Day 337: I've had the concertina less than a week, and although I have a long way to go to become proficient, I think there's hope! I began by learning this piece ("Blue-eyed Stranger," a traditional Morris dance tune) as just single notes, then added a simple baseline which gives it a bit more substance but only requires three buttons on the left side (mostly just one). The bellows are still quite stiff, so my playing is a bit breathy, but that too will improve with practice. The reeds also need a break-in period, particularly those in the upper register. Upload times do not permit me to post the whole piece even if I could play it reliably for the duration of a video, but you will get the idea from this excerpt. For the time being, I'm treating the instrument as a 10-button model except for the occasional F-sharp in the bass, but it has 20 buttons and plays in the keys of C and G. A 30-button concertina was beyond the range of the budget for an instrument I wasn't sure I'd be able to play, but maybe some day, I'll feel I can step up.
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