NEW MACCANN PLAYER

[Martin Essery]

I am just starting out with my first McCann (by whatever spelling! 😄 ), and feel like I have just joined the smallest club in the world! I read somewhere that only around a thousand McCanns were made and many of those must have gone to concertina heaven by now. I counted through the ledgers, and it seems less than a hundred 81 button McCanns, such as mine, were made. I wanted the full range of notes and this is the only concertina that has that range.

 

Any advice from McCann players on how to proceed? Do the 4 fingers stay on the 4 rows? It seems, like the English, that, say, playing C then G, you would need to twist the hand round to avoid jumping the finger. Is that right? My little fingers do not seem to work well. Can it be played with just three fingers, or should I just exercise a lot to get the pinkies working better?

 

When I was looking at the pattern of notes visually, I saw, apart from a stray note or two, that there is an upper pattern and a lower pattern, with a cross over of patterns around the G. I thought that was going to be confusing, but now I have my fingers on the buttons, I see that, in the commonly played range, that change extends the 1324 pattern actually making it easier to play.

 

Is there a McCann group?

[maccannic]

No Maccann group that I know of - we plough a lonely furrow.  And please spell it Maccann, it makes searches more reliable.

The late David Cornell used to run a website for Maccann players, but I don't know if it's still going.

And I play with 4 fingers.  4 note chords sometimes.  Also, shocking habit, I tend to jump between two buttons in the same column, as quickly and smoothly as I can.

Good luck with it.  The world needs every Maccann player it can get.

Edited July 26, 2023 by maccannic

[David Barnert]

3 hours ago, maccannic said:

The late David Cornell used to run a website for Maccann players, but I don't know if it's still going.

 

There’s this on concertina.com.

[Martin Essery]

7 hours ago, maccannic said:

No Maccann group that I know of - we plough a lonely furrow.  And please spell it Maccann, it makes searches more reliable.

The late David Cornell used to run a website for Maccann players, but I don't know if it's still going.

And I play with 4 fingers.  4 note chords sometimes.  Also, shocking habit, I tend to jump between two buttons in the same column, as quickly and smoothly as I can.

Good luck with it.  The world needs every Maccann player it can get.

Thank you, I changed the spelling in the title 🙂 Secret finger jumper huh? 😄

[Martin Essery]

3 hours ago, David Barnert said:

 

There’s this on concertina.com.

Oh yes, I found that. What impressed me as a lifelong musician is that the tutorials are more like other instrument instructions, through music rather than secret finger codes 😄 It seems that with a little practice, a lot of piano and organ music can be played on a MacCann, probably more than on other types of concertinas.
 

Not sure if I explained that well. Most concertina books feel somehow alien to me, but I immediately felt at home with the MacCann books. I thought it was going to be crazy difficult to remember where all the notes are, but it is becoming more obvious each day.

[Little John]

On 7/25/2023 at 9:08 PM, Martin Essery said:

... feel like I have just joined the smallest club in the world!

 

Congratulations on taking up the duet, but the Maccann club is far from the smallest in the world. The Crane club (to which I belong) is smaller, and the Jeffries Duet club is much smaller still. But surely the accolade of smallest duet club must go to the Vienna duet (or C5) club. There's only one instrument known, so probably only one player. That said, Alex Holden is about to complete building a second one so the membership should double in size soon!

[Martin Essery]

I must admit to finding the scale of Eb a little crazy 😄

[wunks]

Wow!  looks like a DDR arcade machine.  Easier with 2 feet than 2,3 or even 4 fingers. 

[maccannic]

I must admit I tend to avoid the flat keys.  Prof. Maccann found sensible places for 11 of the 12 notes, but D#/Eb obviously was the sacrifice.