Geez Claudine…these guys do want us to start squeezing boxes! 
People often seem to say this, the implication usually being that if slides and polkas are not your main interest, then you need a B/C. Mostly it comes from B/C players who appear to want to pigeonhole the C#/D and, presumably, reassert their system’s greater suitability for the rest of Irish music.
Of course this may not be what you mean rh, but I’d point out that quite a few prominent C#/D exponents - come to think of it, most of them - don’t particularly favour Sliabh Luachra music.
Don’t want to start the whole debate over the merits of the two systems again, though, we’ve done that!
Steve
Oh no, not what i meant at all… my favorite box player is Conor Keane, a Clareman. But Claudine mentioned Jackie Daly, who is from Sliabh Luachra; and some people who like Jackie really like them some slides and polkas – Jackie of course plays everything well, but his early work was more Kerry-centric. And a lot of Kerry polkas lie quite nicely under the fingers on a C#/D keyboard.
Certainly there are B/C players who play some great Kerry music as well – look at Donal Murphy’s playing with Sliabh Notes.
As is usually the case when someone asks the “B/C vs. C#/D” (or pick whatever keys you desire), one of the better answers is “Which is the one that is either played most in your area OR the one you are most likely to take lessons or get pointers on?”
I never gave any thought to my box key (C#/D) because my starter box a was a loaner from the local accordion pusher who plays C#/D and collects boxes and has one or two that he’ll loan out to those thinking that they might want to play but don’t want to shell out good money on something that might not work out.
John Williams has come to the Twin Cities on a number of occasions to give seminars and has made several comments about the plethora of C#/D players in the area (Paddy O’Brien excepted, of course, but rumour has it that he plays C#/D from time to time).
First comment at the first seminar I attended: If someone lobbed a grenade into this living room there wouldn’t be ANY C#/D players in left in the upper Midwest. (There were about ten of us in that room.)
Second comment from another seminar: It’s just odd that there is such a concentration of C#/D players in one area. (I’ll assume that he meant in the USA.)
I played diatonic harmonica long before I even knew what a button accordion was, so it made more sense for me to learn on C#/D than B/C because I could already play tunes the same way a D harp works.
Hi Buttonbox,
I’m in the Mpls/St.Paul area and play B/C and a one row D box. So we ARE around playing quite happily in our kitchens 
Yes, Paddy does play on a C#/D from time to time.
All the best
And I assume all these alphabets are Anglo, not English system, concertinas?
Dave
If we were talking about concertinas, Dave, this would be a reasonable assumption…
More questions about B/C vs C#/D:
- Is it easier to play fast jigs and reels on a B/C than on a C#/D?
- Is the B/C more versatile and easier to play than the C#/D?
- Does the C#/D offer more opportunities to play bass/chords/harmonies in D major and G major tunes?
Hi Claudine,
Someone has been sowing doubts in your mind, am I right?
It all depends on the key you’re playing in. As Rob G pointed out somewhere on this board, they’re really the same instrument… for example, playing a tune in A on a C#/D, you are using exactly the same fingering you would use to play the same tune in G on a B/C.
The conventional wisdom is that playing B/C you use the bellows less, at least in common keys for Irish music. This is mainly because you have longer passages of legato notes - particularly the fact that you can play A B C# D E without changing bellows direction. (On a C#/D the same is true of B C# D# E F#, which only comes in handy in the key of E).
But it’s all swings and roundabouts as they say. It seems to me (from my limited experimentation with learning tunes in B/C fingering) that the keys of D and particularly Em are easier on a C#/D. Playing in D on a B/C, you have to deal with the fact that a simple arpeggio of D requires you to change bellows direction for one note - the F#. This seems totally perverse when you first start!
I’d say that the fingerings on a C#/D are easier to get your head (and your hands) around when you begin, but that yes you will be pumping the bellows a bit more often in some passages. But I think that in the long run things work themselves out.
- Is the B/C more versatile and easier to play than the C#/D?
No, I don’t think so. Again, depends what keys you’re playing in. But listen to Martin O Connor - that should put your mind at rest.
- Does the C#/D offer more opportunities to play bass/chords/harmonies in D major and G major tunes?
Possibly, maybe someone who’s better at basses than I am can address this. As far as I can see or hear, there do seem to be more good bass hands among C#/D players than B/C.
For playing in G, on a standard 8-bass C#/D box there is no C chord, which is really dumb. (A thirdless A chord will do the job a lot of the time.) But then on a B/C box there is typically no Bm or F#m bass, which is similarly dumb.
Hope all this helps,
Steve
PS Claudine I’ve decided I want a B/C myself. But mainly for the mellow pleasure of playing everything a tone down.
I spent the weekend at an epic music party thrown by a B/C player friend of mine and as usual we both grabbed each other’s boxes whenever possible. He seems to enjoy the sound of my 3-medium-voice C#/D, and I like experimenting with the sound combinations his 4-voice box (LMMH) .
For playing lazy tunes on a Sunday morning after two late consecutive nights of music, a B/C played as if it were C#/D is just the thing. Until others want to join in with you, of course. (An A/Bb would be even better…)
BTW this is what Josephine Marsh does a lot of the time: plays a B/C box using C#/D fingering. You’ll find a lot of players “crossing over” occasionally. For instance I have clips of B/C players playing D tunes in C - Billy McComiskey (Humours of Tulla) and Raymond Roland (Bucks of Oranmore), and I believe that Joe Burke’s influential recording of Bonnie Kate was in C too, although I haven’t heard it.
Sporting Nell and New Mown Meadows are both easier to play “on the pull”, so you’ll find B/C players doing them in D and C#/D players doing them in E. Yesterday a fiddler started playing The Holly Bush in E major, and when I asked him why, he said he’d learned it from a Sharon Shannon recording. In other words, she was playing it B/C style on a C#/D box. So I tried it last night in E and it was a bit easier - nice flow to it.
Out on the Ocean, Foxhunter’s Reel, Miss McLeod’s and other tunes are commonly played in both G and A, so learn both keys on your C#/D and you’ll be able to play them in G on a B/C box. And in F too, which will surprise everybody…
So that’s why I think that if you keep at the half-step box you’ll end up being able to play both systems anyway!
Steve
Ditto all that Steve said.
- Is it easier to play fast jigs and reels on a B/C than on a C#/D?
Like superfast? Over 120 bpm? Yes. But for normal sane session/ceili tempos, I don’t think so, not once you’re past the beginner stage.
- Is the B/C more versatile and easier to play than the C#/D?
I haven’t really found that to be the case. Some things are trickier in one system than the other – the key of G doesn’t lie as nicely under the fingers on the C#/D keyboard, for example. On the other hand, on the B/C the A scale is almost all on the pull, so you have to use your air button with extreme cleverness. One thing I do like about the B/C is that with all the outside-row notes, crossing fingers over for shifts is a breeze. I had to get comfortable with shifting on the same row when I switched to C#/D. It still feels slightly clunky to me.
- Does the C#/D offer more opportunities to play bass/chords/harmonies in D major and G major tunes?
YES. Definitely. That’s one of the reasons I switched over to C#/D. It’s a lot easier to figure harmonies and chords out. And the basses make a lot more sense too – each pair of bass buttons gives you I and V chords in a particular key.
There’s this story I have heard Jackie Daly tell dozens of times: One night he was playing a cocnert somewhere, Joe Burke was on as well and Joe was in a panic ‘Jackie Jackie what am I going to do one of my basses doesn’t work’ ‘Well Joe’ Jackie replied, ‘you could try using a different one’
thanks for your advice. C#/D shall be my choice then.