Newbie Stuff

[falcon's flight]

Hello al,

 

I'm a newbie here having just left 8 years of melodoen madness and am enjoying a surfeit of concertina joy so I thought I'd share my experience.

8 years ago and into my 50's I bought a melodeon as my one great regret in life was that I couldnt play a musical instrument. I'm not naturally musical and was I think pretty much tone deaf. Anyway I got on OK and after a couple of years had enough tunes to play in sessions, a source of great happiness. But I just never really got any further than bashing out simple tunes with a pretty basic (for basic read awful) bass accompaniment. And this was not through lack of practice, I drove my wife mad with it.

Problem was my right and left hands never really got divorced. I was OK playing a bass note which coincided with a melody note but if it was in between forget it.

During this time I also dabbled with CG Anglo but given that I was playing mostly in G it didnt work out at all. I am sure proper musicians can do this but I couldn't. Anyway recently on a whim I bought a secondhand Stagi DG Anglo, the logic being that I might be able to simply play a bit up and down the rows. Wow what a revelation! After 3 weeks I'm playing the most sensitive and to me beautiful music ever. OK only bits of a few tunes but the pace of improvement is amazing to me.

I'm a person who needs explnations and to rationlaise stuff, and in this case I reckon its down to being strongly left handed. My left hand feels like it just got out of prison. I started playing in octaves, which given that my hands and fingers want to work in unison anyway this came very naturally, then once the melody was going on both ends I could drop out on either end when the going got tough. That in itself produced very pleasant effects but then I found I my left hand taking the lead as it were and pressing extra harmonising buttons and I was flying, Then I bought the excellent tutor by Gary Cover mentioned here and started bunging in 3 finger chords at random where they linked with a particular right hand note. I am doing this with tunes I already know from the melodoen, just winging it and mixing it all up and to me the result is amazing, my left hand is running riot. The unexpected harmomies and other stuff, sometimes born out of mistakes, are amazing too. It will take me 10 years or more likely sometime never to get through the tutor but in the meantime my playing is becoming socially acceptable,

Funny thing is on the melodoen I only ever used 2 fingers on the left hand but I'm easily using all 4 on the concertina after 3 weeks.

I suppose you could apply all this reasoning to the melodoen but whereas the melodoen feels logical the concertina feels intuitive, well as far as any instrument can to a fairly non musical person anyway.

Its also good that I'm using a CG tutor for a DG concertina as its making me think about the notes and chords a lot more.

OK I've had false dawns before in my little musical oddysey but this is definitely not one. So now I shall be mainly listening at sessions for some while but I think its gonna come quite quickly.

The Stagi I bought is excellent but I struggled with the air button. The person I bought it from had made a modification and I have refined this, see pcture. I am sure this problem as been aired here before but anyway this is how I got round it, The plastic buttlon which contacts the original air button is a cap used to cover the ends of sharp exposed screws.

 

Happy days!

 

Cheers,

 

Paul

 

[Anglo-Irishman]

Hi, Paul,

 

Glad to hear that you've emerged from the dark side into the light of concertina day!

 

Also interesting that you're happy with your Stagi. They are much maligned here, but I've been playing one for over 15 years now, with only minor maintenance like replacing broken springs (for which I use the cut-offs from autoharp strings I've installed)

 

I did have a problem with the air-button of my C/G Stagi. It was in the right position, but too short. So (being an inveterate user of cut-offs and other junk) I took the surplus end of the linkage rods of a new wash-basin stopper (chrome-plated brass, 5 mm in diameter like the original buttons, and with a domed end), sawed it to the appropriate length, and used a file, a drill and a fretsaw to fashion the cut end as an imitation of a Stagi button. I was able to use the rubber grommet from the original button, and install it like the original.

 

BTW, when I finally obtained a traditional-reeded Lachenal, my bandmates said I should keep the Stagi for band work, because it blended better with the other instruments, especially the fiddle.

 

Have fun,

Cheers,

John

[TedK]

The advice I would give to anyone moving from the D/G melodeon to the G/D Anglo is to start playing melody lines across the rows as soon as possible.

 

On a D/G melodeon I think you can get away more with playing up and down the row, but on the Anglo you will severely limit yourself.

 

For example, when you play a tune in D, try to play the melody as much as possible on the RH. Use the first last button on the LH G row (or the 3rd row reversal) and the 2 buttons on the RH G row to play the lower notes in the D scale and then cross to the first button D row. (Finding a layout map will help if this is getting a bit confusing!)

 

This will allow you to play in D with much fuller accompaniments and is good practice in general to get your head around the whole instrument.

 

But maybe you're already doing this, in which case apologies!