Looking for "The Anglo Concertina Music of William Kimber"

[Leah Velleman]

This book seems to be missing in action — the online booksellers I know of all say it's unavailable and they can't say when it will be back. Has it gone out of print? Is there any chance some copies might remain somewhere? Does anyone have one they'd be willing to part with? 

[malcolm clapp]

Can't help with a  print version, but available here, downloadable as a .pdf

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160507183128/http://angloconcertina.org/files/Kimber_for_website.pdf

[Leah Velleman]

Good find!

Sadly, it looks like it only has two of the tune transcriptions, which are what I'm really in it for, but the rest of it looks like a nice read. 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Leah Velleman

[malcolm clapp]

Yes, I just noticed it was abridged and was about to delete/amend my post  🙂

The author, Dan Worrall, is a subscriber to this site, so it might be worth a pm.

Good luck.

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by malcolm clapp
sp

[gcoover]

What a nice coincidence! The good news is that I'm working right now with Dan Worrall on a completely revised version of the Kimber book since the previous one has been out of print for some time.

 

The new book will include additional historical information, more tunes, and updated single-staff notation in real pitch in the style of the 19th century tutors. It will show all notes played as well as having the same tablature as in all the other Rollston Press concertina books.

 

With luck the book will be out by the end of the year or early 2024, in paperback and probably also in Kindle.

 

Just yesterday we reached out to the EFDSS folks about a possible release party in London, perhaps with presentation, concert, and maybe even a workshop and some Morris dancers. It's all in the very preliminary initial planning stages, but could turn into a fairly big concertina event. Stay tuned...

 

Glad to see there is still interest in Kimber's unique playing style!

 

Gary

 

P.S. Attached is a sneak peek of what Bacca Pipes looks like.

 

Bacca-Pipes-C-KIMBER.pdf

Edited May 21, 2023 by gcoover

[Leah Velleman]

This looks fantastic! If you happen to need play-testers at some point, please allow me to volunteer 😁 (Seriously, though, it feels weird to be playing for morris without at least having a stab at Kimber's version of a song, and I'm very glad you two have taken the time to work all this out and share it.)

[David Barnert]

9 hours ago, Leah Velleman said:

Seriously, though, it feels weird to be playing for morris without at least having a stab at Kimber's version of a song

 

What team do you play for? I’m the musician for Pokingbrook Morris in Albany.

 

[Leah Velleman]

Well, maybe it's an exaggeration to say I play for anyone yet -- I dance with Marlboro, in western MA, and I'm juuuuuust starting to get to where I can keep up as a musician

[Little John]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:25 AM, malcolm clapp said:

Can't help with a  print version, but available here, downloadable as a .pdf

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160507183128/http://angloconcertina.org/files/Kimber_for_website.pdf

 

Thanks. I followed the link and read it with interest. I was struck by the discussion of Kimber's harmonic style and by the discussion around example 9. The author refers to Kimber's "surprising chord choices", and compares them to a typical "standard" chord structure (example taken from a New England contra dance chord book).

 

To me there is nothing surprising about Kimber's chord choices. At every point they are musical - chosen to include the notes in the melody and not to clash with them. That's very much what I do myself.

 

The "standard" chord progression, on the other hand, seems to ignore the melody altogether. At one point it gives a D7 chord (consisting of D, F#, A and C) to accompany three notes in the melody of B, G and E. It couldn't be worse!

 

The "standard" accompaniment doesn't even have the saving grace of being interesting in its own right. It consist of just three chords - G, C and D7. Kimber uses five chords G, C, D, Am and Em.

 

It seems unfair to characterise Kimber's harmonic choices as in some way rather odd when in fact he is simply being sympathetic to the melody and producing a musical arrangement. Isn't that what we should all aspire to?

 

Is it just me that disagrees with the author's assertion "Kimber’s chord selections are often quite surprising and unusual. His overall harmonic style is like nothing you would hear in a polished folk group, or even from most other accomplished Anglo players."?

 

LJ

[hjcjones]

The "three chord trick" is the most basic chord progression, and guitarists will be familiar with a number of more complex (and arguably more interesting) "standard" chord progressions. Progressions are used to add harmonic movement to a piece and do more than just sympathise with the melody notes - indeed at times they may clash with them, but that provides tension which should then be released by the next change of chord.

