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Author Topic: Melodeon Key and Regional culture  (Read 12587 times)

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deltasalmon

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Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« on: August 06, 2015, 04:46:38 PM »

Most melodeon key/tuning is based on the music that will be played on the instrument, i.e. D/G for English music, G/C for French music

Does anyone know of a table somewhere that has all the common tunings and the musical styles that they are most popular with?
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Graham Spencer

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2015, 06:04:40 PM »

How regional do you want to get?  D/G will indeed see you through the majority of English sessions, but in East Anglia C rules.....

Graham  ;)
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Among others, Saltarelle Pastourelle II D/G; Hohner 4-stop 1-rows in C & G; assorted Hohners; 3-voice German (?) G/C of uncertain parentage; lovely little Hlavacek 1-row Heligonka; B♭/E♭ Koch. Newly acquired G/C Hohner Viktoria. Also Fender Jazz bass, Telecaster, Stratocaster, Epiphone Sheraton, Charvel-Jackson 00-style acoustic guitar, Danelectro 12-string and other stuff..........

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Lester

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2015, 06:08:24 PM »

but in East Anglia C rules.....

Is this actually true any more?
All the sessions I have been to up that way have be D/ friendly??

Anahata

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2015, 07:01:41 PM »

but in East Anglia C rules.....

Is this actually true any more?

No, not really.
We do like to have a squeeze in in C occasionally though.
For instance the EATMT Trad Music Day has a C session for some part of the day.
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Graham Spencer

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2015, 07:06:36 PM »

Well there you go - shows how long it is since I lived in the UK! The two East Anglian musicians I see here from time to time do a lot of tunes in C - maybe it's an ex-pat thing, hanging on to how it used to be.......... :D
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Among others, Saltarelle Pastourelle II D/G; Hohner 4-stop 1-rows in C & G; assorted Hohners; 3-voice German (?) G/C of uncertain parentage; lovely little Hlavacek 1-row Heligonka; B♭/E♭ Koch. Newly acquired G/C Hohner Viktoria. Also Fender Jazz bass, Telecaster, Stratocaster, Epiphone Sheraton, Charvel-Jackson 00-style acoustic guitar, Danelectro 12-string and other stuff..........

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deltasalmon

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2015, 08:08:24 PM »

So the semitone boxes are typically played in Irish and Scottish music. D/G is played mostly in English music. In continental Europe it seems to be mostly C/F or G/C. Single row melodeons in C and D seem to be more popular in North America, Cajun and Quebecois respectively. Are single row in G mostly played in English music also?

What about some of the not-so-common two row boxes? A/D? F/Bb? Bb/Eb?

I think most of the three row 4th based boxes seem to be popular in Latin American musics. Three row semitone I can only think of really being popular in Scottish music (although there is a thread on here about BCC# use in Irish music).
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Lester

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2015, 08:16:53 PM »

ADG boxes are not uncommon in English sessions/morris/ceilidh. My experience say that D 1 rows are more common G in English mainly because G  1 rows are hard work to play.

There is also a growing sub-culture in England for Bb/Eb sessions where melodeonists gather.

GBbox

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2015, 09:17:40 PM »

I guess the main factor to consider is/was the the makers' choice. The musicians in the end had to adopt what was available on the market.

In Northern Italy now you find mainly G/C two row instruments, but the melodeon here was quickly replaced after the first world war by the piano accordion, so this is mainly due to the influence of the French revival. Down South, where the two  row boxes aren't so common, you can still find the F/Bb, the latter being one of the common bagpipe keys. But in Italy the melodeon has never been a ready made, industrial instrument: any player could order what he wanted to one of the makers.

This was obviously  different in England, since the instruments were imported from Germany, so until the sixties the C/F was the standard for the two row instruments (the Hohner D/G boxes were made then for the English market only, and aren't still available on the continent), and the one row four stop boxes were mainly in C. I guess the choice of the C one row four stop in Luisiana is another side effect of the marketing strategies of the German makers, Hohner in first place, although there are  now a number of local makers, and that's changing.

For the record, the early Irish boxes were in C#D, then they suddenly disappeared in the early twenties and were replaced by the B/C instruments, to be rediscovered only in the seventies.

The three row instruments in three keys tuned in fifths are popular where the two row boxes where “high pitched”. Santiago Jimenez played a C/F box (I dare say obviously, since the instrument and the music were both borrowed from the German immigrants), and so his son Flaco naturally moved to the G/C/F. No G/C player would move to a G/C/F box, having to relearn about half of the tunes he has learned on the two row instrument!

The Eb/Bb boxes are popular now in Brittany, to play with the bombarde (usually in Bb), and I have read that three row instruments instruments in the flats are now popular among the norteño ensembles using a horn section.

But then, considering the number of makers that produce custom made instruments, the map should be updated every three or four years!




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penn

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2015, 11:02:32 PM »

I'm interested to know why C is considered the East Anglian key?
Is it as GBbox said, just because C and C/F boxes were coming in from Germany in the first half of the 20th century? But wouldn't that have been the same all over England? I read somewhere that Percy Brown played a C/C# - these seem not to be terribly popular in any culture, so how did one end up in Norfolk?

