So What's The Jeffries Duet Like To Play

[Chris Timson]

Just eyeing up that nice Jeffries duet in C on eBay right now, and thinking about the one at Chippenham that I passed up and Peter bought. I've been looking at Nick Robertshaw's layout diagrams on my web site and trying to imagine how it would feel to play, without much success. It's the way the key of C sort of goes up the middle and then sort of along the bottom that gets me.

 

So since we have at least two regular players and one learner player on the forum I thought I'd ask: what's it like (nudge, nudge). What's easy on the system and what's hard. How is it for the anglo player, since ostensibly they are the target users for the system?

 

TIA

 

Chris

[PeterT]

Just eyeing up that nice Jeffries duet in C on eBay right now,

I see that Nick is bidding!

 

What's hard? The sheer weight of the instrument compared with anything else that I've played in recent years. I had an excellent Tenor/Treble about 15 years ago, but sold it due to weight problems. Even with wrist straps it hurt me. Early indications are that I will come to terms with the weight of the Jeffries Duet.

 

Regards,

Peter.

[Greg Jowaisas]

My experience in learning to play the Jeffries duet is that the chording is reminescent of the anglo (left hand)and the melody playing (right hand) is more like the english.

 

I seem to be "chord challenged" and have been limited so far to mostly adding some bass harmony notes to enhance the melody. When I have been able to work full chords in with the melody the effect can be glorious! (listen to Michael Hebbert's "Rampin' Cat" LP for inspiration and examples of ultimate potential!)

So you may want to have someone other than me, who is more facile with a true accompaniment on the Jeffries duet give their insights.

 

As far as the right hand I've found that three fingers with the pinkie in reserve works well. I think of working up and down the scale in triangles; the corners of the triangle intersect and depending on the note sequence different fingers lead.

 

It has taken me about six months (not the quickest learner here) to wrap my head around the right hand fingering, but it is now getting comfortable and makes sense to me.

 

I think the biggest hurdle in playing the Jeff duet, besides finding one. is acknowledging that it is a different fingering system and some of your learning will have to be from square one.

 

Have a go at it! The sound is unbeatable and the mental exercise will be good for you.

 

Greg

[PeterT]

How is it for the anglo player, since ostensibly they are the target users for the system?

Well Chris,

 

First comment is that I have no regrets after "buying" the concertina in early June. I actually only own the two ends at the moment, and, having sold a few items (got the famous quote "the cheque's in the post" yesterday), will be able to pay for the bellows at the end of this month!

 

So, what does it sound like, and how easy is it to play?

 

Firstly, I really like the "meaty" sound which you can get using the full chords. On Anglo, I often drop out the middle note of the chords, or sometimes play octaves for variety.

 

Because you don't need to worry unduly about the change to bellows direction, the melody can sound quite smooth, and like other duet systems. You could put in bellows reverses, to make it sound more like an Anglo, but I think that this would defeat the object of having a duet.

 

Since my last posting, I've been having a play around with the song melody "John Peel" - don't know why, it just came into my head. Well, apart from the fact that I was hitting a few "wrong" chords (will come right with practice), I managed to play it comfortably faster than would ever be needed for singing. Note; this was in the key of C, which is probably not the best singing key. However, this is practice, and is helping me to get to know the box.

 

So, overall impression: very favourable. I'm now finding that I can go back to the Anglo without thinking about it, and still play some complex (for me) tunes.

 

Regards,

Peter.

 

PS - Since we met at Chippenham, I've thought about the "Radstock Jig" (which I recall "remembering" in Robin Madge's house many years ago), and got this tune out of retirement. This is a bit of a "funny" tune since if I start playing it in C, other musicians seem to get lost very quickly. Don't know why.

[stuart estell]

I think the Jeffries system is great, but not without disadvantages.

 

The main one is that it can be pretty counter-intuitive, even with the benefit of coming to it from playing the anglo, which is what I did. I found the leap from getting simple tunes out of it in C - which is really straightforward coming from the anglo if you remember that you don't have to change bellows direction any more (something that caught me out from time to time to start with ) - to playing more elaborate arrangements on it quite hard work, and it can be very frustrating physically: if you stop concentrating your fingers can get themselves into terrible knots just finding the patterns to play a simple scale passage (e.g. a D major scale up the top right corner of the right hand keyboard is horrible). The result is that it's a very easy instrument to become lazy with - because of the relative safety of familiar patterns once you've learned them versus the horrors lurking in the uncharted waters of the things your fingers don't do very often.

 

There's less playing logic to the placement of accidentals etc outside of the "core" of the instrument than there is with the anglo. It took me a good while to be able to find some of the more eccentrically-placed notes reliably.

 

The other big disadvantage, compared with, say, my 67-key Maccann, is the lack of much overlap between the hands. My Jeffries is a 56 key and has an overlap of a 7th (middle C to the Bb above) which isn't really enough. I don't think they usually come much bigger than 56/57 key. This may or may not be an issue depending on what you want to do with it.

 

But, for my money, it makes up for the things it does really badly with the things it does really well: shouty octaves, playing in keys you perhaps wouldn't play on a C/G anglo being two of them. It plays in A and E really nicely, although too much of that will probably put you in A & E . I find it a good "rock & roll" concertina too - if I want to do repeated chugging riff-type patterns (e.g. The Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man") I play them on the Jeffries duet, as it seems to lend itself to that sort of thing.

 

Rereading what I've written, it sounds more negative than I'd like. To be fair, if I could only keep one of my duets, I'd keep the Maccann as it's far more musically flexible. But the Jeffries is great fun.

[Paul Woloschuk]

I can't really add any more to what has already been said Chris.

 

As I learned my Jeffries playing for morris, I have become (more) proficient at playing in G than in other keys.

Playing in any other key is a real challenge as the 'G' pattern is not replicated to those other keys - but I guess you were already aware of that.