Hey! How about an icebreaking introduction? I notice noone has posted yet.

I'm John from Gainesville Florida. I have played the uilleann pipes and bodhran going on a decade, and the flute for half of that... and the C#/D box for less than a week... which means I can't play jack yet. I have received great advice from a bunch of you so thank you deeply for getting me going! Why the button box? As opposed to the pipes, you push a button and more often than not you get a note... and it is in tune... and like the pipes it can drown out the concertinas!

Saltarelle Irish Boebe C#/D

Steve from Montreal. At the C#/D box for just on two years, but at "the music" for about 30 years before that, mainly on fiddle and latterly tin whistle.

Why the button box? Haven't got a good answer for that, because much as I love getting up to speed on it, I still think it's a pretty crass instrument. I really took it up because focal dystonia prevents me from playing my real instrument, the fiddle, and I got tired of the whistle's ineffectualness in a band setting.

I love the box for its improbable mechanics and its irrepressible feelgood factor. I dislike it for its steamroller qualities and its tempered scale and the fact that you can't bend notes on it. I used to dislike its phrasing restrictions and the weird factor of having a supposedly chromatic instrument that is actually very difficult to play in anything other than a small handful of keys. Now I'm getting to love that.

I'm not sure what to think of the fact that as a beginner, you can easily hit notes (on a half-step box) that are so far out of key as to be insanely comical and break everybody up.

Steve

None of the above.

I play D/G. You missed C/F as well. Also a lot of people play one rows.

The forum was locked when I last looked.

Hi dee ho there John and everyone. Mark from Charlottesville VA here. I knew John back when he was tickling a small piano box but I swore I'd never tell anyone. He's apparently moved on to better things since moving to sunnier climes.

I'm working on a Salterelle C#/D Boube. It absolutely kicks my ass. But I'm a whistler/fluter by nature.

Mark

English Concertina when my game elbow permits, which sadly isn't as often as I'd like.

Hey all... i had two other options on the poll that don't seem to have shown up. Anyone know how to edit a poll? I had

D/G, C/F button box
one row, three row, other

but they did not show up. i guess there may be a limit to options or something ?Dale?... but knowing me, i just probably screwed it up.

you were NOT supposed to divulge the little red piano box thank you! It sad in the cupboard for years collecting dust until the latest band incarnation An Triur started doing more songs, so it comes in handy when accompanying them... plus it makes us sound more Pogue like at times!!

there... out of the stomach steinway closet!

Rob H in south Florida.

I have a C#/D Castagnari Lilly but i don't play it much and probably will sell it in the near future; mostly i play my Weltmeister one-row in D ... i know, i'm ignoring a sleek Italian beauty in favor of a big loud German fraulein, but the sound of a four-stop LMMH one-row is one of my very favorites in music.

Can't say i play well at all, i'm mostly a mandolin and tenor banjo player and sometime whistler. But i do enjoy the melodeon greatly.

Anglo concertina for me. Also harmonica and melodica. I want to get one or another of the standard Irish-style accordeons soon but can't decide which guitar or flute to sell to finance the project.

Rob from DC here. I started playing B/C about 5 years ago when I was living in Charlottesville (Mark and John, glad to see you two coming over to the dark side). Before that I'd played around a little with G/C and D/G tunings and (gasp) English Concertina. A couple of years ago I switched over to C#/D as my primary system, though I still have my trailworn mid-60's Hohner B/C, and someday soon I'm going to get that thing tuned and fixed up. Once I get it sounding better I may well switch back. My D box is a Castagnari Fazzy. I also play flute, guitar, bouzouki, and mandolin.

In the interest of equalling the level of discourse of other realms of C&F, I'd like to take this opportunity to troll: you're all a bunch of wankers. Thank you.

I love seeing this new forum. I'm Dan from Alabama. I've played harmonica for years, and I'm looking to expand to either/or concertina or accordion. I play some IrTrad, but I also play a lot of AmTrad! My main inspirations have been the music of Patrick Street and Altan- and I'm embarrassed but I can't even remember their accordion player's name. But Jackie Daly is awesome and so is he!

I only play the Anglo, mine being a late-model Crabb about as old as I am. It has a sweet sound, and by "sweet" I mean that it doesn't have too much caw or haw or nyah or bwah or whatever. Very pure sound.

The inside is filled with cigarette soot---the previous owner must have played it every day for 30 years in smoke-filled bars. It was so heavily played when I bought it that the metal buttons were worn down. It was as if the previous owner sweated sulfuric acid.

I'm also building a new one of my own design, based on some computer simulations I ran as a grad student. I actually have a bunch of programs to analyze the rate at which you hit different buttons when playing different layouts in different styles. I have discovered, for instance, that about 50% of common Irish tunes can be played just fine on a 20-button C/G, and that people who play along the rows are more likely to run out of air on the push while people who play across the rows are more likely to run out of air on the pull.

Caj

Dan,

Homewood Music is in Homewood Alabama, near Birmingham. The guy Bob Tedrow makes and sells concertinas. You can find gobs of information at his site http://hmi.homewood.net.

Bob Tedrow is a pillar of the concertina community; his website provides a wealth of information about how concertinas work, how to make minor repairs etc.

Caj

I started boxing nearly two years back on C#/D , but i'm a slow learner on the box.
I play flute for a year now and i'm way ahead compared to my boxing...
I loved the sound of a Saltarelle Nuage and bought one, but i found it rather heavy to play.
So i bought a 2 voice Cairdin last week, and it's perfect!! there's very fast action and steady bellows, it's also very dry tuned. I can practice a lot more now. I'll keep my Nuage for when i'm a better player though!

Dermot Byrne, amazing C#/D player.

I'm on the waiting list for a Streb electronic melodeon:

http://www.streb.co.uk/

and should have it by Midsummer. Amongst other benefits (ability to practise silently, numerous diffent voicings possible), it's also programmed for sveral different keyboard layouts - so I'll have a C#D, B/C, D/G, C/F and any other tunings I can think of, all in one box.