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Author Topic: What started you off playing Melodeon?  (Read 11824 times)

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Anahata

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #20 on: October 01, 2014, 04:08:04 PM »

For me it was picking up somebody's Pokerwork (with permission!) and discovering it was just as loud as my Hohner Gaelic IV at about a third of the weight, at about the same time of my life that I was discovering that being restricted to D and G wasn't really going to get in the way of playing the kind of music I wanted to do.

The Gaelic IV was from direct influence of John Kirkpatrick, and replaced a piano accordion that I played before that.
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The Blues Viking

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #21 on: October 01, 2014, 04:12:09 PM »

I was playing congas in a folk-rock combo on weekends, and as I had encroaching problems with my hands and I thought that playing  a concertina would be a way to keep them supple. I went to Elderly Instruments in Lansing to see what they had. I was a bit disappointed to see the prices of even crappy 'tinas, but they had this little toy melodeon (think "Chanson") for fifteen dollars. Well, I had to go home with something...

A year later I used my saved tip money to buy a $350 Chinese "Cajun" box (which was actually a pretty good box). I forgot all about the concertina. Mostly.

TBV
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #22 on: October 01, 2014, 04:53:29 PM »

( Bob - my friend was at Uni slightly later and always called Buttercup 'Buttercup'! )

I sat in my tent on my first trip to Brittany on my first foreign morris tour, August '78. A Pokerwork on my lap and it was the first instrument where I'd worked a tune out by ear. My guitar I played from chord shapes and didn't know how to listen.
On returning home I borrowed then returned said melodeon, bumped into an Anglo then English Concertina which stuck. At the time  there were no tutors for melodeon and I had no idea what to do on the left hand, but that didn't matter on an English concertina.
Thirty plus years later (!) my daughter returned from an Ed Rennie workshop with a handful of paper notes, and when she wasn't around I cast an eye over them and picked up my friend's borrowed-for-her Chineese melodeon. I realised afer an all day bash that through my now blinding headache perhaps I could join my left and right hands and get the hang of it.
My new mountain bike frame ended up having buttons on each end and bellows in the middle!

I think the push to change instruments was a touch of frustration on EC, as I always played it as a melody only instrument, and sometimes felt it was a bit thin for some English tunes, though great for flying round the keyboard playing Northumbrian Pipe tunes after Ali Anderson's influence.
I do enjoy it, despite coming to it late.
Q
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I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Sue

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #23 on: October 01, 2014, 04:56:05 PM »

I used to dance with a side based in my home village (I still dance but with another side), after the practice a couple of the musicians started a session in my local pub.  It was very friendly with a variety of people, but with a core of very good musicians, some nights it was brilliant, which I realise now is not always the case with sessions.  So every week I was in the pub till around midnight listening to some splendid music.
One evening someone asked me what I played.
"I don't play anything" I replied.
"But you'd like to!" was the response.
Well that hit the nail on the head.  My musical education stopped when I was about 8 when I was told I WAS NOT TO SING, and I spent the next 50 years believing I 'couldn't do music', but I really wanted to.
It was suggested I try a melodeon because 'you only have to press a button and you get a note' !!!!
I was lent an old Black Pearl and spent quite a long time discovering that if you pressed a button you did get a note, and if you pressed another button you got another note!  I then bought a second-hand Lilly and took it to sessions.  When I arrived I put it under the table and it stayed there for the duration, at the end of the session I took it home.
Then one week in Summer when there weren't many people at the session I had a go with my one tune.  Those who were there joined in AT MY SPEED, and after that the tune was played every week.

Well I still can't play as I would like, I still haven't got the repertoire I would like but I do play for my Morris side and I can and do lead sets at local sessions.  So the journey is underway even though it had a very slow and nervous start.
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Tufty

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #24 on: October 01, 2014, 06:08:52 PM »

It started for me when I heard the "Oak" LP "Welcome to our fair" in about 1976. At first I tried a cheap plastic Anglo but after a couple of years heard a one row being played for Redcar longsword and fell in love with the sound. After reading other posts I feel lucky to have started fairly young! Melodeon has been a part of my life for almost 40 years and while I will never be a virtuoso it continues to bring a great deal of pleasure, especially playing for dancing.
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Curamach

