Left handed concertina?

[Martin Essery]

9 hours ago, Mikefule said:

 

Not for Anglo.

 

A standard Anglo played right handed:

LEFT Hand.  On the bass side, the lower pitched notes are at the bottom, next to your pinkie.

RIGHT hand.  On the treble side, the lower pitched notes are at the top, next to your index finger.

 

If you flip the instrument over, then

RIGHT hand is now the bass side, and the lower pitched notes are at the top, next to your index finger.

LEFT hand is now the treble side, and the lower pitched notes are next your pinkie.

 

So the technique for playing the instrument upside down would be fundamentally different.

 

When I play harmonic style Anglo on a 30B, my pinkie on my bass side (left) is the busiest finger of all, controlling the lowest 6 buttons.  If the box were to be inverted, my index finger would be doing that work.

 

 

 

Wouldn't the air button end up under the little finger too?

[Mikefule]

30 minutes ago, Martin Essery said:

Wouldn't the air button end up under the little finger too?

Yes, that too.  I was naughtily typing at my desk in a quiet moment at work and forgot that detail!

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I can't help but add another mischievous thought to this discussion (sorry!)...

But there are instances of one armed pianists ..playing with one hand only!

So what of one handed concertina players? With I expect.  Some special way of holding onto instrument!????

[Takayuki YAGI]

19 minutes ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:

I can't help but add another mischievous thought to this discussion (sorry!)...

But there are instances of one armed pianists ..playing with one hand only!

So what of one handed concertina players? With I expect.  Some special way of holding onto instrument!????

Andrew C. Norman once made one handed anglo (please see Special Orders section). http://www.acnorman.co.uk/

 

And I once saw the photos of one handed anglo by Lachenal if my memory serves.

[Takayuki YAGI]

3 minutes ago, Takayuki YAGI said:

And I once saw the photos of one handed anglo by Lachenal if my memory serves.

Found: https://web.archive.org/web/20130901093545/http://www.concertina.net/weird_lachenal.html

 

And there was a related thread:

 

[wunks]

I've just been contemplating such an instrument having recently acquired a beautiful silver(ish) tipped (both ends) rosewood (ebony?) whistle at a local shop.  Its appointed like a fife but the whistle mouthpiece twists for tuning.  Bb when reasonably snug.  Since I play mostly on the left hand, and I have 2 octaves in Bb, I wonder....🤔

[Richard Mellish]

9 hours ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:

I can't help but add another mischievous thought to this discussion (sorry!)...

But there are instances of one armed pianists ..playing with one hand only!

So what of one handed concertina players? With I expect.  Some special way of holding onto instrument!????

My friend Clive Woolf was an excellent guitarist until part of his brain got clobbered, leaving him hemiplegic, A benefit concert was organised, and from the proceeds he was given a Maccann concertina. He hooks his non-functional left hand into the strap and plays with his right hand. Some years ago we contemplated some sort of strap to go around his leg, to hold the left-hand end of the concertina more firmly, but he wasn't interested in trying that.

[hjcjones]

11 hours ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:

So what of one handed concertina players? With I expect.  Some special way of holding onto instrument!????

 

The late Dave Brady, who sang with Swan Arcade in the 1970s, had lost his left arm in a motorcycle accident. He played a duet concertina by holding down one end between his stump and his leg.

[Anglo-Irishman]

On 8/10/2022 at 12:18 PM, hjcjones said:

When I started to play guitar I wondered why the complicated fingering was left to the weaker and less co-ordinated left hand.  Later I understood that stringed instruments are built the way they are because the musicality comes from the right hand, which for most is the dominant hand.  Holding down the notes is the easy bit, musical expression comes far more from how the strings are plucked or bowed.  This is actually where most dexterity (quite literally) is needed.

This is a good step towards understanding the difference between, say, piano and guitar in terms of "handedness." It's not a matter of the strength or skill - it has to do with dominance and subservience.

There are many tools and weapons that are wielded in one hand: the pen, the sword, but also the hammer, the saw, the egg-beater, the paintbrush ... These are all implements with which we express ourselves, or assert our dominance over a workpiece or an opponent.

Then there are (sets of) tools and weapons that require two hands, e.g. the smith's hammer and tongs and the hunter's rifle. In both cases, you can immediately recognise the "handedness" of the wielder by the tasks he assigns to his hands. The right-handed smith wields the dominating hammer with his right, and holds the tongs, which assist by holding the workpiece for the hammer to hit it, with his left. The righty hunter merely steadies his rifle with his left, but determines the moment to fire the shot with his right. Note that, in both cases, good performance of the assisting left hand is essential to the success of the endeavour!

Then again, there are activities that require parity between the hands. The examples that spring to mind are sports: rowing a boat and lifting a barbel. A sculler's arms must be equally strong, otherwise the skiff would go round in circles; and the weight-lifter's arms (and legs) must be equally strong, otherwise he'd fall over sideways. Neither one of the sculls,, nor one of the ends of the barbell, has any more "glamour" or "prestige" or "functionality" attached to it than the other, so neither the "master" hand nor the "servant" hand consider it "above" or "below" them.

 

For me, the fretted stringed instruments fall into the category along with hammer and tongs, dustpan and brush, and shotgun: two hands with very different skills.

The keyboards I would see more in the same category as weightlifting and sculling. The fact that the standard keyboard (organ, piano, etc.) has the high notes to the right and the low notes to the left probably stems from the tendency in European music to have the "flashy," "glamorous," "expressive" melody line above the accompanying voices - so, as such, the piano is right-handed, but only slightly so, because the skills required of both hands are the same.

The English concertina is even less "handed" than the piano, because half of the high notes are played with the left hand. To me, the Anglo is piano-like, in that the left hand often has to act on its own, when the melody line drops below the right hand's range.

The Angloist's left hand is no subservient slave - it is a proud, self-expressing artiste!

Cheers,

John

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I have heard that opinion on the Anglo is piano like a few times, and it is an interesting unexpected idea for some people or the layman to consider (being a small instrument with apparently tiny stud buttons).. but when I play my own Anglo type I often feel I am in miniature using sort of keyboard (piano) style in use of left to right hand configuration.