Chiff and Fipple Forums

Session is defunct as of Jan 2011.

If you play using one strap, tilitng the box forward lets you brace the lower front corner of the box against the outside of your thigh. I also find it puts my right arm in a more comfortable position.

I think the key to doing rolls on the mando is to pick the last note. Viz: downstroke, hammer-on, pulloff back to the original note, pulloff to the open string, upstroke on the original note. Works for me. I often use a cut/left-hand-pizzicato to articulate the middle note of a triplet. It sounds ni...

I'll see you and raise you. Here's "Hoogie Boogie Land," by the legendary Fort Worth, Texas band Complete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukjnrXTTvPY

I see what you are saying, but I don't think that's a good analogy. My kids (like thousands of others around here) are growing up in a household where English and French are both spoken. At some point they will probably choose to identify more strongly with one language than the other, but they are...

Well, I don't have a problem playing many musical instruments (I play Irish flute, guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, and button accordion). But the C#/D and B/C really are the same instrument played two different ways, each calling on a different vocabulary of ornamentation/variations/gestures, and neithe...

talasiga wrote:For some inexplicable reason I associate
snare drums with INVASION
and
bodhran with the down trodden.

So you just have to ask yourself which side you'd rather be on.

The House of Musical Traditions carries bellows tape in different colors. The catch is that the tape is essentially a long strip of metalized textured fabric with no adhesive. You have to spread white glue evenly on a board, press your tape into it, then apply the tape to the bellows. My Hohner's be...

I got my Japanese-made Squier P-bass when the Fender Squier line first appeared around 1984, and remember being astounded at how nice an instrument it was for the price. I see the newer non-Japanese Squiers still get high marks. My only mod was to replace the tailpiece with a genuine, heavier Fende...

Why do you say the PA isn't a great instrument for Irish music? It's not a popular instrument, fair enough, but what in your opinion makes it unsuitable?

Concertina & "irish" box with two rows and eight bass chords are cool, but they're not chromatic, am I right? Nope, they're fully chromatic. There are some factors that make certain keys a little challenging on some instruments -- e.g., playing in A on the B/C box sometimes makes me t...

Nearly? You mean you're at work? And your new concertina is going to be sitting there on your doorstep waiting for you to get home? Good lord, man, it could be there RIGHT NOW. What on earth are you thinking? Clearly you're not well. Take the rest of the day off.

Seriously though, who cares? They're the same instrument but for a couple of sharps. A pretty dull, limited and mechanical instrument, unremittingly and excruciatingly equal-tempered, albeit with a few redeeming features. The point is if you get really good on the thing, the system doesn't matter. ...

I played B/C accordion for four years. Then I switched to C#/D and played that for four years. Nowadays I'm picking up the B/C again, and I'm in this strange state of mind where I really don't know which system I want to concentrate on. Every time I pick up one box or the other I find myself thinkin...

1981-1983 Japanese Fender Strats (copies of vintage instruments although genuine Fenders) blow Custom Shop recreations away and even mid 80s Squiers are better than American made Fenders since the 60s if what you want is that vintage sound. Just to pull the discussion further off topic: have you se...