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #25 on: October 01, 2014, 06:38:03 PM »

I had been playing Irish fiddle for years when around 8 years ago at age 55 (or so) I broke my left forefinger playing basketball. My darling wife Ellen would spare me no pity having long said such behavior was unseemly. Worse, with said finger in a splint, fiddling was out (I tried!) so I needed something I could play (mostly) with my right hand. I began to noodle with a toy accordion a friend had given me long ago. At that very time someone (perhaps Old Nick himself) put a battered HA 113 in D on that devil site, eBay, and I "won" it. Needless to say I was hooked (I now know about the drugs on the Hohner buttons, but it is too late.) I eventually added a C#/D, then another, then a couple of one rows in G, A , D, then some more toy accordions then..............
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butimba

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #26 on: October 01, 2014, 07:52:51 PM »

I can lay most of the blame on Andy Cutting's solo CD, with a bit of help from seeing Markku Lepisto perform live.

I also spent a long time trying to find an instrument that I liked as much as the piano, but more portable and cheaper. So far the melodeon seems to have stuck more than anything else, although its peculiarities also aggravate me quite a lot as well!
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boxdancer

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #27 on: October 01, 2014, 08:19:51 PM »

Melodeon? It's unpretentious, has lots of cut and thrust (push and pull) and is a great way of airing (literally) some of England's most beautiful melodies.  Not to metion those of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  Actually, France, Scandinavia, USA...it covers a lot of territory and, wonderfully, a lot of musical centuries. Thanks, too, to Melnet and Melnetters for all input and output - push and pull, cut and thrust!
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Sebastian

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #28 on: October 01, 2014, 09:14:40 PM »

After student years I suddenly got a well-payed job (well enough to buy a melodeon, that is) and wanted an upgrade from the harmonica. And I was interested in the peculiarities of diatonic instruments.
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Nick Collis Bird

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #29 on: October 01, 2014, 09:58:45 PM »

It's amazing though not surprising that so many of us have come from the Mouthorgan. It must be the push pull / suck draw method helps in starting. Will let you know how I'll get on with the Organette.
See thread other free reed instruments. :||:
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Ollie

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #30 on: October 01, 2014, 10:25:27 PM »

I bought an English Folk compilation album when I was about 13. The first track was Waterson Carthy's Raggle Taggle Gypsies, featuring Saul Rose on melodeon. It was so wonderfully English, and I feel in love with the sound of the melodeon. The following Christmas, Santa was very kind!
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boxcall

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #31 on: October 01, 2014, 10:33:50 PM »

Some great stories! mine is simple my mothers father gave Me and my brothers a hohner 1040 in C,
I wish he showed us how to use it, but he didn't. So I mostly just made noise with it ( might be what I'm still doing) I took it when I left home and pretty much just sat it on the shelf and only rarely pick it up to mess about never really learning any tunes. button 3&4 were badly out if tune so I only had the top end to play, talk about limited. anyway just shy of my 49 birthday I decided I should learn the thing proper so I started looking for a teacher and got lucky finding an excellent melodeon player Jack Conroy though Comahaltas in Boston. and not only did I learn to play some tunes, I learned about a whole genre of tunes from Ireland that I didn't know. And with this great site I'm learning still more.
Thanks All
I forgot to mention I ended up buying a new one row to play.
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arty

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #32 on: October 01, 2014, 10:48:51 PM »

A friend bought a wreck of a house in the Dordogne and I went to help with a lot of the work that needed doing on it. Every Friday morning, we went to a big open market and there was always an accordion player there playing musette, French Cafe Music. Oh! how I loved that music, with the smells of the market, - Gauloise, garlic, cheese, wine, chickens being roasted, the noise of people chattering away and little cafes serving delicious coffee.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, I left after a year and as a (very generous) thankyou for all my work, I was presented with a full size, 120 bass CBA. There you go, they said, you have loved that music since you arrived, now go away and learn to play it! Well, I did practice hard and learnt quite a bit, but I did find it very complex, I mean - all those buttons and the weight! If I remember correctly, it weighed about 25lbs. I persevered for a few years until I went to Cornwall in 2012 where I met Mike Rowbotham and THAT changed everything!
I bought a Pre Pokerwork from him and I haven't touched the CBA or my guitar since! I still have them both but I never play them now - it's the melodeon for me, I love it.

