How does the mind effect learning concertina?

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

 

I am always interested in how learning can adapt to new skills, particularly as regards previous honed abilities as a pathway into acquiring new skills or abilities.

For example, I know someone who once taught [ English and school subjects] , he also  played guitar and piano, and was always so interested, and intrigued by concertinas, [never got round to buying one] however very interested in learning about how they worked; it occurred to me then that often Guitarists are also attracted and adapt easily to concertinas, I am assuming maybe [ a guess on my part] the 'tablature' which is used, is maybe easier to understand, and of course dexterity of the fingers helps, as with most finer skills; those other existing skills must help in your newer interests?

Myself I always learn better [by my own ways] when I find the need to fill that hunger to know more about a  subject, and can find my own way in, but that is my own personal experience. How about those other skills, engineers must find it interesting in the mechanics of sound production, [as long as they don't take everything apart too often that is!].. All skills are useful and adaptable and can aid and enrich our experiences of the world and life; 'adult education' [my own preferred subject] is also often overlooked as an important subject to encourage. [ That is another matter for a later debate ].  But, interesting to understand how a mind can adapt previous knowledge to acquire newer skills, and so enhance, and gild lives experience.

 

[RAc]

1 hour ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:

it occurred to me then that often Guitarists are also attracted and adapt easily to concertinas, I am assuming maybe [ a guess on my part] the 'tablature' which is used, is maybe easier to understand, and of course dexterity of the fingers helps, as with most finer skills; those other existing skills must help in your newer interests?

I do not share the observation that there is an extraordinary affinity for concertinas within the guitar playing community. I myself do come from the guitar, but among the concertina players I know, of the ones who switched from other instruments or took up concertina as an additional instrument, there are all kinds of instruments represented - flutes, violins, pianos, pipes, cellos, you name it. One reason why one could think that the guitar accounts for a larger percentage of concertina players is very simply the fact that the guitar has been one of the most fashionable musical instruments for decades with many more to play the guitar to begin with, so naturally, many will come from the guitar in absolute numbers, but possibly not percentage wise.

 

"The" concertina (dangerous oversimplification to begin with) has a few similarities with the guitar (eg the presence of <sometimes moveable> chord shapes and the possibility to play either melody, harmony, or both at the same time), but there are also significant differences (eg the much more limited range on a concertina or the lack of sustain on the guitar).

 

I would expect that among those who rationally select an instrument to follow up a guitar history, those who end up with free reed instruments might lean more towards the piano accordeon (due to the compatible range). In my case the rationale for the concertina over the PA was partly pragmatic (weight and size). 

 

[jgarber760]

 I think I’m might rephrase the thread title or include this approach: How does learning concertina affect the mind?

 

All aspects of this are very interesting to me. I have been playing fiddle and mandolin for over fifty years and guitar forever longer, but just started on Anglo concertina 6 months ago at age 75 and it is really fun and keeps me going. Yes, part of it is like a puzzle or word game but the joy of making music drives me on.  More later in this subject.

[Johanna]

What follows is merely my own observations of my experience playing the English concertina.  It may or may not extend to other concertina systems, other people, or any general principles of any kind.

 

But to me, a major defining feature of the concertina is that it's impossible to look at both your hands simultaneously while you're playing, and it's extremely awkward to look at even one of them (and on the EC specifically, looking at only one hand is of limited use, because anything you want to play requires both hands).  So you need to find your way around the keyboard through touch and your "mind's eye" alone.  It would seem to me, then, that concertina-playing would draw heavily on the skill of "spatial awareness" - the ability to mentally visualize and manipulate complex structures.

 

My degrees are in math, chemistry, and physics, so I got a lot of practice in spatial-awareness activities.  My whole five years in grad school, basically, were one long exercise in mentally visualizing pairs of molecules and figuring out whether one could transform into the other (or whether they were mirror images of each other, for example, which don't readily interconvert).  The same sort of skill shows up a lot in classical physics - for example, imagining the 3D structures of electric and magnetic fields - so I guess that the illustrious Charles Wheatstone would have been similarly practiced in spatial awareness.

