Where do all the 20s go?

[david_boveri]

well, i would say that a lot of these concertinas probably go to people who want to start off but don't know what to get, and know that chinese boxes are not high quality. i have known several people who shop ebay this way.

 

can i make multiple submissions? cuz i can play something in G without using the extra rows... or i could play fair, and take a D tune down into the key of C.

 

Hey, please record that clip! I never had the chance to hear you beside our experiments a few months ago :-) A jig or a reel please ;-)

 

all right. i'm currently planning on doing the following things: concertina reel in C; winster gallop in C and G; a polka from sligo. i'm trying to think of a good jig or two to do: maybe an seanduine or kitty lie over? depending on my mood i might even do the sailor's hornpipe. the real question is: natural acoustics or echoey room, .

 

oo... maybe biddy from sligo? i'm not sure if i can pull it off...

[Azalin]

oo... maybe biddy from sligo? i'm not sure if i can pull it off...

 

Hey, something simple if possible, don't you go crazy on the keyboard

[david_boveri]

oo... maybe biddy from sligo? i'm not sure if i can pull it off...

 

Hey, something simple if possible, don't you go crazy on the keyboard

 

it IS a simple tune... that's why i'm not sure i can do it!

[Azalin]

it IS a simple tune... that's why i'm not sure i can do it!

 

Haha, yes, I know what you mean :-)

[Bill N]

 

 

Hi Tom,

 

Well I won't qualify for the prize over here on this side of the pond, but I think it's a moot point in any case. This sound clip is provided more for curiosity's sake than as a musical offering.

 

"Constant Billy" played on the C row of my Great-Great-Grandfather's c.1875 Henry Harley square concertina with broad steel reeds (my avatar picture). Very sophisticated recording set-up: placed my little Sony IC digital recorder on a sofa cushion, and recorded through the built-in mike.

 

It's a bit wheezy and slightly out of tune, but I do like the sound of the low reeds.

 

Cheers

Bill

[TomB-R]

Good man Bill, first entry!

Cheers

Tom

[paddy123]

Hi I purchased a 20 button wheatstone Linota off David Levine last year and it is a fine instrument ,in my opinion!

Here is the link for Mark Davies playing this concertina before I purchased it .

 

.

 

Glenn

[Bob Lusk]

I have a 20 button mahogany ended Lachnel look alike that sounds and plays better than my 30 button Wheatstone or Jones. I use it to accompany myself on Sea Chanteys. When I think of thinning down the herd, this is one that doesn't wind up on the list. It's a keeper.

 

Bob Lusk

[TomB-R]

What was that? Did something fall over?

 

But while I'm here, just a reminder that the 20 button competition (above) ends on 30 Sept so this must be the last weekend for making and posting recordings.

One entry so far.....

 

(Perhaps this will be like Ebay with all the action in the last 30 seconds.......)

 

Tom

[david_boveri]

What was that? Did something fall over?

 

But while I'm here, just a reminder that the 20 button competition (above) ends on 30 Sept so this must be the last weekend for making and posting recordings.

One entry so far.....

 

(Perhaps this will be like Ebay with all the action in the last 30 seconds.......)

 

Tom

 

i've been practicing, making arrangements, and trying out different tunes. you'll get one from me, at least!

[david_boveri]

here is my submission. i decided not to fully adhere to the time limit... i'm sorry if that disqualifies me! i really don't have any more time to do any re-recording, or arranging to make every submission fit under 40 seconds.

 

[edit: i apologize in advance if the of the post is a little self-deprecating. i was hoping to have it all sound better!]

 

i was very sick when i recorded these these saturday afternoon... i felt like i had a part of my brain missing, and it just so happened to include the part of my brain that enjoys playing music. so... i felt really dead when playing the music, and it shows up in the recordings too (especially everything irish besides the polka). i am very busy this week, so rather than hope i can redo all of these so that they sound how i would have liked, i'm just posting them now.

 

also, please note that some of the songs randomly end in the middle of them, as if to adhere to the rules of the competition. as you can tell, also in some tunes i didn't care when i was recording and just kept going.

 

for some reason my cuts and slides and ornamentations sound really choppy. i'm not sure why... it might be that the microphone is so close to the concertina, or it could be that i was really tired and wasn't stabilizing my bellows enough.

 

finally, as i did not do any sound checks ahead of time the microphone seemed to have distorted the concertina in the low end. obviously, the concertina sounds much better than these recordings show.

 

submissions

all submissions were made only using the twenty buttons.

 

winster gallop in C

 

i learned this tune from brian peters. the basic arrangement is his, but i have taken my own liberties with it over the years.

winster gallop in C

 

to me this tune is the epitome of concertina music--this is how the anglo was designed to be played!