 

A "polished" folk group with some knowledge of music theory would probably look to these standard chord progressions when arranging a tune.  Even where players don't know music theory they have probably absorbed these progressions from listening to a wide range of music and will use them because that is how their sense of harmony has been formed.

 

Kimber probably had no knowledge of music theory, and when he was developing his playing he would have been far less exposed to music which might have allowed him to build up an understanding of it through osmosis.  Instead, his approach is a very natural and intuitive way to play the instrument, but whilst they are sympathetic to the melody his chords often don't provide harmonic movement, which an organised chord progression would.  It is not only the chords he uses, but when he uses them. They are of course musical in the sense that they accompany the melody very effectively, but his chord choices are possibly not ones which a trained musician would make - which is what makes his playing so refreshing. 

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, Little John said:

Is it just me that disagrees with the author's assertion "Kimber’s chord selections are often quite surprising and unusual. His overall harmonic style is like nothing you would hear in a polished folk group, or even from most other accomplished Anglo players."?

 

I don’t have the patience to work through the analysis and I’m not an anglo player (Hayden duet), but in choosing my chord progressions, I frequently opt for horizontal rather than vertical considerations, that is, placing more importance on the integrity of the progression over the duration of the phrase than on what notes are sounding simultaneously at any given instant. At first glance, it appears that Kimber had no clue how to think like this, but, as I say, I haven’t gotten beyond the first glance.

[Dan Worrall]

Interesting conversation, and timely because I am just now working on this revision project. There is a lot to add that I have learned in the past two decades since the first book came out!

 

Kimber had no formal music training, and hjcjones and David Barnert have hit the nail on the head. He did not go to music school, and thus no one had drilled into his head the classical usage of chord progressions and chord theory and the like. In fact, and in my observation for what it is worth, he really wasn't going for specific chords. The left hand served mainly to help the dancer mark time. Hence the staccato beats, often on the offbeat, which usually consisted of a lower octave note of the right hand melody note as well as a third above it (or sometimes he put in a 3rd and 5th pair instead of the octave note and third). These sound to us like partial chords, because that is what our more-or-less trained minds search for, but to him they were his drum section.

 

He may not have had music 'education', but he was a canny musician. Not having had such classical music training, he was free of the mental confines of the three chord trick and chord progressions, which typify the concertina playing of nearly everyone since his time. He wasn't playing to the concert-going and CD-listening crowd, but to dancers with bells on in the open air, with lots of associated crowd noise. He needed his notes and rhythm heard across the ground of the Quarry floor, plain and simple.

 

Another thing he did, in order to make his music heard, was to play as high in the treble range as he possibly could (Getting Upstairs is a good example, or his version of Princess Royal). He eschewed the ooms of oom-pahs, for example, and didn't do any bass note progressions to speak of. In some of his taped discussions, he noted that treble notes travelled well in the open air, and bass notes did not. Today, sides might have booming bass notes from accordions, which is unlike what was his situation. Playing solo outdoors, he was all about making sure his dancers heard his notes so that everyone kept time together.

 

With that in mind, it may be easier to understand the reasons of his method. He was an amazing and thoughtful musician.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Dan Worrall

[Little John]

Interesting discussion, indeed!

 

16 hours ago, Dan Worrall said:

Kimber had no formal music training, ...

 

as @hjcjones and @David Barnert also indicate. A lack of formal training doesn't mean Kimber didn't have innate musical sensitivity. The Beatles famously had no musical education, nor even the musical language to describe what they were playing, but look at what they achieved! And remember the academics of over a century ago marvelling that the untutored peasants from whom they were collecting folk songs could sing in modes that even their own scholars didn't understand.

 

To judge from the musical examples (nos. 9 and 10 in Dan's article) Kimber displayed an intuitive understanding of many styles and tricks for which he is not being given credit.

 

16 hours ago, Dan Worrall said:

These sound to us like partial chords, because that is what our more-or-less trained minds search for, but to him they were his drum section.

 

I agree they were his "drum section" in the sense that he was using his left hand to emphasise the rhythm and, probably, to mimic the double stopping of a fiddle or the tabor in the pipe and tabor combination. But if that was all what he was doing, he could done it much more simply; for example by keeping his left hand fingers on the same two or three buttons and providing either the tonic or the supertonic chord (according to press or draw); similar to what some melodeon players do vamping either the tonic or the dominant on the same two buttons. Fortunately Kimber was not in a position to be influenced by bad melodeon playing, nor by the tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh combination almost ubiquitous in 12-bar blues. In consequence he used all the chords available to him. And he used them thoughtfully.

