Concertina Philosophy...

[Jack Campin]

"Equitonic" doesn't mean that. Some African and south-east Asian cultures have musical genres where the scale has five or seven pitches with all adjacent intervals the same size. That means the only interval they have in common with Western music is the octave, and melodies have no tonal centre.

[David Barnert]

Anybody here tried playing a concertina tuned to an equitonic scale?

 

The Hayden duet concertina is arranged in whole tone rows.

 

"Equitonic" doesn't mean that.

To be honest, I have no idea what it means. I never saw the word until today. So I looked it up (googled it). Here's what I found:

 

http://thesciencedictionary.org/equitonic-scale/

 

What is EQUITONIC SCALE?

 

The musical scale in which the main notes progress by whole tones, as contrasted with the

Pythagorean diatonic, which uses both whole tones and half-tones.

 

Maybe not the most reliable source in the world, but at least they had heard of the word before. Hence, my statement about the Hayden. If you're telling me the internet isn't always right, then I guess we'll just have to go with that.

[Jack Campin]

The definition you quoted is right as far as it goes - the 6-note wholetone scale is equitonic. But it's only one among many.

 

Concertinas would be good instruments to use for experimenting with such scales, since they have very stable tuning.

[cboody]

To put what Jack said another way: "Equitonic" implies only that the interval between notes in a scale are all the same. So, if you happen to have an eight note equitonic scale each interval would be an eighth of an octave Etc. I hope this clarifies rather than confusing.

[David Barnert]

The definition you quoted is right as far as it goes - the 6-note wholetone scale is equitonic.

 

So when you said:

 

Anybody here tried playing a concertina tuned to an equitonic scale?

 

And I said:

 

The Hayden duet concertina is arranged in whole tone rows.

 

Why did you say:

 

"Equitonic" doesn't mean that.

 

as if I had said something incorrect?

[CZ in AZ]

So many reasons that we play the concertina (in addition to, or instead of).....

Its portable - but why do we like it portable? Because we are naturally obsessive people and want to surreptitious bring it on all family trips, in case there is just a "moment" to play. and/or because we are already lugging so much other crap, that out of necessity for our aching backs and full suitcases, we must think small.

It's tone - clean, bright, uncluttered, quick - it turns our heads in a session and makes us happy to hear it and/or because it cannot off pitch (only wrong noted) and we singers and fiddlers are tired of worrying about being on pitch all the time... sheesh!

Its is culturally connected- it has a history and role in history that we can explore and connect with (thank you Dan Worrell), an authentic sound to our ear, and/or it is respected in a session and you won't be expected to take turns for crying out loud (ie bodhran/guitar/zouk) and you generally won't get thrown out of an old time jam (especially if you start your own).

It is hard! - although you can get a nice tone early on in your playing (good early feedback loop), there no short circuit to play these well - lots of time, practice, lovely ups and downs, always more to learn (so fun) AND - its confusing to all those great musicians (fiddlers, etc) that you play with, who will pick it up and say- jeez how do you even do that? This prevents them from taking the instrument out of your hands, easily demonstrating that extremely challenging bit, thereby driving you to drink, which would, in turn, not improve your playing!

Edited June 9, 2016 by CZ in AZ

[Jody Kruskal]

CZ... I like your thinking.

[Randy Stein]

"By now I play almost anything on it ( tango, balkan, musette, classical, jazz, klezmer etc... ), but nothing feels or sounds quite right, simply because none of it was written for the concertina"

 

I began playing music at age 7 and the English concertina at 19. It was at that instance that I found my destiny as a musician. That very little is written is the very delight and challenge i love. Just to arrange and perform all styles and genres of music fulfills my artistic and musical needs.

 

Concertina Philosophy? Sometimes a bellow is just a bellow.

 

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Edited June 10, 2016 by Randy Stein