analagous, there are contemporary bando makers like dipper and suttner. they have waiting lists, same deal, but the wait is not as long as those for anglo concertinas. their stuff is gonna go for about 5K to 7K or was the last i checked.

 

one would be uwe hartenhauer. he is like the fine contemporary anglo and ec concertina makers. his prices look comparable to theirs as well....

http://www.bandoneon-hartenhauer.de/preise.html

 

people already mentioned harry geuns. he does an accordion-reeded unisonoric patterned after the c-system cba with a sloped ergonomic setup this isn't really for me. but he also does "true" bandos in the classic AA style, zinc frames, the whole deal....

 

http://www.bandoneon-maker.com/harrygeuns.htm

 

there are a couple of others.

 

if you watch ebay for a while to learn about it, and also do research and find out about who can work on bandoneons and/or appraise or asses the condition of a potential purchase, you can probably get one for the price of an edgeley or a tedrow. i don't mean that in any negative way. i mean it in a good way..... :rolleyes:

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i'm not much on the orchestral tango sound...i love bando in small-group instrumental settings like the troilo/grela classic above...

 

the instrumental bando record i'm listening to a lot right now is this bando-piano duo, listenable on cdbaby....really lovely stuff.

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/davidsonjaurena

 

tango has its own version of "the pure drop." they say, "la guardia vieja." it's a cleaner, more single-melody-line version that is closer to tango's folk-dance roots than some of the super-arranged, closer-to-classical stuff the big orchestras started doing.....i love the two instrumental trio recordings by ciriaco ortiz in the more "guardia vieja" style....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbcKzF6yDxA

 

 

and last but not least, i also really enjoy this solo unisonoric bando recording of thelonius monk music by olivier manoury, tracks listenable here:

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/manoury

 

 

 

okay, that's all. 'night. :rolleyes:

 

 

What does the phrase 'The Pure Drop' mean ? Could you explain it for our younger readers?

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"the pure drop"---it is a phrase used in rural ireland to describe the "real" or "authentic" old style, and has an emotional component as well as a style-of-playing component. whether it refers to sparkling spring water or pure poteen as in what my tobacco-chewing grammy from appalachia would have thought of as moonshine or "white lightening," depends on who you're talking to. it can be a controversial term in the culture wars that sometimes go on among fanatics of itm. i don't mean it in the culture-war sense, though i'm definitely a drinker of "the pure drop," rather than of fusion-y, "super-band," "postmodern" iterations.....in tango, the "guardia vieja," would be more the folk-dance style tango arrangement to be found among the rural gauchos in the late 1800s and in the dance halls of buenos aires in the late 1800s to 1920s/30s or so....later tango became highly classicalized in terms of complex voicing and arrangements, for the big orchestras of tango's "golden age," which is great stuff in its own right, just not my thing. even later, astor piazzola ushered in an also-classicalized phase in tango, but this was analagous to the modernist, chromatic/atonal phase of classical music. that too is wonderful, wonderful stuff, though as with irish music, there have definitely been "culture wars" among the tangueros. as a listener, i love piazzola and have numerous records both of him and of others playing his stuff. but as a player and as a diner, for whatever reason, in music as in food, i'm a peasant who likes superbly-done, rural-derived folk forms....

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i guess i should add, we are coming full circle here, because the really early-wearly tango from the rancheros often was just a couple of flutes, maybe a harp, AND CONCERTINA, as in, the little old hexagonal ones we love so well!!!!

 

Would you happen to have a link or reference to a recording of such an early grouping?

Thanks very much.

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