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Good beginner tunes to pair concertina and violin


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I've been learning concertina for about a year now and feel I would like to practice playing with others. I have a musician friend who plays violin, and we were talking about playing a set together. Does anyone have any tunes that may pair well with a violin and concertina? 

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Concertina and fiddle is a great combination. Any tune that you are comfortable playing should work well, particularly if one or both of you are adept at improvising harmony lines or drones, but even if you are both playing the melody. One of my favorite things to do with a concertina is find a fiddler to play tunes with.

 

It first occurred to me how nicely the two instruments complemented each other some 40+ years ago (just a few years before I started playing the concertina myself) listening to the first Swallowtail album, when they start playing “Bay of Fundy” at the end of the first medley with just the two instruments, Ron Grosslein on fiddle and George Marshall on English Concertina.

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Dear Victor F,

 

I agree with David and more. Fiddle and concertina make for a great pairing, regardless of the tune or genre.

 

As an Anglo player I have sought out and played with the best fiddle players I could find. I learned their tunes note for note, knee to knee, and tried to match my bellows to the fiddlers bow. Really, such fun. I highly recommend it. I've had four main fiddlers in my time, mostly in the contra dance and old time worlds.  Michael, Sam, Bill, Christian and I'm still on the lookout for another. 

 

Enjoy your concertina adventure.

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If you want to play in unison, any fiddle tune will work great. Waltzes are a good place to look for easier tunes, and The Waltz Book is full of really good ones. If you want to play harmony together, you could go looking for some violin duets - the concertina generally subs in for either of the parts just fine.

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6 hours ago, Steve Schulteis said:

If you want to play harmony together, you could go looking for some violin duets - the concertina generally subs in for either of the parts just fine.

 

Here’s a fun violin duet by Mozart. It’s called Der Spiegel (“The Mirror”). It’s meant to be played by two musicians looking at the same piece of paper lying flat on a table between them, so the first notes one person plays are the upside-down version of the last notes the other person plays, and vice-versa. Or you could just print two copies and have one person place it upside-down on their music stand.

 

table-duet-music.png

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I enjoy playing traditional hymns on my Anglo with other musicians when I have a chance. The closest I've come to playing with violinist was with a professional violist who had no trouble transposing to one of my two home keys while sight reading from the hymnal. 

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