Damien Connolly’s Irish Accordion Tutor is now available. I got a copy from him at East Durham last week, and it’s a fine piece of work.
It comprises a book and a DVD. The book includes quite a bit of introductory theory - including a discussion of Damien’s approach to fingering and moving around the fingerboard, and detailed explanations of the principal ornaments he uses - and a collection of 29 tunes (polkas, jigs and reels) rendered in both conventional notation and a tablature of Damien’s own devising. All the tunes are recorded on the accompanying DVD.
The book is spiral bound - opens flat or on a table or music stand - with a thick plastic protective cover. The tablature is a kind of souped-up variant of ABC that Damien calls “BoxTab”. In both systems coloured highlighting is used to indicate bellows direction and certain specific ornaments. In addition there are red symbols - an arrow to indicate a finger slide (a technique that Damien uses copiously and to great effect) and an X to signal an unexpected shift. Fingering is indicated for each note, including graces.
On the DVD,each of the 29 tunes in the book is demonstrated slowly (first and second parts separately) using the fingering indicated in the book. The camera angle is such that you can see exactly what he is doing. He also demonstrates all the ornaments he explains in the introductory part of the book. Basses for 6 tunes are demonstrated separately.
All in all a very well thought-out project, based on the teaching system Damien has been developing over the past few years. I’m not a B/C player but when I started C#/D I bought a few of the teaching aids for that system to get a few tips. I consider this new tutor by Damien Connolly to be far more thorough and useful than any I have seen so far. In a completely different league, in fact. Highly recommended.
For the moment, copies are available only from Damien personally. The simplest thing for anyone interested would be to contact him by email (at damienj NOSPACEHERE connolly ATSIGN hot NOSPACEHERE mail DOT com). The price for the book and DVD is US$45 and there may be an additional charge for postage. He is in Fairfield, Connecticut. You would need to send him a check in US$ drawn on a US bank or an international money order for the total.
PS In the end Damien realized he couldn’t deal with both B/C and C#/D in one book, and so he plans a second volume for C#/D players. I think it might be a while before he gets around to doing it though - he completed work on the tutor at about the same time that his wife Sally gave birth to their third child, a girl this time. Congratulations Damien and Sally!