Curious....
Steve
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Anahata

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2015, 11:20:45 PM »

There used to be many C box players in Norfolk and Suffolk. To quote John and Katie Howson's "Before the Night was Out..."
Quote from: The Howsons: Before the Night was Out...
A large bulk of the musicians in East Anglia, both melodeon players and otherwise, regularly played in the key of C, and this remains a popular key in the area
The book was published in 2007, but the recording and collection of tunes in the book started in the 1950s.

Why East Anglia?
C, B/C and C/C# used to be common all over England and Scotland. D/G melodeons were introduced during the folk revival in the 60s but there were still many East Anglian players carrying on doing what they had always done, so the "C habit" has persisted longer in that region.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2015, 11:25:51 PM by Anahata »
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Matthew B

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #10 on: August 07, 2015, 01:18:43 AM »

About 20 years ago up in Newfoundland I ran into quite a few A/D players, which if I'm not mistaken, is a fairly "fiddle-friendly" set up.
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deltasalmon

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #11 on: August 07, 2015, 01:24:03 AM »

A/D seems very fiddle friendly. I'm actually curious especially about that one. It seems not as popular as many others. Maybe someone can confirm, I seem to recall hearing it was played somewhere in Scandinavia? Or maybe someone can tell me where else it is popular?
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Sean McGinnis
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forrest

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #12 on: August 07, 2015, 05:43:51 AM »

A/D seems very fiddle friendly. I'm actually curious especially about that one. It seems not as popular as many others. Maybe someone can confirm, I seem to recall hearing it was played somewhere in Scandinavia? Or maybe someone can tell me where else it is popular?

Scandinavia is a good bet because fiddles (and nyckelharpa) are mainstays. Here's Rannveig Djønne of Norway playing what seems to be an A/D with accs.
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Bobtheboat

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2015, 09:35:35 AM »

I've come across a few other GCers this side of the channel. Pretty much all into the French/Belgian revival. I also meta couple of Dutch players in a bar in Amsterdam (or perhaps Rotterdam) who played English stuff on D/g boxes. Bob
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Mike Gott

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #14 on: August 07, 2015, 11:38:17 AM »

I'm interested to know why C is considered the East Anglian key.....

I always understood that it was just the key that the shops that sold them in that part of the world tended to stock. The 1-row that I was given by my next door neighbour as a child in Lincolnshire was a C. I'm glad to hear that the EAMT events keep an element of C playing in there, it would be a shame if we lost those localised individualities in favour of blanket D/G. If I'm playing in a "round the room" type do, I tend to take my C just to give it an outing. Other than that, I've had my G since 1982 so we've got used to each other by now, though it is a bit like playing a Bullworker....

Mike
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TedK

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #15 on: August 07, 2015, 12:58:00 PM »

Following on from Anahata's comments, I think it's likely that people acquiring a melodeon in the past had much less choice regarding the key of their instrument. Also traditional players would not be going to sessions or folk festivals but probably just playing in a local pub, occasionally with others but quite often as the only musician, so having a "standard" tuning would not be so important.

My feeling is that C was"popular" in East Anglia, not because people particularly liked it, or even because it particularly suited the traditional music (which would surely have been ultimately rooted in fiddle tunes in the same way as the rest of England).  It's just that C was the key that melodeons usually came in!
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Jack Campin

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #16 on: August 07, 2015, 01:08:56 PM »

No sort of generalization, but the one time I've been to a session in East Anglia it was in C.  Which was great for me as I had a very good F alto recorder with me, and I hardly ever get a chance to use it in British trad music - C is the strongest key on the F alto.

So, I hope to be back there someday and I hope they're all still C-ing along.
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Theo

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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #17 on: August 07, 2015, 02:20:36 PM »

There is also an argument that in England the introduction of the DG melodeon has narrowed the choice if keys. Here in the northeast the box is not the mainstream instrument it is further south, and session tunes here often will be mainly in D, G, Am, Em Bb mainly but very often there will be tunes in F, C, E sometimes Bb, and of course Dm and Gm are very popular fiddle keys.  And then the NSP players all think they are playing in G, but some are in concert F but many are still in the "traditional" pipe pitch of F blunt, which is about half way between F and F#.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2015, 02:22:13 PM by Theo »
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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2015, 02:37:17 PM »

As a lazy fiddler, I much prefer to play in G, D and C, in that order. I'm less keen on A because the G# means that I have to use a different finger pattern.
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Re: Melodeon Key and Regional culture
« Reply #19 on: August 07, 2015, 03:39:43 PM »

Great post in general GBbox, thanks.

... so his son Flaco naturally moved to the G/C/F. No G/C player would move to a G/C/F box, having to relearn about half of the tunes he has learned on the two row instrument!

Yes! I have often thought this very same thing, and when I got a three row F/Bb/Eb (which is close to the same pitches as G/C/F) I have found myself working out new strategies to play old tunes.

Quote
The Eb/Bb boxes are popular now in Brittany, to play with the bombarde (usually in Bb), and I have read that three row instruments instruments in the flats are now popular among the norteño ensembles using a horn section.

I have heard the same about Brittany. As for norteño, when I did my research on this, maybe a year ago, I found it was about half and half, G/C/F vs. F/Bb/Eb. What was interesting was that I never once heard of anyone arguing about which is better or more "authentic." It was a very convivial community.
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