Category: music

A Louder Recorder

I spent today at Bunkfest, playing recorder for Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers. I was (somewhat unexpectedly) the only musician, a position I’m going to find myself in more often next season. Originally I played tenor recorder, but quickly discovered it was just too low to be audible out of doors. I switched to descant, as you can see, but it’s still a challenge to be heard above half a dozen clog dancers, ambient noise from an audience and in this afternoon’s case, a Punch & Judy show and a helicopter!

After that particular performance a lady came over to me and asked whether I’d ever played a Renaissance-style recorder. I said I hadn’t, so she handed me one of these. I hadn’t been aware that Renaissance recorders have a much wider bore, which makes them much louder – and therefore ideal for playing out of doors. Perfect! I’d already been thinking about going to the Early Music Festival, but now I’m definitely going to go and try out some Renaissance recorders. So thank you very much to a lovely lady with a bag full of covetable recorders, for her extremely helpful advice.

As well as meeting some lovely people, we also saw some fabulous performances. The Outside Capering Crew had been recommended to us as a must-see, and we did manage to catch the tail end of one of their sets. The highlight of the day for us was watching their performance with Berkshire Bedlam, collectively known as The Big Caper. If you think you know what Morris Dancing looks like, go and see these dancers – they’ll blow you away. We also loved Wild Hunt – visually stunning with black tatters and masks, they also had no traditional musical accompaniment, only drums, which made them very dramatic to watch.

We had an absolutely brilliant day, and I’m now inspired to venture up into the loft and try to unearth some of my old recorder music. If I’m going to treat myself to a new recorder, I’m going to need plenty of music to play!

Falling in love with a concertina.

Wheatstone English Concertina

This is my lovely Wheatstone concertina. I bought it about a year ago, and have been playing it a little bit ever since. I don’t normally post about music very much, because this is supposed to be a sewing and knitting and generally crafty blog, but summer’s clog dancing season, so I might mention it from time to time.

Last week I went to a workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life, given by Karen Tweed, who’s an accordion player. I felt slightly awkward, being one of only three people to turn up with an instrument that wasn’t an accordion, but I had great fun. The workshop was slightly too difficult for my current level of skill but it pushed me to play more quickly than I’ve done before, and that’s definitely helped my practice since. After the workshop there was a concert by Hilary James and Simon Mayor, and then a wonderfully inspiring performance by Karen.

I came home absolutely smitten with the accordion, and the ability to carry practically an entire orchestra around with you in one handy box. I recently borrowed a tiny 12-bass accordion from a friend, although I haven’t yet managed to learn to play, well, anything. I can’t cope with trying to do so many things at the same time! Piano on one side, buttons on the other, notes and chords, bellows in the middle, plus reading the music… it all seems a bit much.

This weekend I went to Chippenham Folk Festival with Aldbrickham. I had a little look in the musical instrument tent, as you do, and accidentally fell in love with a new concertina, made by Marcus Music.

Marcus makes brand new hand crafted concertinas, and they’re absolutely beautiful. I’d previously been looking at antique ones because the general consensus seems to be that most modern concertinas are mass-produced and not very good, but these were hand-made and absolutely stunning. He makes a 37-button English concertina with wooden ends and seven-fold bellows. (Mine’s a four-fold.) I had a little play and it felt absolutely lovely. The buttons are slightly closer together than on my own instrument, which makes it a little bit easier on my small hands. The bellows are really smooth and free, and it makes a much louder sound than my Wheatstone without being at all honky or squeaky. My concertina’s a 48-key, so I’d have to be absolutely certain I wasn’t going to miss the extra notes, but I think if I’m still playing the concertina in a year’s time (which I plan to be!), I might have to invest in one of these.

This morning I did as much practice as my poor old thumbs could stand, and really enjoyed it. I’m still very much a beginner, so I’m at the stage where making any kind of progress at all is really satisfying. But even though I’m no virtuoso, there are some problems with my current concertina which are making a new one seem very tempting. It has a leak that needs repairing, and the bellows are very stiff, which is why it makes my thumbs hurt after a while.

I could send my current concertina off to Marcus and have the bellows repaired or replaced. He could proably also replace the missing leather from the finger plates. But with an antique instrument, I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to replace something as fundamental as the bellows. Does it become a different instrument then? Does it lose its value if the original bellows are missing? Or does that not matter, as long as it becomes playable again and I no longer need to sell it? I don’t know.

Either way, I can’t afford to buy a new concertina right now. So, I’ll keep learning to play the one I’ve got, and I’ll keep saving up for a better one, and I’ll see how things go.

Shaharazad

This is a little picture of “Shaharazad”, a mechanical organ owned by Boz Oram.

Today we went to Crofton Beam Engines with the Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers, to dance at their end of season gala. There were some vintage cars, a few different steam engines and this mechanical organ. (And the enormous beam engines, of course.)

