Improvising

[Kelteglow]

I have watched a lot of videos by Karen Ramirez on music Theory and practice She has taught me a lot .Applying Keyboard  to Concertina is challenging but I think her idea of practicing Arpeggios with grace notes works for me.Here is the series of Videos  

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmAA7-WeLiw ).Bob

Edited January 13, 2020 by Kelteglow

[Anglo-Irishman]

On 1/13/2020 at 4:03 PM, Kelteglow said:

Applying Keyboard  to Concertina is challenging

I improvise a lot - one has to when one is illiterate!?

When a piece has been improvised for a while, the improvisation sort of solidifies, and becomes an "arrangement!" And when I'm working up an arrangement to accompany a song, I very often think to myself, "What would Franz Schubert have done in this situation?" To my mind, Schubert was THE master at making the piano serve the voice in such a way that the piano received due recognition, too. He knew when to make an accompaniment lush, and when to make it sparse,; when to keep it simple, and when to show off; when to use chords, when arpeggios, and when harmonising melody lines; when to be rhythmic, and when flowing. Not everything, but a lot of his ideas can be transferred from the piano to other accompanying instruments.

I am at my most "Schubertesque" when accompanying songs on the finger-style 5-string banjo, because that's my most-used self-accompaniment instrument, but the idea works for the duet concertina, too. I find that the duet (a Crane, in my case) is more amenable to pianistic techniques than the Anglo, which has a character all its own when accompanying songs. I wouldn't know about the EC - a lot of people seem to play bare melodies on it, though there are exceptions, but it seems to me that it's less piano-like than the other concertinas.

 

Cheers

John