Instruction Books for Concertina

[Roger Hare]

Duplicated post deleted. Sorry!!

Edited September 7, 2024 by Roger Hare

[gcoover]

Just now noticed these on Amazon - based on the text in the sample pages, I seriously suspect they might be AI-generated. Especially the one with the melodeon on the cover...

 

Gary

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, gcoover said:

Just now noticed these on Amazon - based on the text in the sample pages, I seriously suspect they might be AI-generated. Especially the one with the melodeon on the cover...

 

From the 2nd one:

 

Quote

Charles Wheatstone, a German instrument builder, created the concertina in the early nineteenth century. In 1829, he patented his device, which immediately gained popularity in the United Kingdom and Ireland, particularly among the working classes. Wheatstone's concertina, often known as the English concertina, was a hexagonal-shaped instrument with buttons on the right side.

 

Another German instrument builder, Sir Charles Jeffries, produced the Anglo-German concertina in 1844, which was comparable to Wheatstone's instrument but had a different button configuration. The Anglo-German concertina gained popularity in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where it was utilized to perform folk music, dancing music, and popular tunes.

 

The Duet concertina, which had a similar form to the Anglo-German concertina but had buttons on both ends of the instrument, was invented in the late nineteenth century. The Duet concertina gained popularity in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and other countries in Europe and North America.

 

Wow! Artificial something, but intelligence seems to have nothing to do with it.

[Tullochgorum]

I've just stumbled across a digitised copy of Richard Carlin's out-of-print tutor English Concertina which you can borrow from archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/englishconcertin0000carl/mode/2up

 

This is the book I learned from, and it's full of excellent tunes and interesting history.

 

But beware - for some reason he labels the thumb as the 1st finger, with the actual fingers labelled as 2nd, 3rd and 4th. This is very confusing for anyone familiar with string instruments, where these fingers are universally labelled as 1st, 2nd and 3rd. He also advises a rather eccentric way of positioning the instrument on your knee at a tilt towards your body.

 

His two old LPs are available on Spotify, where you can hear him play a number of the tunes in his book.

[Roger Hare]

32 minutes ago, Tullochgorum said:

...for some reason he labels the thumb as the 1st finger, with the actual fingers labelled as 2nd, 3rd and 4th...

Some introductory piano tutors/lessons number the thumbs and fingers in this way. Also, I think the medical profession numbers them this way. Maybe he was influenced by a pianner-playing doctor...

[Tullochgorum]

Pianists and accordian players number 1-5. But they use their thumbs so that makes sense. Like fiddlers, our thumbs are otherwise occupied...