concertinas

Subject: RE: concertinas
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Apr 18 - 06:02 PM

The anglo, being a glorified mouth organ, is for a beginner much the easier to get to grips with and learn to play tunes quickly. However, as you have already found, in the mid term, once you have mastered the basics on an English the instrument is much more versatile and can be played in any key with similar principles to a piano keyboard. As an anglo player with a very advanced model I'm glad I started and continued with anglo. It really depends how far you want to take it and what sort of music you want to play. If you want to play advanced orchestra parts and complex chords you'd probably be better off going for one of the duet systems. You don't say if you have a 20 key or a 30 key. There are some very clever (mostly Irish) players who can play almost anything on a standard 30-key.

Subject: concertinas
From: Andy7
Date: 11 Apr 18 - 05:47 PM

I've always been fascinated by concertinas. And recently, on a whim, I bought myself (with a bit of cash that unexpectedly came my way) a fairly cheap, but reasonably well-constructed, concertina. It has a lovely tone, and it's not too hard to play simple tunes on, after a bit of practice, as long as those tunes are in the keys of C or G!

Mine is an 'Anglo', which I naively assumed meant 'English', but is apparently short for 'Anglo-German', as opposed to an 'English' concertina.

With mine, I have to use fingers 1-4 on each hand, as well as using the thumb of the right hand to get breath back into the instrument silently. And each button produces 2 different notes, depending on whether the instrument is pushed or pulled.

The 'English' concertina apparently has more buttons on each side, and uses only fingers 1-3 to play them, the thumbs and little fingers of each hand being used to support the instrument. But ... and this does seem quite a big plus, for a beginner ... each key plays the same note, whether pushed or pulled.

Have I got all of those details right? And did I make the right choice, as a beginner, opting for an 'Anglo'?