What if your tastes don't run to traditional genres of concertina music?

[pinnman]

As a former saxophonist  - I had to give up after throat surgery - I have a mass of jazz and show tunes that I used to play on tenor. OK, so they come out one tone below the ' correct' pitch for concertina, but that is fine at home. Great fun.

I also used to play from the Busker books: 101 tunes in concert pitch in each book; perfect for concertina.

For the classically minded, the violin syllabi for the music examination boards - all mirroring the range of a 30 button concertina, of course  - provide a graded course of study for the concertina player.

All comments relevant to EC, of course.

[Jesse Smith]

I play the D/G melodeon at a local old time jam. I treat it like an honorary fiddle and just play the melody line 95% of the time. The box is loud enough by itself without bringing in the left hand bass and chords oom-pah. I think concertina would work fine in the same way.

[Nicholas Rossler]

I'm of the mind that there are no "rules" when it comes to music. Especially with an instrument like concertina, which is played by a relatively small community, I think part of the beauty is our freedom to build new context for the instrument. While I deeply love a lot of the music that people traditionally associate with the concertina, that's certainly not all I play. I've arranged non-folk tunes such as Bjork's "Anchor Song" and "Cocoon" by The Decemberists. I've been invited to play hymns in a little country church alongside their pianist. I've performed a largely improvisational piece for concertina and live electronics. Some of these endeavors turned out better than others, but they've all been a blast! My situation differs slightly in that I play English and not Anglo, but I think the sentiment remains the same. I love that a previous comment mentioned Cormac Begley and Mohsen Amini, two very adventurous Anglo concertina players. If you want to cast a broader listening net that includes English players, check out Simon Thoumire. An absolute prodigy in the "traditional" sphere, but also someone who has written a lot of original music and veered into some pretty experimental territory at times. 

[Jim Besser]

 My situation differs slightly in that I play English and not Anglo, but I think the sentiment remains the same.

 

It does, and I agree there are no rules for what you can play.  Yesterday Randy Stein and I did a gig - English and Anglo concertinas. The setlist included an English hornpipe, a modern written waltz, a French mazurka, a Romanian klezmer tune, a tango and a tin pan alley tune. Oh, and 'All of Me," a jazz standard.

 

My primary interests are English ceilidh and Morris music, but I dabble in French and Scandi trad music, modern Euro acoustic stuff and who knows what else.  On a snowy winter's evening, there's nothing more fun than working out something like Under the Boardwalk on Anglo.  Play what you want  and what gives you pleasure.   Genre purists can be real pains in the you know what.

 

Responding to the original post, I also sometimes play oldtime, or at least the oldtime tunes likely to turn up in a contra dance setting.  I've been to oldtime jams with mixed results;  some have been welcoming, others less so.  Around here, some oldtime players won't even welcome a dobro in their midst - 'it's a bluegrass instrument, not oldtime.'   But if you want to play oldtime, there are plenty of places where you can play it without getting the stink eye

[hjcjones]

Of course this question begs another, what are the "traditional genres" of music for the concertina?  Wheatstone designed his instrument to have the range of the violin, and hoped it would be adopted by orchestras. I suspect he would have been horrified by the thought that it might be used for folk music.

 

Instruments were only affordable by the middle classes and would have been used to play light classics and popular drawing-room pieces.  Of course the introduction of cheap German concertinas made it available to everyone, and the invention of the duet opened it up for more sophisticted music. The Salvation Army adopted it for hymns, concertina bands adopted the brass band repertoire.

 

The instrument was taken around the world. If your tastes don't run to Irish or English folk, the Inuit, Bolivians and Braziilians among others had concertina traditions.  In South Africa you find both Beremusiek and squashbox. 

 

All this is just a long-winded way of saying the concertina is not limited to a few genres, it can (and has been) used for all and every type of music. Whatever you choose to play on it, someone somewhere has probably been there before you.

[Jane_in_UK]

This discussion has been eye-opening and thought-provoking for me. I've now given myself 'permission' to play the type of music I like listening to, even if it doesn't fit with anyone else's idea of 'concertina-suitable' material. I'm extremely shy and musically inept so I can't envisage ever trying to join a session or playing with other people. I'll purely be playing for my own pleasure (or at most playing alongside my husband's banjo at home), so I guess I can play what I want to! 

