okay, learned the pipes almost completely by listening... to great people sitting in front of me, or on ipod and cd's everywhere i went for years...

but it was always helpful to have great teachers verify or correct my attempts to emulate what i had catalogued in my head from listening...

so now i have an entire ipod devoted to the box and really working hard to hear the ornamentation and phrasing particular to the box.

can anyone take a few minutes and describe some rolls, crans, etc that i need to be working on so i can match the sounds i am hearing with the digital mechanics? i can play a button thrice for a roll or cran or triplet (all the same on box?) or button A, next button up as a cut the two more button A's... etc. until after my impending b-day (i am on buying restriction until then #!@$ it) i cannot get my hands on a tutor.

thanks!!

In my view all that kind of stuff is a lot less essential to good box playing than to piping. I'd work on learning to play tunes simply with a good swing - mastering the bellows and the air button - before I worried too much about ornamentation. The bellows are your bow!

And I would play marches and waltzes for a good few weeks before driving yourself mental with your first reel. Jigs you can slot in somewhere on the way.

Probably not what you want to hear. So who are you listening to whose sounds you want to reproduce?

Steve

I thought of Han's page after making my first reply but when I came back to add the link I saw that Rob H had already done so.

One useful thing Han doesn't discuss is a simulated roll on the home row only, which Rob G and Bretton described in another post. The problem with the classic B/C player's 5-note roll as described by Han is that the "tap" if you like is more often than not out of key, which not everyone will like the effect of. (I'm trying to put it mildly...).

The single-row roll is played note-{cut}-note-note. This can sound very concertina-ish (nothing wrong with that), especially if you use only two fingers in the process. However if you alternate the fingers you use on the main note, you can vary the rhythm more easily and produce a very effective compressed sort of "roll." For example instead of 1-{2}1-1 try 1-{3}-2-1.

(BTW I think that Han is wrong when he says Sharon Shannon plays the standard 5-note roll. I can't hear it anyway. )

Han discusses cuts, but there's a use of a cut that is a common feature esp. in C#D playing, that's a bit different. I don't even know whether it should be called a cut at all. You use the button above the one you're playing, not as a cut for decoration or articulation, but to give your main note a bit of woomph in the middle. Almost like a very brief chord.

Say you have a G lasting three 1/8 notes, maybe at the end of a phrase. Towards the end of the note, probably after two of the three beats, hit the B button snappily (without releasing the G button). Your G gets a big kick in the tail, similar in effect to a delayed long roll on other instruments, esp. if you put a little extra pressure on the bellows to swell the volume. Used judiciously, this puts a lot of beef on the bones of your playing, I feel.

Steve

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. That link you posted is invaluable.

Coming along!

That's exactly how I feel about concertina, except that, since I don't play fiddle, I wouldn't have mentioned the bow. Your best friend when it comes to good rhythm, articulation and expression is bellows control.

I'd add one other thing. Get very good at playing triplets before you worry about other ornaments. I don't know if this would be good advice for accordeon.

Wombat,

Triplets is what I am hearing the most of as far as ornamentation. Rhythm and this stupid non-linear push pull thing is what i am working on right now ... but do want to konw what to put in at critical points in a tune (i.e. roll, triplet) instead of just holding the note for a quaver...