 

i had to rearrange this tune to get it into twenty buttons.

 

 

winster gallop in G

 

this is the same tune as above, except taken up a fifth. i am still learning it in G, so there are some mistakes that would have been there no matter what.

winster gallop in G

 

it can be a little mousy in this key, but its still a lot of fun. i included it to show some of the diversity of the anglo concertina in twenty buttons. as the tune progresses, a lot of interesting variations in the chording come up, which i didn't really notice when i was playing it. as a whole, i think i like the piece in C better, but this one gives some food for thought.

 

 

sligo polka

 

i learned this tune from noel hill. it is a polka in G from sligo, as far as i recall.

 

sligo polka

 

i included this to show a tune that i play in G, which can be done on twenty buttons. i did not rearrange this tune to fit, as this is how i normally play it. again... i was very sick and out of it when i recorded, so some things are a bit off, especially the chording in the first part.

 

 

Concertina reel in C

the arrangement here is not as good as i planned. i probably should have stopped it after one time through, as the second time through i just seemed to have forgotten to develop the tune and build up on what i had done before, and instead just dropped the chords and double octaves.

 

concertina reel in c

 

i chose this piece because this is how the concertina was traditionally played in ireland. too bad i did such a shoddy job of it.

 

 

kitty lie over

 

this is off of the album of the same name, with caoimhin o raghallaigh and mick o'brien.

 

kitty lie over

 

this is just godawful... i could not feel the tune at all. for some reason i just had no sense of lift, and a shaky sense of rhythm. i'm including it just because i had intended to include it to show that you can play in the key of D on a 20 button concertina. i didn't really rearrange it, except that i did not use C# to slide into D or to make cuts on D. again... the ornamentation in this is pretty choppy, which makes the phrasing and deadness that much worse.

 

silver spear

 

this version is based on the version of brian rooney, who is a fiddle player from london

 

silver spear

 

if i hate the jig then i loathe the recording of this reel. it feels like it fell flat on its face, and the chording is kind of awkward and sporadic. i included it to show how you could rearrange a tune in D to drop the C#'s with nobody being the wiser.

Edited September 27, 2009 by david_boveri

[TomB-R]

Good man David, very well played. (I think you're being far more critical of your playing and recordings than anyone else would be!)

 

Is it Winster Gallop that Brian Peters give the the name of an Australian version of the tune "The black cat piddled in the white cat's eye" !

[gavdav]

I have a 20 key rosewood jeffries in Bb/F that I play most days - I got it for accompanying singing and I've found that having less buttons has mad me work harder when playing it - it certainly improved my playing when I went back to the 30 key boxes. I have toyed with the idea of putting an extra button or two on to give it a bit more key flexibility. The fretwork pattern would easily accommodate this and there is, as one would imagine, plenty of space inside.

[Daniel Hersh]

Here are a couple of submissions from me, both played on a 20-button mahogany-ended G/D Lachenal with 5-fold bellows:

 

Round the Horn (tune by Jay Ungar)

 

Amelia's Waltz (tune by Bob McQuillen)

 

Apologies for the recording quality, especially on the waltz -- I don't have an MP3 or WAV recorder and had to do two conversions on each file to get them into MP3 format.

[Graham Collicutt]

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8847 Rakes of Marlow

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8846 Parson's Farewell

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8845 Foxhunters

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8844 Musical Priest

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8843 John Locke's

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8841 Carolan's Welcome

 

http://www.onmvoice.com/play.php?a=8842 Flatbush this one breaks the rules, but would be interested if anyone has found some similar arrangements.

 

All played on a 30 button mahogany ended Lachenal on the 2 rows, some retakes necessary when 2nd finger strayed onto alternate G/A. Recorded direct to mp3 to individual tracks with no edits using an Olympus LS-10 which is supplied with a handy remote control.

 

Graham

[Lawrence Reeves]

Dr. O'Neill's on the C row. Pints consumed and not very good really.

[Lawrence Reeves]

Musical Priest on the C row. Again, not a "for sale recording".

[Daniel Hersh]

And here's one more from me. Same concertina, same recording equipment (Sony ICD-SX25 Digital Voice Recorder, which makes very good recordings if they're left in its own idiosyncratic compression format):

 

Dargai

 

Here are a couple of submissions from me, both played on a 20-button mahogany-ended G/D Lachenal with 5-fold bellows:

 

Round the Horn (tune by Jay Ungar)

 

Amelia's Waltz (tune by Bob McQuillen)

 

Apologies for the recording quality, especially on the waltz -- I don't have an MP3 or WAV recorder and had to do two conversions on each file to get them into MP3 format.