Do you play other instruments?

[Greg Mirken]

I’m wondering what other instruments you fellow concertinists play. Watching the submissions for World Concertina Day video concert I noticed harps, bouzoukis, and more concertinas in the backgrounds. 

Personally, I played mandolin for a dozen years before I took up English concertina, and I’m sure that experience colors the way I think and arrange on concertina [Also I’m part of an ensemble so I have other instruments to fill out an arrangement]. Did you start with concertina, or did you come from some other musical experience?

Thanks for your input!

Greg Mirken

[pohaku]

My instruments include African drums, high-school clarinet, guitar, ukulele, clavichord, recorders, harps, and psalteries. I have always had a strong interest in Medieval and Renaissance music, and fairly recently that led me to harp-like instruments. Then, to balance all of the plucking, I wanted something with sustain, and less than a year ago, I realized that bellows instruments provide just that. A concertina (or accordion) is like a portative organ (think "portable"), which is a small organ played either solo or in a small ensemble, often used for early music. So I'm loving my concertina, a little organ which can play anything from Gregorian chant to jazz, Renaissance keyboard to folk. 

 

I will add a curiosity that might be of interest to bellows-and-reed afficionados: The regal, which is a small (think table-top) keyboard instrument which has two large bellows, lifted in turn either by an assistant to the player or by foot pedals operated by the player...and which uses reed pipes, like a concertina, rather than flue pipes (like a common organ). I've never heard regals mentioned by concertina or accordion players, but there might be some interest if more people knew about them. 

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I have had my current anglo concertina now for 25 years and before that a 20 key type, from 1988 to 1999.

Earlier in my life I fiddled around with a glokenspiel, and inherited my late father's accordion, then just last year started playing a Chalumeau.

Incidentally I have heard of the Regal instrument, but never played one. ( Which was mentioned in this topic thread).

[Dimble]

I've come from trumpet. First school band then jazz jam sessions. Also a smattering of guitar over the years. 

[Jillser Nic Amhlaoibh]

I started out playing guitar and drums in bands for years. Then I picked up the tenor banjo, mandolin and tenor guitar when I got into irish trad music, and then I succumbed to a long time fascination with the concertina and finally bought one. Still play all of the other instruments listed as well!

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

I can play the melodeon and that was my first instrument, honestly I don't really pick the melodeon up anymore I was not dedicated enough to maintain what I would call a competent standard on melodeon and concertina at the same time. I can play tunes on it though. 

 

If anyone was living in Hertfordshire in the noughties they may well have seen a teenager with red hair busking with a melodeon, that was me. @Geoffrey Crabb you might have seen me, one of my regular places to play was Bishops Stortford. For years I was at it. 

[David Barnert]

My first instrument was the cello, which I’m still actively playing. Then came the recorder and the guitar, still playing both.

 

Then I discovered traditional folk music (32-bar fiddle tunes) and learned as many instruments to play them on (except the fiddle) as I could: pennywhistle, 5-string banjo, hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, ocarina, probably some others that I’ve forgotten over the decades. The point is that all the instruments in this paragraph went on the back burner when, almost 40 years ago now, somebody put a concertina in my hands. That was clearly what I was looking for.

 

The one instrument that I haven’t mentioned from my early “folkie” days that I am still playing is the pipe and tabor.

 

BTW, although not yet well-represented in this thread, I have noticed over the years that a disproportionate number of concertina players also seem to play the cello. My guess is that (like me) they played the cello before playing the concertina.

[Bassconcertina.net]

I started learning drums when I was 4, I stopped playing drums nearly as often when I started piano accordion 1.5 years later, then over 9 years I picked up multiple instruments, such as the English concertina, Anglo concertina, Chemnitzer concertina, upright bass, organs of all shapes and sizes, bass guitar, autoharp, steel tongue drum and then probably some I'm forgetting, but now I have a collection of around 35 instruments. I am currently only 15 years old. One of my goals is to start the largest free reed museum in the world one day that is also a usable studio. 

 

 

[davidevr]

I started with the guitar many years ago, then I picked up the fiddle which is still my main instrument. I also dabble a bit with the mandolin and the tin whistle.

I got an anglo concertina last summer, and so fari am really loving it!

Edited February 7 by davidevr

[Ende]

Hi!

I had to learn the violin as a child and youth and stopped it with 19. As an adult, much later, I picked up a Russian garmoshka, for training my brain to two sides and accompanying, then soon switched over to Concertinas, mainly for you just can pick them up and play. And because they are small, cute, beautiful and technically made wonderful. In between, I sometimes take the violin again, wich has grown a fifth side.

[Michael Eskin]

B/C box, whistle, flute, Uilleann pipes.

[McCarthy]

Started with the trombone in school band and played it for close to 8 years. I could still play a Bb scale on it, that's about it. At some point in that time frame, I played guitar briefly and took lessons but I didn't really dedicate myself to it. All of that is lost somewhere in my subconscious.

 

Picked up the anglo concertina about a year ago and it's become a massive outlet for me. When I started playing the concertina it had been close to a decade since I last tried to play any musical instrument. I knew the music was there somewhere, just had to tap back into it. 