[Randy Stein]

 

[Roger Hare]

On 2/20/2026 at 9:27 PM, Jody Kruskal said:

...The Swimming Song - Kate & Anna McGarrigle

 

Another one from the McGarrigles...

 

 

Log Driver's Waltz - in D, I think, so that may put it outwith the OP's range...

Edited February 26 by Roger Hare

[David Barnert]

36 minutes ago, Roger Hare said:

 

Another one from the McGarrigles...

 

 

Log Driver's Waltz - in D, I think, so that may put it outwith the OP's range...

 

The McGarrigles recorded it (the recording’s in C), but Wade Hemsworth wrote it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Log_Driver's_Waltz

[Matt Heumann]

Here's the original National Film Board of Canada video of the Log Driver's Waltz, a favorite of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPep2lm__4&list=RDtMPep2lm__4&start_radio=1

 

[David Barnert]

18 minutes ago, Matt Heumann said:

Here's the original National Film Board of Canada video of the Log Driver's Waltz, a favorite of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPep2lm__4&list=RDtMPep2lm__4&start_radio=1

 

 

This one’s in D.

[Roger Hare]

9 hours ago, Matt Heumann said:

Here's the original National Film Board of Canada video of the Log Driver's Waltz, a favorite of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPep2lm__4&list=RDtMPep2lm__4&start_radio=1

Stunning isn't it? I look at that one every couple of months or so, just to cheer myself up a bit. 

 

Here's some ABC code - in G (slightly modified for my own purposes, but sources flagged in the comments):

Quote

X:12831
T:Log Driver's Waltz
%A lightly edited tune from Seymour Shlien's Ottawa Slow Jam page: https://ifdo.ca/~seymour/ottawaslowjam/
T:There is a wonderful National Film Board of Canada film clip featuring this tune: https://natunelist.net/noth-atlantic-tunes-blog/#canada
%video https://youtu.be/IyyL2Kg6RvY
C:Wade Hemsworth
M:3/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=125
K:Gmaj
D DD |: "G" D2 B2 G2 | D4 DD | "C" E2 c2 A2 | "Am" E4 E2 | "D" D2 F2 A2 | d2 d2 d2 |
e2 d2 ^c2 | "G" d2 z2 D2 | "G" D2 B2 G2 | D2 ^C2 D2 | "C" E2 c2 A2 | "Am" E4 EE |
"D" D2 d3 d | d2 c2 A2 | "G" B2 G2 G2 | "D" d2 e2 f2 || "G" g4 d2 | B4 d2 |
"C" c4 e2 | e2 c4 | "G" B2 d3 d | d2 c2 B2 | "D" A3 d d2 | d2 e2 f2 |
"G" g4 d2 | B4 d2 | "C" c4 e2 | e2 c3 c | "G" B2 d2 d2 | d2 c2 B2 |
|1 "D" A4 d2 | "G" B2 G4- | G2 z D DD :|2 "D" A6 | d6 | "G" B2 G4- | G4 z2 |]

 

 

[David Barnert]

10 hours ago, Roger Hare said:

Stunning isn't it? I look at that one every couple of months or so, just to cheer myself up a bit. 

 

I know we’re way off-topic, here, but here’s the one that does that for me:

 

https://youtu.be/NXtXZuNeZlI

[wunks]

Thanx for that David.  It brought a tear!  I've played that tune for dances for over 50 years and still can't remember the name of it!  

 

Well duh.  It's Macklemoyle. Soon as I picked up my 'tina I remembered!

Edited February 27 by wunks
more info

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, wunks said:

Thanx for that David.  It brought a tear!  I've played that tune for dances for over 50 years and still can't remember the name of it!  

 

Well duh.  It's Macklemoyle. Soon as I picked up my 'tina I remembered!

 

Actually, it has two names, depending on whether you’re a francophone, like the folks who made the film, or an anglophone. The French speakers call it La Galop de la Malbaie and play it as you hear it in the film, starting on the measure. The English speakers call it MacKilmoyle's Reel and play it with the first four notes as upbeat to the downbeat on the F#. There are, of course, other subtle differences between the two versions, but clearly they’re basically the same tune.

 

I first saw the film some 40+years ago projected on a rolled out screen in somebody’s basement. Years later (after the internet but before youtube) I acquired a DVD of it. I only recently found it on youtube.

 

And thank you, Michael Eskin for making it possible to provide the links, above, to notation and abc for the tunes.

[wunks]

Yah.  I learned it in the French style but not the French name.