 

The two examples given in the article show that Kimber employs a number of devices to make the accompaniment interesting and not merely functional. In example 9 (Haste to the Wedding) bar 3 beats 4 and 6 [3(4,6) for convenience] he could have played the same chord each time. He doesn't. He plays a root G triad followed by a single B note. Is he doing that because he knows instinctively that it leads nicely into the C on the next beat? Similarly at 4(4,6) he could have kept the same notes but doesn't. In consequence the lowest notes of A and C lead into the following D.

 

Vamping (oom-pah) on a melodeon consists of a bass note followed by higher notes from the chord of which that is the root. Without the restrictions imposed by the melodeon system, Kimber frequency employs vamping  - as long as we allow 'vamping' to refer more generally to a low note (not necessarily the root note) or notes followed by higher notes from the same chord. The first bar of example 9 contains two examples 1(1,3) and 1(4,6); also 5(1,3). The four bars of example 10 (Constant Billy) contain five examples: 1(1,3), 1(4,6), 2(1,3), 3(1,3) and 3(4,6).

 

There is also one example of parallel playing in example 9 bar 2.

 

In conclusion it seems to me that, although untutored in musical theory, Kimber had a good intuitive understanding of which tricks to employ to achieve a good effect. In fact I'd suggest his playing shows more imagination and variety than many modern players. I can only agree with Dan:

 

17 hours ago, Dan Worrall said:

He was an amazing and thoughtful musician.

 

LJ

[Leah Velleman]

> Today, sides might have booming bass notes from accordions, which is unlike what was his situation. Playing solo outdoors, he was all about making sure his dancers heard his notes so that everyone kept time together.

 

And don't accordions tend to have more reeds per note on the bass side than on the treble? I wonder if the sound-carrying equation just works out differently when you have a consistent one reed per note...

Edited May 24, 2023 by Leah Velleman

[Leah Velleman]

@Dan Worrall any updates on the new edition?

[gcoover]

I believe all the tunes are now completed, but I haven't seen them yet for a final proofreading. Dan is finishing up the historical portion, which will focus more on Kimber's early years and musical backgrounds. The current plan is to have an official launch sometime in September in Headington Quarry.

 

Of course, the Headington Quarry Morris will be there, and Andy Turner will be part of it since he is now the Headington Quarry Morris musician, and other players like John Kirkpatrick, John Watcham, and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne have also expressed interest in being part of the festivities, so it might end up being quite the event.

 

Gary

[Ken_Coles]

19 hours ago, gcoover said:

I believe all the tunes are now completed, but I haven't seen them yet for a final proofreading. Dan is finishing up the historical portion, which will focus more on Kimber's early years and musical backgrounds. The current plan is to have an official launch sometime in September in Headington Quarry.

 

Of course, the Headington Quarry Morris will be there, and Andy Turner will be part of it since he is now the Headington Quarry Morris musician, and other players like John Kirkpatrick, John Watcham, and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne have also expressed interest in being part of the festivities, so it might end up being quite the event.

 

Gary

 

Do keep us posted! It happens I will be in Europe in September and would gladly make a detour to be present at such an event.

 

Ken

[Dan Worrall]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the interest!

 

I'm trudging along....there is much that has to be done, and I'm working hard at being as thorough and accurate as I can be on the historical/biographical parts, as well as the tutorial with its discussion of style. Kimber deserves no less! I spent today working on tune sources. It goes on and on.

 

The basic transcriptions are all done in draft form, but there is a LOT of checking we must do on this before it goes out the door. My co-author Jarrett Branch has been busy taking the scribbled tunes and transcriptions and placing them in Finale software. We then compare the 'music audio' from the Finale notation and compare it with Kimber on slowed down recordings, and work to make corrections of the printed staves. It is difficult perhaps for anyone who hasn't done a lot of this - especially with music with heavy amounts of chordal accompaniment - to see why it takes so long, but it does! To make matters more complex, Jarrett and his wife have just had a first baby, and with that of course all schedules very naturally go out the window. We both hope to be done with the completed first draft in summer which would allow an autumn visit. Some English ale would be welcome!

 

Meanwhile, our earlier book on Chris Droney just had a very nice review by Jack Talty; look for it in coming days in the Reviews section at the Concertina Journal website, www.concertinajournal.org

 

All the best,

Dan