 

I never made that particular connection between concertina-playing and physics until now (so thanks for raising this topic for discussion!)  But I've often joked, when I try to explain the EC layout to people and they end up completely baffled, that this idea for an instrument could have emerged only from the mind of an English physicist.  Maybe there's something to that idea after all....

[jgarber760]

22 minutes ago, Johanna said:

But to me, a major defining feature of the concertina is that it's impossible to look at both your hands simultaneously while you're playing, and it's extremely awkward to look at even one of them (and on the EC specifically, looking at only one hand is of limited use, because anything you want to play requires both hands).  So you need to find your way around the keyboard through touch and your "mind's eye" alone.  It would seem to me, then, that concertina-playing would draw heavily on the skill of "spatial awareness" - the ability to mentally visualize and manipulate complex structures.

I agree and in my limit red experience it also applies to anglo and probably any other kind of concertina. I find myself staring off into space and not really looking at anything in particular, much more trying to concentrate on whether I am hitting the correct button, and, for the anglo, the correct bellows direction.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

Just a little extra thought here..

I wonder if Wheatstone could actually play his own invention or not? Or was the inventing enough in itself.?

 

[hjcjones]

I began by playing guitar, and that led me to folk music, and that led me to concertina, and then to melodeon and dulcimer. It was the music that was the connection, nothing to do with the instruments themselves.

 

However from my own experience of playing several instruments I do believe that having learned one instrument does make it easier to learn another. This is partly because you have already developed physical dexterity and an understanding of music, but also because you have learned how to learn, and what learning methods suit you best.

[rlgph]

The most surprising thing for me to discover is that with a mirrored duet, learning a tune on the right side transfers almost automatically to playing it on it the left side.  (Presumably it works the other way as well, though i haven't checked that.)  I did not expect my brain to operate that way.

[Caroline]

I am spatially challenged, especially where numbers are concerned.  I cannot add or subtract numbers larger than two digets in my head and I can't memorize phone numbers.  I have a hard time with right and left (but not north and south.)  I am an excellent typist (I can't type well when I'm actually looking at my fingers) and 20 odd years ago, I could do machine stenography up to 150 wpm.  I'm a lousy piano player, a mediocre folk guitarist, and a dabbler with whistles and the flute.  But, I'm about 4 years into playing the Anglo and I feel like i'm making great progress!  Although, I can read music and ABC notation, I find it much easier to learn and memorize tunes by ear alone.  I "see" my fingers on the buttons as I play much like I do when I type.  I don't think at all about the bellows' direction.  Not sure whether I would be able to play and English or Duet, but for some unknown reason, the Anglo works for me!

[Anglo-Irishman]

5 hours ago, hjcjones said:

I began by playing guitar, and that led me to folk music, and that led me to concertina, and then to melodeon and dulcimer. It was the music that was the connection

My history is a bit similar, except thast one thing didn't lead to another; the things just came along one after the other. When I was small, my father played a fiddle , a mandolin and a mouth organ, and my mother a piano and an Autoharp. So I learned mandolin and Autoharp and later, when I could be trusted with the valuable instrument, the fiddle. Then, when I was 10, my father just happened to be given a derelict 5-string banjo, which he renovated for me, so I started playing the banjo. We were now in the mid-1960s, and the guitar had appeared in Ireland, and was being used for folk music. So I borrowed a guitar from the singer of my little folk group, and followed a TV course on finger-picking. As part of the folk-group activity, by the way, I had taken up the tin whistle...

When I moved to Germany, and saw what I thought was a mandola in a junk shop, I bought it, intending to use my mandolin skills in the tonal mid-range. But it turned out that the instrument was in fact a Waldzither - so I learnt that as well. The concertina? That was no accident! As a small child, I was taken to the Salvation Army Citadel on Sunday mornings, and just loved the duet concertina that the Captain played. Later, not knowing that there are different concertina systems, I bought a cheap, GDR Anglo, and learnt that, too. (Wasn't hard, because I already played the mouth organ!) 

So now I'm a multi-instrumentalist! Well, actually, I'm a singer, and I have several accompaniment instruments. (So I don't have to be a virtuoso on any of them - though I have an instrumental solo repertoire for several of them.)

What made it easy to learn one instrument after the other was the music I wanted to play. I had the music in my head, in my blood, and the instruments all had the same theoretical basis of intervals, scales, chords, rhythm, etc. 

