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Arranging for the english concertina


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I was reading The Wheatstone Concertina and Symmetrical Arrangements of Tonal Space and the author implied that the keyboard/fingering patterns used on the EC

don't mesh well with certain (polyphonic) musical patterns.

 

I've read that harmonizing a melody in 3rds is easy, are there other techniques/patterns that come easy on the EC?

Have you found pre-existing music which just didn't sit right on the EC without modification?

 

I'm wondering what you all's experience is.

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I was reading The Wheatstone Concertina and Symmetrical Arrangements of Tonal Space and the author implied that the keyboard/fingering patterns used on the EC don't mesh well with certain (polyphonic) musical patterns.

Quite likely. So what? There's more to music than a particular restricted "school" of "polyphony". I'm not sure that the same couldn't be said of any instrument, if one carefully selected examples to demonstrate lack of compatibility.

 

I've read that harmonizing a melody in 3rds is easy, are there other techniques/patterns that come easy on the EC?

Yep, though parallel thirds tend to be the easiest at high speed using most "common" scales (including some "unusual" ones, e.g., G-A-Bb-C#-D-Eb-F#-G). What works well or poorly -- e.g., drone, parallel fifths, parallel sixths, sparse chording, chord inversions other than root triads, and more -- often depends on the piece, though.

 

Have you found pre-existing music which just didn't sit right on the EC without modification?

Yes. (It's tempting to say, "Of course!) And lots that does "sit right", too. Should this be a surprise?

 

 

I'm wondering what you all's experience is.

The above is a quick "summary" of my experience, in relation to the questions you've asked. I've also just skimmed the paper, and my reaction is that it appears pedantically intriguing but useless -- possibly even harmful -- for the purpose of learning to play the English concertina.

 

E.g.,

As convenient as the concertina’s layout was for playing root-position chords and single-line melodies, it also generated potentially disorienting symmetrical reversals of fingering patterns for the performer. No pitch class appears twice in the same vertical row, resulting in a distinctive hand/finger coordinate for pitches of the same class appearing in different octaves.

Tell someone that something is difficult -- whether to play or understand -- and they're liable to believe you, without trying to find out otherwise. I myself have never experienced the suggested "disorientation", nor either a "distinction" among configurations in different octaves. (They may be distinct if one's viewpoint is restricted to translational symmetries, but under reflection symmetries the "differences" become similarities.) And I doubt very much that students of the violin are taught that it is "potentially disorienting" that the different octaves of a given note must be fingered at different positions along the length of the fingerboard.

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Thanks for the replies.

 

Jim, I especially appreciated "pedantically intriguing but useless -- possibly even harmful -- for the purpose of learning to play the English concertina";

Sometimes I go a bit afield with theory over practice.

 

Randy, I compared your rendition of Harlem Nocturne against a few others I found on the internet, and noticed a few distinctive elements that you put in.

But it's not really about the instrument, I suspect its really about your personal interpretation of the music.

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