 

I'm so glad to share in this passion with the rest of you all.

[Squeezebox Of Delights]

I started on piano, and had lessons for a few years. Then I took violin lessons at school (aged 8 or 9), but I gave up pretty quickly because I really wasn't enjoying them. I got a toy piano accordion for my ninth birthday, and a proper one for finishing my SATs in year 6. I bought myself an old Hohner B/C melodeon when I was about 13, which I taught myself to play along the rows, English style. Since then I've required a pretty silly variety of instruments, most of which I can at least play a little bit, including a cheap mandolin, a mysterious old guitar, countless whistles and recorders, multitudes of toy pianos, a hammered dulcimer, a mid-century modern clavichord, so on and so forth. My most played instruments are the piano accordion, the melodeon (I sold my B/C and bought a G/C and a D/G last year), the autoharp and the portable harmonium. Interestingly I don't actually play concertina at the moment, as I sold my Wren last year and I am yet to get my Lachenal repaired. In time I would like to learn the English concertina, and I'm planning on taking a violin making course at a local college so I have actually recently picked up the violin after a decade or so of not playing it. So many instruments to learn, so little time to learn them!

[maccannic]

I find it hard to imagine anyone playing concertina for any length of time and reaching a reasonable standard without also playing, or having played, one or more other instruments.  But maybe that's because that's not the way I did it.

Born in 1948, piano lessons from about 1955.  First guitar in 1963 - I was going to be the next Beatles, but I soon changed to the next Bob Dylan.  1974 borrowed a piano accordion, inspired by the playing of Garth Hudson, and bought my own one in 1977 (I still play it). 

Never liked concertinas much, but then I didn't know about duets until I saw Tim Laycock in concert in mid-1990's.  Bought a 64-key Lachenal Maccann for Christmas 1997, replaced it with a 67-key Aeola in 2009 which is what I play now.

I no longer have a piano (except a little electric one), and arthritic fingers mean I no longer play guitar much.  But I still play accordion for song accompaniment (can't do barn dance gigs any more), and tune sessions on the concertina are what I like best.

[Doug Anderson]

I started singing on stage with my mother when I was five. I have continued singing in secular and church settings ever since. Seventy five years after my debut at a boy soprano I now sing in the bass section of a mixed professional and volunteer church choir. The bulk of our material is motets from the time of Palestrina and early English church music. 

 

In the early 60's I started playing rhythm guitar as well as singing with a folk group that performed in several Greenwich Village folk venues. Our lead singer was also an amazing 5-string banjo player who took our arrangements way beyond the three-chord trick. I continued with the guitar to accompany myself and other singers until arthritis and injuries limited my hand strength and dexterity and I switched to finger picking a ukulele. 

 

Over the years I also played around with combining melody, which I can sight read, with an improvised chordal accompaniment. I tried piano, finger picking guitar and even autoharp. Finally a friend suggested I try a melodeon. I bought a DG Hohner and within a week I was doing what I wanted, albeit in a very slow and sometimes discordant manner. I stuck with it now play a AD Hohner which is a better match with my vocal range, but I don't play it a lot anymore. 

 

Once I was in the squeezebox universe I also became aware of the different kinds of concertinas and thought an Anglo might be worth a try. I bought a 30-button CG Stagi and found that playing melody mostly with the right hand and finding accompanying lower notes with the left hand was a viable match with my particular strengths and weaknesses. My main instruments these days are a GD Morse and a 31 button GD Jeffries. 

[Roo boy]

Started out playing heavy metal guitar, then playing banjo for last 20 years. 

[frogspawn]

Besides Crane Duet (and briefly an Anglo), I play Irish Bouzouki, Guitar, Tenor Banjo (Irish tuning), Mandolin/Banjolin, Medieval Lute and sing Acapella. 

 

I also own and have dabbled with Appalachian Dulcimer, 5-String Banjo, Melodeon, Cigar Box Guitar, Tin Whistle (Low and High), Keyless Flute, Thee-Hole Pipe and Tabor, and Harmonica.

 

The instruments I use most are the Bouzouki and Crane for Trad Folk song accompaniment and the Guitar for Old Time song accompaniment. 

 

 

[David Colpitts]

As it seems many have, I started on harmonicas (only have about 20) and made the obvious move to melodeon and Anglo from there.  Hoped to learn to play self-accompanied folk singing stuff, but reallized that I had to inhale when I played the next higher note....Damn those harmonicas.....

Got hooked on GDAE strings, and have several ukes tuned like mandolins, my Dad's old tenor banjo, a tenor guitar and a fiddle.  Discovered Hayden duet and lucked into an old Bastari (from the first production run in the 80's) which is one of two 'tinas I play a lot.  While practicing silently on the iPad (Musix Pro....a wonderful app!) got bitten by the Janko keyboard bug, and have now converted 2 MIDI controllers and 3 melodicas to that isomorphism. I play them everyday, too.  Have a handful of whistles and slide whistles, but don't dare in public.....Same with tenor sax, two autoharps, and full-sized piano.  The list goes on.....Dabbler?  Collector? Hoarder?  Yikes!