 

But, much as I love my family of instruments, they are, basically, just tools of my trade as a singer. And just as other tradesman have a variety of tools, like hammer, pliers, screwdriver, spanner, saw (wood or metal), chisel, sander, drill ... I have my concertina, banjo, Autoharp, mandolin, Waldzither, tin whistle, mouth organ, guitar (and guitar-lute). No one of these can be used for all the music I want to make. Some pieces can be rendered on several of these instruments, but depending on the situation, one instrument is often better than another. 

 

When I think about it, I've never decided I would like to play a particular instrument, and bought one and learnt the music for it, as some people tend to do. I just have my music, and when an new instrument comes along, I say, hey, I could use that sound, that style - I'll take it!

The one exception is, in fact, the concrtina. I didn't have one given to me, I didn't inherit one - I went out and bought one, just because I'd always loved the sound of it, not knowing whether I could even get a tune out of it. 

 

BTW, when I had become familiar with the Anglo, I learned that the Salvation Army concertina that I had so admired as a child was probably a Crane/Triumph Duet. So I bought one. Very different from the Anglo, but ... the right-hand work reminded me of the mandolin (along the row until you run out of fingers, then along the next row) and the left-hand work reminded me of the banjo (memorise chord shapes, and move them about the finger-board/keyboard.) 

 

A proverb comes to mind: "To him who possesses only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

 

Cheers,

John

[Ubizmo]

In my case, my mind was one of the obstacles to learning the Anglo concertina. The other was my elbow. But for some reason, my mind would not adapt to the disonoric way of doing things, and even eight months in, I was constantly making errors where I'd have the right button, wrong direction. Elbow pain forced me to stop, and once I'd stopped, I sold the Anglo, thinking I wasn't getting anywhere anyway.

Now, I have an English, and my elbow is fine. The English system is, in its way, just as counterintuitive as the Anglo system, but for some reason my brain doesn't object to it. I certainly am still a beginner, but I have the sense of making slow but steady progress and, what's more, I can make a good showing of playing by ear, which eluded me on the Anglo. I want to say that something in my way of thinking is more comfortable with the English than the Anglo, though both are far out of my woodwind comfort zone.

[Ryan Galamb]

I played ukulele fairly seriously for 10 years before picking up the concertina.

 

For me, portability is the main factor that determines how much I'll practice. If an instrument can sit comfortably on my desk, I'll practice at work. If it can fit in my carry-on, I'll practice on vacation.

But it also has to be too big to get forgotten in a drawer or a pocket. So whistles and harmonicas are right out. As soon as that sucker goes into a drawer, it's gone forever.

 

Concertina perfectly inhabits this sweet spot, giving it an effective monopoly on my practice time/attention.

My guitar, banjo, and piano accordion are neatly stowed in a closet, while my concertina stays in sight on couches/tables/desks, singing its siren song to me whenever I'm doing less interesting things. (I work from home, so my meetings-that-could-have-been-emails are valuable rehearsal time!)

 

The medical condition behind my affinity toward concertina/uke (and away from everything else) is often referred to as "ADHD."

[davidevr]

That "not-looking-at-your-finger" thing is actually common to a lot of instrument, probably most of them.
I play the fiddle, looking at your fingers has no use whatsoever, given the skewed perspective. Also, generally speaking, I think looking at the fingers is explicitly discouraged in classical teaching, where you are supposed to look at the score.   

Talking about concertina and the mind, I was talking to a psycologist a few weeks ago, and he was mentioning lateralization, that is, the way some tasks are split between the two brain hemispheres in non-symmetrical ways.
He talked about tasks that travel seamlessly from one side of your body to the other.
For example, to test for incomplete lateralization, they have kids draw a line that spans from one side of the paper to the other.
Well, concertina playing immediately came to mind, we use fingers on different hands and different, in separated spatial positions to play a linked melody. This must definitely do a number to our brains 🙂

Edited March 17 by davidevr

[jgarber760]

On this subject, I highly recommend Molly Gebrian’s book and videos on the subject of the brain and learning music: https://www.mollygebrian.com/music-and-the-brain

Edited March 17 by jgarber760