Thomas Restoin - Duet Concertina On Myspace

[Defra]

Having been very impressed by forum member "Tona's" duet concertina contributions to TOTM, I decided to find out a bit more about this excellent French musician. His name is Thomas Restoin and here, with his permission, is a link to some more of his tunes on Myspace: https://myspace.com/...n-duet-19159856

[Geoff Wooff]

Is there somewhere where he explains the layout of his "Custom Duets' ?

[JimLucas]

Is there somewhere where he explains the layout of his "Custom Duets' ?

 

Try this thread.

 

And somewhere in that one is a link to another, which might have more info, but I didn't have time to look through it.

[Geoff Wooff]

 

Is there somewhere where he explains the layout of his "Custom Duets' ?

Try this thread.

 

And somewhere in that one is a link to another, which might have more info, but I didn't have time to look through it.

 

 

Thanks Jim!

[felix castro]

It seems that he designed a duet layout adapted to his unisonoric style of playing, that it isn't also a typical unisonoric, chromatic, layout of the CBA, it is his own layout adapted from his experiences in the beginnings with bisonoric "diatonic" three row accordions. He tells some things about his layout in the links posted before. Has he says is a layout good for applying his experience of accordion player.

[felix castro]

Here is Mr. Restoin playing with a concertina. I don't know if it is his new model. It was recorded in 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0vuw_-Pos0

[ceemonster]

i believe the concertina in this 2012 clip is m. restoin's custom dipper duet, described thusly by "franglo" [Pariselle, signed "Emmanuel,"] in the cnet thread linked below, where Pariselle gives details on the Dipper "Franglos" and also adds,

 

[...Colin and Rosalie made...two monosonore duets for Thomas Restoin with a fingering of a chromatic accordion (system Verchuren) on the right and a special 24 basses on the left]

 

http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11986

 

 

the video is lovely, and there are some beautiful clips on that myspace page....i do see that right hand doing the work, or most of it. i see that this, or other duet system, would be wonderful for slow-to-moderately-sprightly-paced music, but... i'm wondering if the thing will play like the wind when you need to do that, and if so, how long your right hand would hold up playing like the wind. if you're playing largely melody, would EC or CBA not be better since those two play like the wind with ease, as well as at a moderate pace.....

 

what i find fascinating about this instrument as well as the "franglos" is, they give you the concertina features with a full accordion lung power, unlike some of the "hybrid" concertinas with cut-down reeds. i am currently playing a morse geordie Tenor EC with custom-ordered TAM reeds, and it's wonderful but for one very distressing deficit, and that is that while the voice "personality" of the reeds is indeed bright and squawky, the overall lung capacity in terms of volume is no greater than that of a brass-reeded concertina.

 

i wonder if there is somethng about cutting accordion reeds down to make them sound "concertina-ish" that does that. i would rather have a pound or two more in weight and have a full-voiced instrument that sounded like a single-reeded accordion with concomitant lung power...like a castagnari lilly, say,....it seems that is what the dippers seem to have done with these franglos and this duet....if it weighed four pounds, that is still less than half the weight of a single-reeded CBA, which clocks in at around 9.5 pounds....

Edited September 20, 2013 by ceemonster

[felix castro]

I suppose that in a Franglo one can play very close, similar in style as in the diatonic accordion, only limited perhaps by the hand sujection, the hand in anglo concertina is tied directly to the palm rest when playing, and in the diatonic accordion it is more free, they are players (some italians mainly) that use also the thumb. I use mainly only three fingers whem playing.

I suppose that the different style of music has its influence in what kind of music is better or worse played.

I find, i. e. very difficult playing in the concertina the style of very quick arppegios.

I have adapted my style of playing the diatonic accordion to the maccann duet. I was tempted in putting in you tube some clips that I recorded almost one year ago, as there are many about EC and AC but not about duets playing close to the camera for looking at the fingers, showing my idea of playing but they have too many mistakes (I usually has much more mistakes when recording than when playing ;-( ) and I didn't put by now. I am playing the maccann with the sime style of fingering that in my diatonic accordion, thinking in the layout as a scale broken in two, I use the same fingering than when playing in a D/G accordion in E minor, using three fingerings, and it works well, I can play reasonabily quickly.

But it works i. e. in galician music, where traditional music hasn't more than a 8 notes extent. In C works greatly, with all the notes in its place, but other keys probably it works worse. In other styles of music surely it wouldn't fit very good.

Edited September 22, 2013 by felix castro

[felix castro]

Other thing, the idea of the Franglos, etc. is similar to the Bandonika with the Bandonion. I don't know if you know about the Bandonika or bandonica, is a bandoneon in shape and sound but it has usually two or three row in the right hand with the same fingering of a diatonic accordion (there are also many styles of layouts), and in the left hand chords and basses as the diatonic accordion.

http://squeezebox.wikia.com/wiki/Bandonika

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frFRUnGYPm4

As in the franglos, the sound of the instrument is the purpose, I think, and the layout (and style) for playing is different than the typical style of the bandoneon or the concertina.