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pikey

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #33 on: October 01, 2014, 11:09:46 PM »

Mouth organ from the Age of five, then Anglo when I was 17 cos I heard a melodeon at the folk club, played by Jim Sharpe , loved the sound but couldn't afford one, but I could afford an Anglo purchased for  £20 from Harry Scurfield. Then for Christmas when I was 18 in 1976 my lovely parents bought me a melodeon !
« Last Edit: October 01, 2014, 11:18:36 PM by pikey »
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busbox

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #34 on: October 01, 2014, 11:11:42 PM »

I was given a melodeon (Busilachio in C). It has an interesting story which I've attached.
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syale

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #35 on: October 02, 2014, 12:55:21 AM »

I listened to my father-in-law playing and was so impressed I bought one. I have 8 now  :D

Stephen
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Chris Ryall

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #36 on: October 02, 2014, 08:52:48 AM »

Yet another who fell in with the Hammersmith Morris mob in 1970! In my case doing Folk Camps. John K and Dave Roberts both impressed the teenage Chris a lot!  But I always hankered after a concertina, always financially just out of reach. Finally bought a Linota in '84. It was very, very loud; annoyed cat and wife in equal measure ::)

I think that's why the latter bought me a Hohner as a "total surprise" March birthday present 2 years later. By that August I'd traded it in for a Cashta "Lily" and that's when I .. took off :|glug


[ed] I'd like to confess to taking a mouth organ to that Folk Camp - there's much commonality in these stories?
« Last Edit: October 02, 2014, 08:55:00 AM by Chris Ryall »
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GuyWyatt

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #37 on: October 02, 2014, 11:57:30 AM »

Quote
Yet another who fell in with the Hammersmith Morris
Anahata played for them too, at one time.
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Six Stars

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #38 on: October 02, 2014, 01:51:37 PM »

I tried hard to learn to play guitar, but only got sore fingers. It really wasn't the instrument for me.

Years later I was looking for an instrument that I could learn to play to take with me when I go narrowboating. I was coming up to retirement, and thought that I would have time on my hands, so I'd be able to learn to play (Hah! the innocence of those who work!).

I saw a boy playing a PA on the front of a passing boat, and thought that would be a good idea. So I asked a very knowledgeable boat living friend, who plays several instruments including concertina and bagpipes, did she think that a PA was a good instrument for me to learn?

"Do you want an instrument or a wardrobe?" she replied. Then said that what I needed was a melodeon.  I had absolutely no idea what a melodeon was, but not wishing to look stupid I said nothing.

I found myself here fairly quickly, and within a week or so was parting with pound notes for a D/G Pokerwork.

I love it, not brilliant at it, but I don't actually have all the time I naively thought would suddenly appear when I stopped work. I get more time playing it when we are out with our boats at festivals.

Learning melodeon has also brought me back to listening to folk music, which I hadn't done for more than 30 years, and I've joined a small morris side as a dancer.

James R

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Re: What started you off playing Melodeon?
« Reply #39 on: October 02, 2014, 05:08:36 PM »

It started for me back in about 2007 ish when the Ouse Washes Molly Dancers came to my primary school and taught some students how to molly dance. Later in that school year someone came in to start teaching melodeon (on cheap, low quality Scarlattis). By the end of that academic year (about 6 weeks after we had started) she'd turned up just twice and the one time we were taught anything we were taught how to play the left hand with out 2nd and 3rd fingers. Something which I was told absolutely not to do by Andy Cutting 7 years later. In September 2008 we had another teacher who actually got on to the other, slightly more important 21 buttons. This teacher had been told by the first that we - a group of 11 - wouldn't ever be able to play melodeon. After about a year of playing it had emerged that my melodeon was the only one to see the light of days outside of the lunchtime lessons and we were split into two groups (me and the other 5 or so who hadn't already given up). I would be taught for half of lunchtime and the others would be taught during the remainder of lunchtime. I progressed to tunes such as Bear Dance crossing the rows and a few others. Towards the end of my last year, I found a beautiful Castagnari Studio on eBay and two weeks later I was playing it. Then I began to play for the side that inspired me to start playing, and years later I am still playing for the Ouse Washes, just on a more expensive box.
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