The Irish Concertina

Book excerpt: Mick Bramich presents a systematic approach to playing the C/G Anglo concertina, Irish style. Many people buy or acquire an Anglo concertina and find that it is less intuitive to play than it first appears. What is needed is a systematic approach and, at last, here it is. You don't have to play specifically Irish music to utilize this style; the system employed is one of the most efficient ways of exploiting the peculiar nuances of this instrument and can be applied to any genre. Keys are presented in order of difficulty and all types of tune - including slow airs - are tackled. The book contains 17 photographs and numerous illustrations and diagrams; 14 reels, 20 jigs, 10 hornpipes and 12 miscellaneous tunes, (56 in total, many with chords), rudiments of music, an extensive bibliography and discography, and a chord chart. The optional CD contains extracts from each chapter and a selection of the tunes from the book. It is not totally essential that you be able to read musical notation to use this book, but musical notation is used without explanation. Mally's and UK product #AT102.