Monday, January 05, 2009

Concertina time (again)

The duet concertina was developed in response to the desire to simplify playing melody with accompaniment. The left hand has lower (bass) notes and the right hand has higher notes, with some overlap, and the instrument allows you to play melody or chords independently with each hand. Unlike Anglo concertinas, these are unisonoric instruments, meaning that when you depress a button, you get the same note on the squeeze and the pull. There are various systems, or ways of organizing the reeds. This includes a system developed in the 1960s, known as the Hayden system. Proponents of this arrangement of notes say it simplifies playing in a variety of different keys.

Here's Jeff Leff:
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If you'd like to hear more of Mr. Leff, here he is playing Baby Elephant Walk

And here's what is apparently a song from Turkey:

2 comments:

Candy Minx said...

Concertinas are cute.

mister anchovy said...

I think so too...and they put out a lot of sound too.