Just curious if anyone has any experience with the MadForTrad CD-ROM based concertina course. I’ve been favorably impressed with the whistle and bouzouki courses.
Other than that one, any other recommendations for videos or instructional books?
Cheers and thanks,
Michael
I have Mick Bramich’s The Irish Concertina. I’ve learnt most of the tunes on the demonstration tape. He’s selected tunes which go well on Anglo and some of the tunes are a bit unusual; most aren’t. The explanation of technique leaves a lot to be desired but it contains a lot of basic information.
I also have John Williams video tutor which is useful but a bit basic for where I was at when I bought it. He has quite a bit of advice about posture and holding of the instrument a lot of which runs against what I was told when I was starting out. If you’ve never played before it might be a good place to start but since you play plenty of other instruments you won’t find anglo particularly difficult to get started on. I haven’t played any videos lately as my player has a problem and I haven’t got around to having it fixed so it’s a while since I reviewed the Williams video.
Thanks for the info on the tutorials.
I’m curious, I know many tunes from my experience with the other instruments I play, but are there any particular common jigs or reels that work particularly well on the concertina and would be a good set to start with?
Cheers and thanks for any suggestions,
Michael
I assume you have a three row C/G, otherwise you’ll have to find ways to avoid playing C# and some of teh tricks I’m about to mention won’t work so well.
Just a few well known tunes (mainly jigs and reels) from Bramich.
Out On the Ocean
The Morning Star
The Boys of Bluehill
The Rakes of Kildare
The Tenpenny bit
The Rights of Man
The Top of Maul
Drowsy Maggie
Bramich doesn’t notate his double stops but they aren’t hard to work out. I enjoy playing fiddle style double stops or regulator style double stops. Two tunes that work well played this way are Dan O’Keefe’s slide which I developed from fiddle settings and Sullivan O’Moore’s March which is in Bramich and just made of Anglo. If you muck around with tunes you play on other instruments you’ll find plenty that work really well on Anglo and you’ll often find something new in them.
Hi,
I had the Mad4Trad CD-ROM, and recommend it.
It has 32 tunes demonstrated in MPEG video and with GIF sheet music, along with close-up MPEGs of ornaments. The whole thing is on the CD-ROM as a collection of HTML pages, so there is no software to install—it should work on any computer with a web browser and a media player. Worked in BeOS just fine.
I liked it because you learn a lot about good concertina style from watching the videos. My concertina sounded a lot more like a concertina after I used the CD-ROM.
Caj
I’m not very good at learning from the CD rom programs. I do have a video clip that a friend let me make, it is my friend playing Kesh Jig on my concertina. It’s very useful for learning. Remind me in about 7 weeks and my computer will be reassembled and I will be able to get that clip to anyone who wants it - it’s currently on a portable external drive crammed into a backpack, where it will remain until about the 27th September.