bellows vs button

[jggunn]

Is it doctrinal for the English concertina to use buttons for successive notes on same line or is bellows movement acceptable? The latter often sounds better to me.

[Wolf Molkentin]

if it sounds better it is better - I‘m always advocating for meaningful direction changes...

 

however, would you care to provide some details?

 

best wishes - ?

[jggunn]

Hi, Wolf. An example is eighth note followed by quarter note followed by another eighth and quarter. I can play it either way, that is, with finger rolls or bellows changes but I cannot really here the difference although in some ways the bellows change seems smoother and more like a violin

[Wolf Molkentin]

I was just musing whether with "on same line" you might have been referring to a sameness of the note; as this seems to be the case, I can say that I widely prefer the "roll" technique as it produces a more accentuated sound ; but for a slower phrase I could well imagine to just reverse the bellows' direction for a smoother transition (any approach to make the EC sound more like a violin is legit IMO), as well as for including harmony notes in the "shake". It just depends...

[Jody Kruskal]

On every button box there are two ways to play a note. Button articulation and Bellows articulation.

 

With button articulation, you load the bellows with pressure, then strike the button.

With bellows articulation, you depress the button and then activate the bellows. 

 

These two ways sound subtly different. Getting control of articulation is one way to play musical phrases more musically.

I often tell my beginner students to play everything with button articulation and then after they have mastered that, to add bellows articulation in certain advantageous spots.