Marcus Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Morning all - has anyone seen or tried this - http://www.irishtunebook.com/the-concertina-diaries.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kay Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Hello Marcus, Yes, I have seen and tried The Concertina Diaries: Discovering the language of the concertina in Irish music by Heather Greer. I responded to Heather's request (on concertina.net some time ago) to read over and try out chapters/tunes in her book as they evolved, and I can tell you that this book is a wonderful new tutor for beginners (and intermediates!) Heather's 'diary', written as she learned to play the anglo concertina, is thoughtful, well-written and leaves nothing to chance or the imagination, as some tutors do... and the 47 tunes included are well-chosen and sequential. I am self-taught as well, and surely wish I had had the benefit of this tutor back then! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Hi Marcus Heather Greer (author of "The Concertina Diaries" here. I thought I'd just post a response to say that I wrote this manual because, as a learner, I had found it so difficult to obtain a tutor which (a) was sufficiently comprehensive enough to show a beginner what buttons to use, where the notes actually are on different types of layout, and ( didn't follow some one line of thinking that says you MUST use a particular button for a particular note - or more usually that you must NOT use a given button (for example, for some reason many players, including good ones, just forbid the use of the D and the B buttons found on the LH inside row - a perspective that I find confusing: all of the buttons are potentially useful, and a learner needs to find the many different ways of playing a given sequence of notes. "The Concertina Diaries" grew out of my own lengthy learning process. I tried to make it the kind of manual that would have been useful to ME as I started to learn my way around the Anglo. I hope it may fill a gap for other beginners, or indeed people with some prior experience who want to explore the potential of the various layouts in greater depth. The approach is a bit like people learn a foreign language these days - NOT by learning lots of grammar (keys and scales) first, but by being guided into how to play a sequence of tunes easily and well, with essential stuff on scales and keys thrown in as the need arises. In reality, I find that "learning scales" is not a generally helpful thing to do with the Anglo, since that tends to confine the player to learning one position only for commonly used notes. I teach trad music, along with my partner (see DustyBanjos.com for more), and just last night a concertina learner who was experiencing difficulty in playing Tobin's (jig - an excellent tune for getting to grips with that pushed G on the LH outside row, if you're playing a Wheatstone type layout); she was accustomed to using the D on the LH middle row, and didn't even realise that even though she was using the 2nd button on the LH inside row for F#, she could obtain the D she needed just by pushing that same button! That's the fault of being taught by someone who insists on using or not using certain buttons to play a scale. If anyone would like to learn more about The Concerina Diaries, see IrishTunebook.com; and if you would like to ask anything about it, feel free to mail me at heather.cleggan@gmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 That smily in my post above was actually "(b)" when I wrote it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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