What’s this? Well, I wrote a script that searches for a way to play a (irish) tune on a concertina.
The (Anglo-) Concertina is quite hard to learn. It has two sides (Left, Right), three rows. And every button has two notes, it depends on whether you push or pull the bellows. It’s a small nightmare to start playing this instrument.
So what do you see above? Take a deep breath! Blue dots are Push, Red dots are Pull. You see the three rows, left and right side. And 5 buttons on each row. On the right side, the first dot on the left is your index finger. On the left side, it’s on the most right dot. It is what you see if you look down on your instrument.
So this blue dot above is an Pull action on the first button of the G row. On the right side.
Please note that repeating notes are not shown. You have to know the tune before you can use these charts.
The scripts needs an .abc file as input. https://thesession.org/ has many .abc files, but there are lots of other sites.
Please note: concertinas can have different key configurations. The above chart is made for my instrument. The above chart are the first 60 buttons of this tune:
X: 1
T: Joe Banes
Z: BanjoGabo
S: https://thesession.org/tunes/16307#setting31289
R: barndance
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
ge| d2 GA B2 BA| d2 G2 G2 ge| d2 GA B2 AG| B2 A2 A2 ge|
d2 GA B2 AG| B2 d2 g2 ge| d2 de dB GB| A2 G2 G2:|
ef| g2 ga ge d2| e2 ed e2 ge| d2 GA B2 AG| B2 A2 A2 ef|
g2 ga ge d2| e2 ed e2 ge| d2 de dB GB| A2 G2 G2:|These are the rest, page 2.
