Wonderful article by Rhomylly!

[moonsagotunes]

Nice job!

 

If there's another thread going about Rhomylly's article... sorry I didn't see it.

 

Not everyone clicks to the main page here at concertina.net, so they may have missed the mention under News & Updates (Nov. 8th). It's on the right side of the page.

[Rhomylly]

Aww, thank you!

 

It's geared toward people who know next to nothing about concertinas and quite a bit about pirate re-enactment, but I thought that even though it's a bit "elementary" for the CNet crowd, some of my fellow squeezers might get a kick out of it.

[m3838]

Aww, thank you!

 

It's geared toward people who know next to nothing about concertinas and quite a bit about pirate re-enactment, but I thought that even though it's a bit "elementary" for the CNet crowd, some of my fellow squeezers might get a kick out of it.

 

Proofreading!!! (or should I say "proofreeding"?)

There are some typos, I guess:

The

English is considered a “diatonic” instrument – and contains all the accidentals, or sharps and

flats, needed to play any key within the musical range of the instrument.

 

 

The Anglo-German is considered to be a “chromatic”

instrument, much like a harmonica, in that the two tones of any given buttons are a half-step apart, and depend upon air direction as to which is sounded.

 

Besides the obvious typo, the term "Diatonic" has nothing to do with air direction.

 

The rest of the article I enjoyed very much. One thing struck me:

XI. The musicians to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days and

Nights, none without special favour.

 

The Pirates observed Sabbath? How bizarre!

It reminds me an article about Ukrainian Cossacks, serving Russia against Poland during 16-17th centuries. Among many names of notoriously anti-semitic Cossacks (think Bogdan Khmelnitsky) of the time, there are many of jewish origin (Yakoob (from Jacob) and Nah-oomenkoh (from Nohum).

But that's outside of the forum's topic.

[buikligger]

Hi all,

 

I don't consider myself a musician, since I wasn't taught formally, I'm self-taught.

 

But: there seems to be a lot of confusion between the terms of 'chromatic', 'diatonic', mono tonal, bi tonal etc

 

dirk

[Marien]

Besides the obvious typo, the term "Diatonic" has nothing to do with air direction.

 

I agree that in music theory diatonic refers to full chromatic scales that are using all half notes (i.e. the white and the black keys of the piano) as opposed to (ancient "church organ") scales that use the white keys of the piano only.

Maybe that explains why the "typo" was made.

 

But is is also a very common to call a melodeon a diatonic box (or a german: diatonische Quetsche, or a french 'accordeon diatonique', or italian "fisarmonica diatonica"). These accordions do often not play all half notes. Here the word diatonic has everything to do with air direction and refers to the fact that two different notes are produced on push and pull.

 

Maybe pirates have yet another meaning for the word diatonic...

Edited November 14, 2008 by marien

[yankeeclipper]

Fun article, and thanks for pointing it out! Another minor correction, though:

 

So what sort of traditional Irish tunes would the musically talented pirate play for his

shipmates to while away the hours and maybe even dance to? How about tunes like:

 

Da Full Rigged Ship (jig)

The New Rigged Ship (jig)

 

If I'm not mistaken, both of those tunes are traditional Shetland, not Irish.

[Anglo-Irishman]

Besides the obvious typo, the term "Diatonic" has nothing to do with air direction.

 

Well, it does and it doesn't!

In general musical terms, "chromatic" means "pertaining to the 12-semitone scale"; "diatonic" means "partaining to the 7-step (doh, re, mi ...) scale".

Instruments are said to be chromatic when they have all the sharps and flats (e.g. piano), or diatonic, when they only have the 7 notes of the scale (e.g. harps without sharping levers).

 

In the narrower context of free-reed instruments, we have a class of instrument including the harmonica, melodeon and 20-b Anglo concertina, in which each row of buttons contains only the 7 notes of the diatonic scale. The second row does not contain the accidentals - just a diatonic scale in a different key that can be used to supplement the first row. So we term them (in most European countries) "diatonic" instruments.

And, de facto, these are all bisonoric, i.e. they give different notes for one button on the push and pull.

 

There are also chromatic free reeds: piano accordion, bayan, English concertina ... These have all the "black and white" notes, and de facto are all unisonoric, i.e. give one note per button on both push and pull.

 

So, when talking about accordions, we distinguish between "chromatic" ones and "diatonic" ones.

 

I would class the 30+-b Anglo-Chromatic as "diatonic", because, although it has had all the missing sharps and flats added, it is still based on the two diatonic rows, and is bisonoric (except for any drones). Similarly the Bandonoen.

 

I would stick my neck out and say that all bisonoric free-reeders are diatonic, and all unisonoric free-reeders are chromatic (with the possible exception of those sub-miniature English concertinas, which are little more than a gimmik, and perhaps the chromatic harmonica).

So in the context of bellows instruments in general, and concertinas in particular, "bisonoric/unisonoric" is the same distinction as "diatonic/chromatic".

In the article, they were interchanged, that's all.

 

The rest of the article I enjoyed very much. One thing struck me:

XI. The musicians to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days and

Nights, none without special favour.

 

The Pirates observed Sabbath? How bizarre!

 

Another semantical point: the word Sabbath was often used, and still is sometimes, to designate Sunday, the Christian day of rest. That the word is of Hebrew origin, and the Israelites held their rest day on Saturday, has to do with etymology. With the Jews, Saturday and day of rest were identical. As is usual with word borrowings, only one of the associations was carried over into the borrowing language - in this case, the "day of rest" meaning. Which for us is Sunday.

 

Semantics follow you around everywhere

 

Cheers,

John

[yankeeclipper]

Semantics follow you around everywhere

 

Cheers,

John

Indeed it does. But the noun semantics is generally considered to be singular, so "Semantics follows you around everywhere" might be more correct.

Edited November 15, 2008 by yankeeclipper

[Sailor]

I'm not shure about diatonic - I prefer gin tonic

 

But thanks for pointing out that article