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[Pete Dunk]

At a loose end this evening I have watched John Kirkpatrick's 'How to Play the English Melodeon' DVD once again. In this tutorial he clearly describes the D/G melodeon as a fourth apart box. Can we please now put aside the musically illiterate description of 'quint' boxes once and for all?

DEFG is four notes, end of story. D is a fifth lower than G for sure but musical convention dictates that you refer to intervals from low note to high. If you disagree please contact John Kirkpatrick and tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about. Thank you and good night!

[JohnAndy]

D is a fourth lower than G. Or a fifth higher. Or of course the two notes could be more than an octave apart, but let's not worry about that for now.

In the case of a D/G melodeon the D is a fourth lower.

[Ollie]

Or G is a 4th higher than D. I think that's a better way of looking at it.

[Pete Dunk]

D is a fourth lower than G. Or a fifth higher. Or of course the two notes could be more than an octave apart, but let's not worry about that for now.

In the case of a D/G melodeon the D is a fourth lower.

Exactly. Therefore a D/G box may never be described as quint???   

[TomB]

But Quint box sounds better then QUART box 

[OrchardAshley90]

Hmm.. More to the point, who cares? Lol!

[Pete Dunk]

But Quint box sounds better then QUART box 

Quite so. Therefore the musically illiterate get to dictate the state of play? I don't think so . . . Sexy terminology and correct terminology are in fact mutually exclusive in this instance.

[Chris Ryall]

Simple "matter of convention". All in music is relative. I won't lose any sleep on this issue.

[Pete Dunk]

Hmm.. More to the point, who cares? Lol!

People who care about musical theory?

[Pete Dunk]

Simple "matter of convention". All in music is relative. I won't lose any sleep on this issue.

No problem if you are well informed enough to appreciate the difference. Not good enough if you are taking your standpoint from a position of ignorance or am I missing the point?

[Chris Ryall]

'fraid you might be. Octaves being octaves … a quart up is the same as a quint down. C is a 4th up from G, and G is a 5th up from C. Put another way C is the 4th note of G scale; G the 5th in C scale. it is all relative. We could argue the toss … forever?

[Steve_freereeder]

Hmm.. More to the point, who cares? Lol!

People who care about musical theory?

Yes - but it's not simply about musical theory. I'm totally with Tallship on this.
We've had the debate about the correct terminology for fourth-apart instruments on this forum before. It actually does matter because the difference between playing a fourth-apart instrument (e.g. a normal D/G melodeon) and a fifth-apart instrument (e.g a G/D anglo concertina, or one of those rare low G/high D melodeons) is profound. The cross-row fingering patterns of the two types just do not match. If we are going to use words to specify tuning/layout systems, for goodness' sake let's do so accurately. Anything else is misleading.

In any case, in music the intervals between two notes are never described as 'quint', 'quart', or even 'quad'. Goodness knows where the term 'quint-tuned' originated in the first place. It's like calling a tsunami a 'tidal wave' - an patently incorrect term which persisted in the xenophobic and linguaphobic media for decades and only recently dropped.

Words matter. They form the very basis of a civilised and educated society. Deliberately not caring about them smacks of inverse snobbery or worse.

[Steve_freereeder]

'fraid you might be. Octaves being octaves … a quart up is the same as a quint down. C is a 4th up from G, and G is a 5th up from C. Put another way C is the 4th note of G scale; G the 5th in C scale. it is all relative. We could argue the toss … forever?

This is misleading. In the example of the way in which a D/G melodeon is tuned, the inside G row is a fourth higher in pitch from the equivalent buttons on the outside D-row. Even when put the other way round, the outside D-row is still a fourth lower than the equivalent buttons on the inside G-row. So there's no getting away from it - the bog-standard D/G (or C/F, A/D, G/C, Bb/Eb etc.) melodeon is a fourth-apart instrument.

Similarly for a C/G anglo concertina, the G-row is always a fifth higher than the C-row, and the C-row is always a fifth lower than the G-row. So it's a fifth-apart instrument.

[Happyhank]

But Quint box sounds better then QUART box 

That depends, of course, on what it is a quart of!

I will say that, when first attempting to orient myself in melodeon world, the "quint box" phrase confused the heck out of me.

Before discovering all of you wonderful D/G folks, I bought a G/C box, with the inside row a fourth higher than the outside row. Then I read on melnet about these D/G quint boxes and about D/G technique being different from G/C technique (not realizing that this was just a reference to the tendency of some G/C folk to use the upper octave more than the lower).

So, for a few days, I thought I had made a terrible mistake buying a box based on fourths when you were all playing one based on fifths.

Then I downloaded the fingering charts and set myself straight.

So the whole "quint" thing can cause confusion, at least for the feeble-minded newbie.

Greg

[syale]

I used to tell my children I had eleven fingers (lets call thumbs fingers for the exercise). I would count my fingers 1,2,3,4,5 on one hand and then 6,7,8,9,10 for the other. I would then say I had an extra finger by counting backwards 10,9,8,7,6 and hold up my other hand and say "and 5 makes 11". Sounds a little like the quint debate to me.

[Graham Spencer]

Personally I always refer to my boxes as "4th-apart" for precisely the reasons Steve outlines.

[oggiesnr]

I wonder if the "confusion" is another of those UK anomalies (like the D/G box itself).  It appears from the continental tutors that I've struggled through that in the rest of Europe, the "home" key of the box is regarded as the outside row so D going up to G is a fourth.  However, the great majority of the early (mainly morris) material that the Kennedy inspired boxes were used for is in G and by default we have come to regard G as the home key, hence a fifth apart (following convention and going upwards)  and so a quint box.

In essence what we have is the result of us little islanders going our way because we know best and it makes sense to us 

Steve

[Howard Jones]

I'd never heard the expression 'quint box' until I started coming on here, and it doesn't make much sense to me.  And as an anglo player, the fourth v fifth difference between the rows which Steve refers to is crucial.  But neither had I thought of it as having a 'home key', or rather having two home keys but neither dominant over the other.

With reference to another current thread, being entirely self-taught I never bothered about such matters and just played it.

[Owen Woods]

Quad and quart are horrid, but quint is misleading. Fourth apart is a bit boring. Any other suggestions? Melnet is a big enough body that if we decide something it has a realistic chance of being adopted.

[xgx]

Take an ADG box ... follow the circle of fifths , the keys are a 'fourth' apart.

Anyone fancy playing a 'fifth' apart box, e.g. GAD