Concertina time (last one for now)

the English Concertina

Here's what's inside:


Here's a nice Irish jig on English concertina from clunktrip


And here's Guywolff playing the Rickett's Hornpipe...

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:

Concertina time

When I first made contact with the fellow who would start me on the road to learning the diatonic button accordion, it took a few minutes of conversation for us to understand one another. "I want to learn the diatonic button accordion". "You mean the concertina?" "The concertina? I thought concertinas were those little hexagonal instruments." "Well, they're not really concertinas. We just call them concertinas. Is yours in GCF?" Of course after that, he always called it a concertina. I called it a button box or a button accordion or a squeezebox. Are you confused yet?

Here's the thing. When a Portuguese player plays a corridinho or a vira on a triple row diatonic button accordion, it's a concertina. If a Tejano player uses the same instrument to play a polka or a huapango, that player is playing the accordeon norteno.

If a Basque player plays a diatonic button accordion (usually the Basque players use a double row box), it is a Trikitixa. If you aren't confused yet, let me add that the Basque players use a trikitixa to play music they call trikitixa.

If a player from Northern Italy or Austria or Slovenia plays a diatonic button accordion, it is called a button box or a hand harmonika or a Steyrische harmonika. These are also sometimes called polka boxes or helicon boxes. The latter name refers to the helicon tuba. These boxes have long bass reeds with a distinctive oompah sound.

So let's forget for a minute that Portuguese concertinas aren't really concertinas at all and listen to some traditional concertina music from Portugal.

I've posted this video before, but it deserves more play. The player's name is Francisco Fernandes and he does a great job on this tune. It kind of looks like it was recorded in a public washroom, doesn't it?



This is: ponese Do Minho Concertina Vira. The Minho is a region in Northern Portugal. The concertina - well we know it's a diatonic button accordion. And a vira is a Portuguese dance which is played in waltz time. It isn't a waltz exactly though, is it? The drums really emphasize the beat in a different way. It doesn't flow the same way a waltz does. It isn't quite like a jig either.

Here's another vira, this time without the percussion.


Now add dancers


We think of the fandango as a Spanish dance, but it is also one of the major folk dances of Portugal. Here is a fandango on the "concertina".
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Many Portuguese players have their instruments tuned in a way that is described as "wet" or "musette". This means that the two or three reeds that are played together as a note are tuned ever so slightly "off", creating a tremelo effect. Some players also mess with the arrangement of notes to make playing certain typical patterns easier. I think this is OK practice if you are going to stick to a certain regional style of music, but my diatonics are all tuned in the standard way.

Concertina time

I've been learning a little bit about concertinas lately. Many readers will associate the word with a small hexagonally shaped instrument. A smaller number will associate it with the larger boxy Chemnitzer or German concertinas, and Portuguese readers might associate it with the triple-row diatonic button accordion - all different instruments. This isn't the place to go into a great deal of detail about the differences and similarities in all these instruments, and in any case, I'm just a diatonic button accordion player and not an expert on the various concertinas.

I thought it might be fun to make some posts featuring the music of the various concertinas. I've made a a couple posts in recent months which refer to or feature the chemnitzer concertina, if you'd like to check them out.

Today, I'm going to post some videos featuring the Anglo Concertina. If I have it straight, the Anglo is like the Chemnitzer in that it is bisonoric (different note for each button on the pull and squeeze) and based on the diatonic scale in a couple keys (plus some helper notes).

Here's a fellow named Jeff Leff playing a cakewalk called Whistling Rufus.

Very nice indeed!

The right hand side of the Anglo looks is set up like this:


And here is the left side:


The last video is Mark Davies playing an English tune:


Here is A brief history of the Anglo concertina in the United States.