Paolo Soprani On Ebay

[hibbs21]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Paolo-Soprani-B-C-Iris...1QQcmdZViewItem

[Stephen Chambers]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Paolo-Soprani-B-C-Iris...1QQcmdZViewItem

Nice box!

 

Wrong key for me...

[Dirge]

That's a funny looking concertina.

[Pete Dunk]

That's a funny looking concertina.

 

That's a mother of toilet seat, lob-sided, vertical anglo. Do you know nothing?

[Stephen Chambers]

That's a funny looking concertina.

That's a mother of toilet seat, lob-sided, vertical anglo. Do you know nothing?

Earwig-o again!

[Dieppe]

That's a funny looking concertina.

That's a mother of toilet seat, lob-sided, vertical anglo. Do you know nothing?

Earwig-o again!

 

For people who play Anglo, how is it playing a beastie like this? (In the appropriate key, of course.) Going from a Piano Accordion to diatonic button is a nightmare, I'm sure. But if you already have the bellows skills for it---is it just learning the fingering then?

[Pete Dunk]

For people who play Anglo, how is it playing a beastie like this? (In the appropriate key, of course.) Going from a Piano Accordion to diatonic button is a nightmare, I'm sure. But if you already have the bellows skills for it---is it just learning the fingering then?

I think that's pretty much the case from a note playing point of view but the complete physical difference must take a bit of getting used to. I mess about on keyboard now and again, well enough to bash out a few tunes, but I struggled mightily with a piano accordion because of the different orientation and smaller keyboard. It was like playing something familiar, but not, if you know what I mean.

 

I really fancy having a go at melodeon but I'm not sure that I could get to grips with the whole issue of different note push/pull; I've never managed to get my head around an anglo concertina but that might be the odd (to me) layout of the keyboard. B/C seems like a good choice of keys to me, offering a greater scope to play across the rows in other keys. One day I might come across an instrument at the right price and give it a go.

[Stephen Chambers]

For people who play Anglo, how is it playing a beastie like this? (In the appropriate key, of course.) Going from a Piano Accordion to diatonic button is a nightmare, I'm sure. But if you already have the bellows skills for it---is it just learning the fingering then?

It's not too bad if you're only playing on the straight row, though you've got to persuade your right hand to do what both your left and right hands normally do on the concertina, and years ago it was not uncommon for people in Ireland to switch between playing either the German concertina or melodeon interchangeably - whichever was available to them at the time.

 

However, playing in the right key is a hugely bigger issue, and (to keep it simple for a moment) even the two rows on a C/G anglo and a G/C melodeon are reversed (so that the same C is the low row on the Anglo, and the high one on the melodeon, their G's being an octave apart) making all "cross-row" fingerings different. The semitone-tuned button accordions in B/C, C#/D, etc. are different again and the B/C needs to be played "across-the-rows" all the time to play in the fiddle keys, whist the C#/D allows you to do so largely on the D row.