On-line Anglo lessons from John Kirkpatrick

[Clive Thorne]

Having signed up for an anglo tutorial weekend with John Kirkpatrick, which was then cancelled due to the dreaded 'Lurgy', I have found out that he has started to offer on-line lessons.

I am a bit sceptical about on-line lessons but, given that that is the only option currently, I have booked one for next Monday.

Obviously lots of people out there doing this now and probably all equally good. However my first exposure to concertina was his playing so to some extent, and to me, that's what an anglo concertina should sound like, hence my giving him a try.

I will let you know how it goes.

 

 

If anyone is interseted  the link to his page is  https://www.johnkirkpatrick.co.uk/lessons.asp .

 

[Clive Thorne]

So, time to give some feedback:

 

 

The first thing that became obvious is that I need a far better Webcam than my old (13 years?) 800 x 600, 5 frames/second (yes I know) Logitech. Even on my own screen my own image was very poor compared with the incoming one from him.

 

Secondly, don't fix your camera in place with Blue-Tac!  It tends to wander around!

 

One advantage of Zoom over face to face, that I hadn't thought of until half way through the lesson, was that you can record the session (with the hosts permission) to refer back to. I'll be doing this for the next one (John has no problem with this).

 

Apart from the technical aspects I was pleasantly suprised at how well it worked, having been a bit cynical before hand, but I have never had face to face lessons with anyone on a concertina (only ever on a trumpet), so nothing to compare it with.

 

After an initial chit chat, dicussing the differences in our concertina layouts etc. ( I had sent him a PDF of my key layout in advance, which I think proved useful), it was down to business, and he asked me to play something I was comfortable with, which I did (Horse's Brawl/Bransle in C). I must admit to being a bit nervous of playing in front of one of the masters, and whose job was to assess what I was doing, and my playing undoubedly suffered for that (any excuse), but without actually critising my playing (probably too polite) he did suggest a few things to try out. Worked though those a bit and then did the same for another tune (Michael Turner's Waltz in C), and again he suggested a few things to try.

 

This first session was 90 minutes, but they are normally 60 minutes. I must admit that by the end of the 90 minutes my head was ready for a rest. I had got to the point where I could understand what he was doing at the time, but an hour later I couldn't recall the detail, especially with some little bass runs he suggested. I will be recording the next session so I have something to refer back to, which should be a great help.

 

 

I can't compare his teaching with anyone elses, and wouldn't want to, but I can say that it worked for me and I have  booked a block of 6 lessons.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Clive Thorne