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Playing With Bellows Centered Over Knee...


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Greg, the thread drift police have caught us again...and none too soon :P .

 

One last parting bit o' business....1957, Lakeland, Florida: It's my Uncle Bill's brand new MG. You guessed it...British Racing Green and burgandy leather. God I was in heaven again (wish I still had those white Wayfairers and the car).

 

My work is done here! Hi-oh Silver! Away! (William Tell Overture comes up in the background)

Edited by Mark Evans
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Greg, the thread drift police have caught us again...and none too soon :P .

I ain't police. ... Mebbe a bounty hunter. :ph34r: :)

 

Fact is, all that talk about fine cars left me feeling a bit jealous. Speed is not my thing, but I used to imagine myself owning a Stutz Bearcat, in white. My parents generally had a low opinion of folks with fancy cars and their reasons for having them, though my dad owned more than than one old (definitely not "classic") Cadillac over the years. In fact, I'm told that as an infant I was driven around in a 16-year-old Cadillac limousine, and my mother kept the baby bottles in the "bar" behind the driver's seat. (Interesting, since the car was built during Prohibition.) But I don't remember it at all. :( And VW's became the family standard, once the parents discovered them. I do remember my mother saying she never forgave her dad for selling the Stanley Steamer. :(

 

But thread drift? ... It sure is! :D

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Bounty Hunter...Yes! You caught us fair an' square.

 

I think a Stuz Bearcat would be the perfect car for you except for the lack of storage space for all your beautiful instruments. I now have a mental picture of you with the duster, cap and goggles sporting two well chosen instrument strapped down within the spare tire on the way to a session :D .

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I think a Stuz Bearcat would be the perfect car for you except for the lack of storage space for all your beautiful instruments.

Did I forget to mention the rumble seat? :)

 

I now have a mental picture of you with the duster, cap and goggles [B)] sporting two well chosen instrument strapped down within the spare tire on the way to a session :D .

Spare tire's almost gone now. Feel's great! :D

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Spare tire's almost gone now.  Feel's great!

 

You're just silly! Mine is a Dunlap....'cause it done lapped over my belt already!

 

parrots are really smart critters

 

This one took me 3 times re-reading my own post to "get"....I must be low on coffe stil....

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want to continue drifting

 

I like drifting....smoking tires, burning rubber...it's more performance art than racing :ph34r: (smiley wearing Nomex helmet liner)

 

 

 

edited for lousy punctuation skills...

Edited by RELCOLLECT
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i've started playing with the bellows centered over my leg...

 

I would strongly suggest that you pick an end and a leg and stick to it.

I know of a number of anglo players that favour the left end/left leg in order to free their right (bowing) hand as some other posters have noted.

While you're at an early stage of playing the instrument try to develop good habits, they'll improve your playing, accelerate your learning and save repair costs (the dearest of which is waiting for your instrument to come home from the repairer!).

 

Good luck to you and congratulations on selecting a real instrument.

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Just out of curiousity, what doesn't pass as a real instrument?

 

I can look over and see my significant other's dusty electric bass and I'm tempted to say it isn't a real instrument, but that's mainly because the poor thing is so ignored.

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As the one who posted the first, and contraversial, reply to Neils I think I ought to own up to something:

 

As I said I normally play with the instrument in the air, even when sitting, but last night, as a response to this debate, I deliberatly made an effort to rest the instrument somewhere in the vicinity of my legs. What I found was that the right hand end ended up on my right knee!

 

I would still advocate the philosphy of 'play it how you want', but it would seem that my own tendenecy would be not to play it with the bellows over the knee!

 

Clive.

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I'm afraid I do play my (EC) box with the bellows centred on my knee, except that I rarely open the bellows at the base and then I tend to lift the box a fraction off my knee to reduce the drag. This was how I was taught initially by a really, really good player. His rationale is that compression of the bellows and button attack needs to be fully controllable and as even as it can be on both sides of the instrument. Nothing I've found has caused me to doubt this even though it may not be the received wisdom. Moreover, it helps me enormously with rapid bellow reversals when necessary and chord playing.

 

I take the point that needing to have the bellows replaced may be a long, difficult and expensive task. But, to my mind, it's part of playing this instrument and I accept that I will wear out my bellows faster than others who don't. If it came to a choice between treating my concertina in a way that I found difficult to play and just getting on with the pleasure of playing, for the sake of the bellows, I know what I'd choose. Just enjoy it and worry less. Despite the high cost of concertinas, it's still nothing to the investment you put in to playing it. I play to improve my musical understanding and to give pleasure to myself and others, not to be fretting about the investment return from my instrument at a later date. If I wanted to do that I could loan my concertina to a museum and go and look at it once a year. This isn't intended to be a judgment on anybody else; it's just how I feel ........

 

I'm going to stop now - I feel a rant coming on!

 

Jill

 

(Proud owner of one well-loved and played Edeophone; learning how to repair bellows slowly ....... and with real leather too!)

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Just out of curiousity, what doesn't pass as a real instrument?

 

 

A personal perversion I'm afraid.

Since I spend my working days behind a wall of synthesisers, samplers and computers I find sitting in the back yard after work playing concertina for an audience of birds and a very disinterested dog a more "real" musical experience. Playing old music on an old instrument both from my own part of the world is very centering for me and makes it possible to get back behind the electronic wall the next day.

That's all.

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Just to chime in with my $.02...

It's been so hot and sticky here- too hot for this early in the season, at least in the hills of my little village. But Monday evening I was dutifully practicing away for a little while, enjoying the ceiling fan effect (not to drift onto another thread...)

 

Finally it was time to put the instrument and me to bed. I noticed a strange bruise on my right thigh. Started to rub it, wondering where I'd gotten it. Lookng more closely, it had the definitive Jeffries scrollwork- it was so humid and I was so sweaty, i ended up with a temporary Jeffries tattoo!

 

I'm packing that silk scarf in the box (oops- drifting into another thread! :rolleyes: ) for the next H & H practice session!!

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Greg, the thread drift police have caught us again...and none too soon :P .

And VW's became the family standard, once the parents discovered them.

 

And what's wrong with that????????????

 

By the way, if anyone knows of a maker that can put together a 60 key extended bass english tenor with VW logo endplates I'll put the children on Ebay!

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