It was very loud, but we stood and listened to it for ages, and I eventually plucked up the courage to be a little bit cheeky and ask Boz if I could have a look inside.

Oh my goodness, it was AWESOME.

Boz showed me all the cards of music, and how they fed through, and explained how he makes them (he makes them himself!) and I was gutted to have to run away after only a few minutes because it was time for me to play the recorder again.

It was absolutely mesmerising to watch the wheel turning and the holes in the cards slowly moving along – I was surprised how quickly I could read the holes, and understand what the music was going to do next.

When I run away and join the circus, I’m definitely going to have a mechanical organ. (And some earplugs. Very loud!)

I had an absolutely fabulous day. Apparently I’m even more of an Industrial Revolution nerd than I’d thought.

Common Concertina, Third Class.

Wheatstone English Concertina

Did I mention that I was buying an antique concertina on Ebay?

Well, I did, and I’ve been learning to play it for about three weeks.

It’s a Wheatstone 48-Key English System concertina with hexagonal wooden case. Its serial number is 18270. According to the Wheatstone ledgers the concertina was one of four sold to a person named Wilkie on the 31st of July 1867. It’s described as “Common (3rd) Class”.

It’s a tutor model, which is why the names of the notes are stamped into the ends of the keys. The black and white keys correspond to the piano (which I don’t play, so that’s no help!) and the red ones are all C. I’d guess that the fact that four identical tutor concertinas were sold together means that they were destined for a school.

It’s much less fancy than the one I’ve been borrowing, and has smaller bellows. This makes it much lighter to hold, which is great, but there’s less resistance from the bellows which makes it a bit harder to play. (You need to push harder to make a decent sound.) I think there’s also a small leak in the bellows, at the right hand end, which will need fixing eventually. But it’s more than playable for now, as long as I don’t push it too hard.

I was a bit worried when I opened the box, because it absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke. Lots of old concertinas were played in pubs, and the smoke gets into the bellows so it’s pretty much impossible to get rid of the horrible musty pub smell. Thankfully the smell was confined to the box and the bubble wrap, and the concertina just smells old. Which it should do, having been made in 1867!

The box is lined with purple velvet, and was tied with a brown ribbon. Inside, the concertina was wrapped in a silk scarf, so I could lift it out without pulling on the bellows. It’s a very snug fit, so I’ll probably buy a modern carrying case.

The steel reeds make a pleasant sound – not too loud and brassy – and I’m really enjoying learning to play on such a lovely instrument.

Gypsy Music

I was walking past a music shop on my way home from work today, so I popped in and asked whether they had any books that might help me with learning to play the concertina. They didn’t, but I spotted this tucked away amongst the violin music.

I promise I didn’t only buy it for the beautiful artwork on the cover. (Just mostly.) It’s by Rima Staines, whose blog I follow and whose artwork I adore.

To be honest, I think this book was a bit of a rash and ambitious purchase. I’ve only been learning the concertina for a week, and here I’m looking at pieces in 11/16, in very peculiar keys, and with notes that may not even exist on the concertina. Talk about throwing yourself in at the deep end.

The book also comes with a CD, which I am currently transferring to my iPod so that I can listen to the tunes on my bus ride to work. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak the music into my head, so that when it comes to getting it past my fingers and out through the concertina it’ll be a tiny bit easier than it looks on paper.

In and out and in and out and in and out and in…

accordion

This is a Wheatstone English Concertina. It belongs to my friend David, who has very kindly allowed me to borrow it. I’m not entirely certain, but I think it’s about a hundred and twenty years old. It makes a lovely sound, and I can’t wait to learn how to play it.

I’ve had a couple of hours’ practice so far – this started going more successfully when I stopped reading forums telling you how to play the concertina, and just started pressing the buttons. Funny, that.

I tried to start with scales, just going up and down the C major scale, to learn where all the buttons are. That very quickly gave me brainache, and isn’t often how you play an instrument in practical use, so I dug out the few pieces of clog music that we play in C (so as not to have to worry about accidentals) and got stuck in.

It’s hard work trying to look at the fingering chart and read the music and find the right buttons and squidge the bellows all at the same time, but I’m slowly getting it. Once your brain’s got the hang of the fact that the notes that sit on the stave are on the left hand and the notes that sit in the gaps are on the right, it becomes fairly intuitive to work out where the next interval should be. Kind of.

So, I can now play the notes for three tunes (Donkey Riding, Click Go the Shears and White Cockade), in the right order, but not at the right speed or in the right rhythm. And with a few extra wrong notes thrown in for good measure. This could take a while!

I had a particularly stressful day at work today, so when I got home I immediately grabbed the concertina and headed out to the Shed. I’m having to limit my practicing to an hour at a time, otherwise my thumbs and wrists start to get a bit painful, so I figure it’s better to build up gently. But today I’m better than I was yesterday, and tomorrow I hope I’ll be a little bit better again.

I can’t wait to be able to do justice to this beautiful little instrument.